So many people dream of making a living online that they are prepared to spend lots of $ learning what to do.
It is so easy to find blueprints and ‘proven’ plans and strategies that it’s difficult to know which one to pick – and whether to pay $27, $97, $997, $1997 – or even more for any training.

Anybody wanting to replace an income probably has monthly bills of $2000 or more – so even a high ticket value training course would pay for inteslf by bringing you income a month or two early.

But do any blueprints actually work?
The answer appears to be both yes and no.

Disclaimers are always justified by the explanation that it is impossible to know if any student will bother to take action.
Quite separately, statistics are published suggesting 99% of people trying to make a living online fail to do so.
I’m not sure if that means most people don’t bother to buy training – or the training doesn’t really work?

Do most people have so much money they can waste it on courses and not bother to try to follow them?
Or is it just too hard to do what courses teach?
Or has something changed in the marketplace between blueprint creation and you trying to make it work?
Or don’t the blueprints work very well, if at all.

I’m still slowly reading Mark Anastasi’s Laptop Millionaire book – where he describes how to make money online in lots of different ways.
And he provides examples of real people who have made lots of money using each individual methods.
What quickly becomes apparent is that the examples of people actually making good money have all, without exception, taken a basic blueprint method and added some special ingredient of their own to make it unique and successful.

Now Mark’s book offers training and doesn’t claim to provide a blueprint to success.
I wonder if that’s because real successful working blueprints don’t actually exist?
My personal view is that if one does exist it should be possible for at least 50% of purchasers to be able to follow it and successfully achieve the promised outcome – something I have yet to find.

Instead what seems to happen is that ‘star’ users adapt strategies for themselves and find extraordinary success.
And these stars are promoted impying if you follow the strategy, you can acieive the same results.
For example, at one of Marks’ seminars with around 400 attendees, the message went out that ‘somebody had made $200 overnight’. Great – but 0.25% really isn’t statistically relevant.
To me, far more impressive would have been if 40 people (10%) had made $10, or better still 160 people (40%) had made $2.50!

One problem with making money online is the almost infinite number of possibilities leading to information overload, a lack of focus and attraction to shiny new offers to learn something you don’t know that seems to be yet another essential ingredient for success.

That’s why finding an honest mentor is so important. – to keep youself on track and avoid distractions.
If only that were easy, we would all be internet millionaires by now!

UPDATE I listened in to John Thornhill’s IM Advantage webinar last night.
John offers mentoring to a limited number of people committed to succeeding online – and he mentioned that his success rate is … 100%!