Friday, August 04, 2006

Data Entry Work From Home

Quite a few companies now offer Data Entry programs where you can supposedly work from home, enter data, and collect checks. Many of these companies claim you can earn thousands a day by simply doing nothing more than spend a few minutes typing. So is it true?

I have looked at some of these programs, and they basically work the following way.

You sign up for an affiliate site like Clickbank, which gives you the ability to promote hundreds of products and receive a commission check for the sales you generate.
You write ads for these products, and place these ads on the Google or Yahoo network. Who pays to have these ads placed? You do.
If people click your ads and make purchases, you get paid your commissions.
The key to making money then, is to spend less on advertising than what you make in commissions. If you can't do this, you will lose money.

If this sounds like other opportunities you have heard about (Google Cash, etc) you are right. It is almost exactly the same system. The only significant difference is that it is being marketed as a "Data Entry" or "Typing" job. This is a bit misleading, since what you actually need to do is write online ads that generates clicks and sales. Of course, this is not the same thing as "typing," just as writing a bestselling novel is not the same thing as "typing." If you already know how to write great ads, then you indeed can make money using your skills to promote products online. But bear in mind that writing money making ads is something very few people do successfully. Don't fool yourself into thinking you can master it by joining a "Data Entry" program.

So in a nutshell, data entry opportunities are not really about data entry, but about writing online ads. If you can do this well you are probably already making money. While it is possible to make money using this method, it is also much more difficult than it seems, and not just a simple matter of typing or entering data.