Early on in this challenge, Jorge posted an article on 29 ways to make money on the Internet.  At the time, I remember thinking that it was so easy to just make money out of “nothing” (or rather just the flow of electrons).  Now, 3 months into this project, I find that I’m again reassessing what direction I want to take this project.

The trap I keep falling into when I look at creating affiliate marketing sites is I realize how poorly I’ve done IM for my own businesses - primarily TaxLoopholes and DKTax Services.  So, the landing pages that we put up tend to be focussd on these companies.  There is profit, without a doubt, but it’s slower to build than I thought.  Add to that an uncertain economy and we have a steep learning curve impacted by extraordinary outside forces.  Bottomline, I’m a big one on testing data but these are such strange and unusual economic times that I don’t know if any test is really valid for normal times.

And in the middle of all of this confusion, I got one of those big smacks upside the head that life gives me every once in a while.  I call it a “blinding flash of the obvious”.  In other words, d’oh!  You’ve heard me talk about investigating different MLMs in previous posts.  That’s because the blinding flash was when I was talking to a friend and he experienced a couple of months ago something I’ve seen again and again.  He got a sudden jump in income from an MLM he joined 2 1/2 years ago.

I often say I’m a CPA so I get to see the truth.  I wish you could all sit where I sit for a week.  I have clients, or have had clients, who are some of the big names out there with best-selling books and wildly popular seminars.  Some of the guys are brilliant with their investing and really are the millionaires and multi-millionaires they say they are.  A lot are not.  So, when I say that I know one thing for certain with MLMs, please believe me that I’ve seen the data and know this is true.

If the company is solid and has a solid business premise, and if you join and work the plan diligently through the first few beginning years, you will make money.  If you keep on through that magic 4-5 year mark, your income will suddenly “pop” up.  

Until a few weeks ago, I thought it always took 4-5 years, so I was surprised when my friend did it in 2 1/2 years.  And he told me about another guy in the company who hit the mark in just 18 months.  (By the way, when I saw “pop” up - the number I’m talking about is $30,000 - $50,000 per month.  This number seems to be true no matter what the MLM opportunity as long as the business premise is good.)

So, that is my next big project.  I’m having a mastermind at my office this Thursday.  I have two projects:  (1) Some brand identity solidification for TaxLoopholes, and adding another identity - more on that (2) outlining a business plan with strong SEO and IM for the MLM.  

I know, someone is going to ask “Which MLM?”  I don’t mean to tease this out. This post is getting too long and I’ll add another one later to outline what I’m doing and why.