I know there are all kinds of "legitimate" business opportunities available on the Internet. You can join (read this as buy into) an MLM selling all kinds of pills, potions, gadgets, etc., in the "health" industry, and indeed some of them might be legitimate, but they all seem to want $500 - $2,000 from you up front. They even tell you that the more you invest, the more you will make selling their products to your friends, neighbors, and family members. Yeah, I am sure the neighbor lady is going to appreciate me knocking on her door and asking her if she is interested in losing 120 pounds before next summer. That is probably not the best way to make friends, but it is probably a good way to be invited to a fight with her husband.

There are also a number of other "opportunities" out there promising - or at least implying - that you can retire and make more than a brain surgeon as a copywriter, all you have to do is pay them $2,500 or so to participate in their writing course where they weed out the illiterate and turn the accomplished loose to find their own clients with an 8 x 10 certificate of course completion, but alas, there are no guarantees and they don't give refunds.

Of course, you could always "get paid to take surveys online," or "make $500 daily" if you will just pay so-and-so $25 to learn how to profit from Google Click Bank, and my personal favorite is the concept of getting rich by becoming a web affiliate. Never mind the concept of having a website with any content of value, all you need to do is be everyone's affiliate.

I am not interested in selling you any kind of system, opportunity, franchise, or even an online business opportunity. What I will tell you is that you can legitimately make $5,000+ per month selling books online through ABE, Amazon.com, Alibris, Barnes and Noble, Half.com, ebay, etc., and you don't have to pay anyone anything to get started! The opportunity already exists and I will not charge you $500 to tell you about it, you can research and verify it yourself.

I personally started selling books online about five years ago and while I struggled until I got some help from my youngest son, a more experienced online bookseller, I have never regretted getting into the business. My wife is Czech and every year we make a couple trips to the Czech Republic to vacation. The online bookselling business has provided the supplemental income to make this affordable. Over the course of those five years, I coached several others that have become successful online booksellers. I took good notes of both my experiences and those of the people I coached, and I wrote a book about it to help others avoid the costly mistakes made in a "learn it yourself" approach.

Don't get me wrong; it does take time, patience, and dedication to be successful. The first 300 or so books I bought to resell amounted to about a quarter cord of expensive firewood. I was just about ready to give up when my son visited and taught me how to find the books that are worth reselling. Up to that point I was under the belief that if a book was very popular, old, or a classic, it would have a good resale value, so I was paying $1 to $3 for them and taking them home to learn they were only worth $0.01 online. To be blunt, I was self-teaching myself the expensive way and not learning very quickly.

Once I knew how to find books worth reselling I thought I had it licked, but the post office had other "learning experiences" for me. Since I was now selling quite a few books, the post office felt it was time to teach me the importance of indestructible packaging - or the "20 story drop test criterion." It sure seemed to me like the post office was determined to separate every book I shipped from the package I put it in, so I set out to establish a method of packaging that pleased the postal workers so they wouldn't try to put me out of business anymore. Believe it or not, I got some of the best packaging tips from a postal clerk that I vented my frustrations on. These I also documented in the form of pictures and descriptions lest I forget how demoralizing it is to ship a book thinking it profited me $50 only to have it "escape" in transit. The worst part is you aren't out only the $50 you thought you were profiting, you are out the cost of the book, you have to refund the customer for the book and shipping, and while it may seem a trivial part, you are also out the packaging materials.

At this point in the "challenge to be successful," I was pretty sure I was going to make it. My postal "escapees" were almost non-existent, I was buying good books for my inventory, and was actually realizing a good monthly profit, but that was not the end of my challenges. My local library - one of my best sources for inventory - decided to go online themselves, and I was encountering an increasing number of competitors, so I had to learn to adapt to better technology to be more efficient in my book scouting adventures.

I am telling you all of this and making fun of my experiences because I want you to understand that making the decision to be an online bookseller is easy, but being successful requires having a good knowledge of the business, the tools to be successful, and it doesn't hurt to have a little guidance. Remember too that making money doing it is only part of being successful; you need to enjoy it and have fun doing it to really be successful. Being truly independent and having the flexibility to pretty much do what you want when you want certainly makes the enjoyment and fun parts easier to achieve.