How many people when thinking about starting an online business have read about people making thousands of pounds online in their sleep, and decided they want to have a go at that? It seems like all you need these days is a website, facebook page and/or a blog and money will just come rolling in......

How many people have seen the big flashy adverts promising to sell you the universal secret to happiness, if you just click this and click that - and while you are at it why don't you just spend twice as much as you were planning to? Or even three times?

Have any of you ever bought any of that stuff?  I have, and I'm afraid I'm still sitting here and not a multimillionaire just yet.

I've got some good news and some bad news for you. The good news is that there are lots of perfectly legitimate (and reasonably easy) ways to make a small amount of money online (eg. through blogging, selling advertising on your website, selling products on your website and so on). And a website and online presence will certainly enhance any other type of business, and is almost essential in today’s world, so it is good to know about it.

The bad news is firstly that although it is possible to make a fortune online, and I'm sure that a lot of the people who write these books are totally genuine, the fact is that it takes a lot of hard work and commitment and a very hard skin to generate serious money. Also, most of the strategies promoted in these ebooks ask you to hard-sell - set up lots of accounts and chase followers and promote them relentlessly to the point of spam. One report that I read said - “make sure you use an alias on facebook, because you don't want to lose credibility on your real name”. If that's not an admission of the worst kind of sleazy sales then I don't know what is.

Another  thing is that most of these ebooks assume that you know how to set up websites and squeeze pages (I hate those flashy long pages of drivel that go on for ever) and very few will explain the online marketing model right from the very beginning, concentrating instead on their strategies for bringing in willing victims to an established site.

So are any of these online sales gurus worth listening to at all?

I've been doing a lot of research into this area over the last six months.  I've already tossed away the notion of becoming another Internet millionaire - I know that college students can do it, but I'm not prepared to sit at my computer 23 hours a day and exist on beans on toast like a college student.  After all, I have a family to look after and two other businesses to run.

I would just like to make a small, but continuous passive income out of my website, blog and facebook page by one means or another, and I would like someone to explain to me how to do it from the very beginning. Not much to ask.

So far, I've invested in a few traffic generating and money making ebooks and products, some better than others. One which I particularly enjoyed, which worked at my level is Learning to Earn Online.

This product contains 22 ecourses and a lot of video tutorials covering setting up websites, blogging, pay per click advertising, SEO, social media etc. They even have a section on how to use Word.  There isn't anything particularly ground breaking in these courses but I found them a very welcome introduction and reference guide to a lot of topics that I have been wrestling with since I took over Motivating Mum. The website is also very clearly laid out and easy to follow, and the courses can be delivered on screen, on PDF or by regular emails, which I thought was very good.

The website itself is run (and mainly written by) Jeremy Gislason, who I'm sure is one of these Internet millionaires.  He has a huge volume of content online, and a wealth of experience, and I'm sure he does earn money in his sleep, with a small army of affiliates like me promoting his stuff. 

By signing up for Learning to Earn online, you will of course be subscribed to Jeremy’s newsletter and bombarded with other offers, which would end up costing you a small fortune if you bought all of them.  Alternatively, you can just harden your heart against all of it, and just observe the way the website and subsequent sales emails are set up, as an example of how the online business model works in the hands of an expert.

From my perspective the Learning to Earn Online website was $27 well spent, and got me thinking and set me off on a lot of things which I now do on Motivating Mum. Anyone who is already making some money through blogging or affiliate sales would probably find it too simplistic, but it was exactly what I needed, coming into this business brand new. I have since bought a few more products from Jeremy Gislason - cynics would say he has done his job well and suckered me in. But I am very happy with the information I have received so far and consider it all well worth the money I paid for it.

You can buy a copy of Learning to Earn Online here, or you can have one as a free gift when you join my newsletter "A Daily Dose of Motivation". 

In this daily newsletter I will be bringing you one blog or article per day from the Motivating Mum website and other mum-focused and small business focused sites. I will include articles and blogs on personal motivation, pr, marketing, website design, facebook and social media,  and all the other bits and pieces that small business owners need. Along the way I will be sharing any ethical strategies I find in my ongoing research, that actually do work to increase my traffic, facebook likes or SEO ranking

I will be including the blogs that I featured in my recent Mummy Mentoring month spot in March 2011, which together form a fantastic resource for mums and new business owners, and there will also be a guided tour of the Motivating Mum site, delivered over the course of a few days, so you know where you can find all the best business-related things. Every time I post up a new event, business freebie, award to apply for, or competition, you will be the first to know, in little easy-to read daily snippets. Of course you could just go to Motivating Mum yourself and find them, but how much more convenient to have one blog per day delivered to your inbox?

Of course I will occasionally offer you some tempting tit-bits for sale (you probably guessed that much) and a few more freebies too, but I promise you two things. Firstly I will never promote anything unless I have tried it myself and really recommend it, and secondly, I won’t be using gigantic colourful squeeze pages that you have to spend 5 minutes reading before you hit the Buy button.

So if you want a no-nonsense introduction to the great world of online business, and business in general, click here to sign up for a Daily Dose of Motivation then please come back and recommend this page to your friends.

See you online x