The biggest recent factor to fuel this boom came on September 11. There are certain to be millions across nation now who shudder as they commute to a tall office building. The attack has also dramatically increased our desire to stay close to family. Parents of young children are probably growing disenchanted with life of daycare and office buildings in new world that abruptly appeared on September 11. Since job alternatives are scarce during this downturn, you can expect people to start visiting business opportunity fairs seeking home-based enterprise opportunities.

Two or three years ago I spent a few months working with a leading business opportunity and franchise show, living gypsy life while giving seminars on how to shop for franchises. This was during late-1990s boom years of early ecommerce and high employment. It was a great time to start a business. Yet attendance at these shows was down across country. Who needs risk and trouble of a business launch when you can raise your earnings simply by jumping from good-paying job to better-paying job. And with stock market sky-rocketing, you could accumulate wealth simply by shifting your nest egg from one fast-flying stock to another.

After throwing site together, just submit it to URL submitter a couple times a day and visitors would just flock to my site. NOT! Boy did I feel stupid. Still do sometimes.

But I have to admit making mistakes has helped in my approach to earning money online. Fortunately those early ventures only cost me about $400 and I did actually earn several checks so I put my loss at around $240.

I think it was worth lessons I've learned.

The way I see it, these are things you MUST have in order to prosper on Internet.

1) A Unique Product or become a dealer for a reputable company 2) You own opt-in mailing list with a listserver 3) A PROfessionally designed website 4) A Salemanager (software to follow up on your prospects) 5) Traffic

Being in restaurant and lawn & tree care businesses a unique product was somewhat of a problem. I mean I really couldn't have you download a T-bone medium rare and a twice baked, now could I ? Mmmm...maybe a fungicide treatment for your lawn. Nope. Grub treatment.......Nope.

Now off to Net to find something that people would NEED and purchase in quantity. First I cut some cookies. BIG mistake. Then I tried to sell overpriced vitamins. HUGE mistake. Not only did I sell about 2% of what I ordered, they weren't as good as ones costing about 20% as much. Boy did that guy FOOL me!