So you want to start earning online and have invested some of your hard earned cash in a couple of online programs but have you really thought about what you are investing in.

You wouldn't simply roll off street into a real estate agency and purchase a house to rent out without looking at area first and seeing if there was a good rental market and similarly you wouldn't invest all your money into shares in just one company before looking into it first.

As any financial advisor and in fact anyone with a little common sense will tell you - you should spread risk. You do not invest all your money into high risk new venture companies or put it all into property. Similarly, if you want to make a good return you don't just leave it sitting in bank.

Earning a living online or a little extra cash is no different. You must consider all options carefully first and then only invest what you can afford to lose and SPREAD THE RISK.

You should look to put your money in a number of different online companies and investments. No I don't mean join every opportunity going and spread yourself across so many different opportunities that you don't know whether you are coming or going, but you should have a balanced portfolio of opportunities.

First you consider how much time you have to put into a new online venture. If you don't have much spare time look to invest in passive programs that require no recruitment or downline building. And yes there are some of these that work and are stable and will be around for long haul but you must be careful. Even if you are planning to promote another network marketing MLM or affiliate program you should have some form of passive program in your portfolio to build up funds.

Again when investing in passive programs spread risk. For example I have invested money into 4 passive programs, 2 fairly low risk ones, one I would class as low to medium and a higher risk opportunity for quicker returns. Number one rule - NEVER INVEST more than you can afford to lose, number two - SET YOUR GOALS. If you want to earn an additional $500 a month, then invest enough to do this but ensure you withdraw rest and do not be tempted to invest more for a bigger return. All these programs carry some risk and you should always aim to at least make your capital investment back and then just invest profits.

Just one-week later I had visitors on site and have made sufficient sales to give me a good margin of profit over my cost of goods as well as repaying a portion of web business set-up costs.

So how did I achieve this in such a short space of time? Has it been just luck, good judgement or maybe I’ve just discovered secrets to setting up a successful small web based business that I can pass on to you.

In truth I’ve just following a few simple common sense rules: keep start-up costs to a minimum, design site so its very easy for people to buy and be prepared to spend some money on promoting site.

Mark Hockings of DesignerMark kindly designed basic template for site at very low cost. I’ve set to and learnt how to use Dreamweaver so I’ve been able to build all of rest of site around this template thus saving me at least a thousand pounds on what cost could have been.

The most difficult thing has been to find a low cost ecommerce system that works effectively in processing sales and offering you support you need in after-sales. In end I opted for a shopping cart from Mal’s e-commerce and payment gateway services from 2checkout.com.

I’ve always believed that you need to have full control over buying process to be able to make changes needed to get best possible sales conversion ratio. Mal’s e-commerce offers simple buy-now button that you can add anywhere on site and link it to shopping cart customised to look like you own site. The whole process is so simple.