There has been quite a discussion in my forum this week regarding latest online 'craze' to generate fast money....

In fairness, this method of earning quick cash has been around for quite a few months but it is just starting to trickle out to masses as more and more people realize potential and jump on bandwagon.

In case you have missed forum chat, overall concept of this opportunity involves using software products such as Traffic Equalizer ( http://www.thetraderonline.com/trafficequalizer.html ) to create websites. Traffic Equalizer and similar programs work by taking a keyword that you input and then building a website around this keyword. The end result is a directory or portal of related links to other websites/articles that are relevant to keyword that you chose. Because of way in which automated site is structured, these pages have a very good chance of achieving high rankings within search engines, which of course can mean lots of free traffic.

So, take things one stage further and add some affiliate links or Google Adsense adverts to automated pages and suddenly these automated websites become sales tools which potentially can earn money from every visitor, which you will recall are all coming from search engines for free :-)

Now fact is that each site may or may not earn you any money and vast majority of sites will probably be doing well if they bring in $5 of Adsense income each day but here's thing - it only takes a couple of minutes to build a site and once built, it requires absolutely no maintenance. Can you see where I am going with this?

Basically speed at which sites can be built means that you can build lots and lots of sites and if each one can, potentially, earn you $5 or more a day, this soon adds up to a reasonable income.

So what is downside I hear you cry?

Simple. In my opinion, this 'loophole' (or whatever you want to call it) to get free traffic is not going to be around forever. Search engines hate to have their results manipulated in any way and as more and more people fill Internet with these directory-type sites, search engines are likely to find a way of excluding them from their results.

I know it is better to be positive than negative. But speaking from experience sometimes you can do things that are bad for your home business without realizing it. You might even think you are doing right thing when in fact you are hurting your online business. So here are some "top 5" ways you can throw your work-from-home opportunity down drain (and how to avoid doing so):

1) Have no plan, vision or goals. Sure, you may find success in your home business by accident. But you are more likely to keep your online business alive (and have it grow) by setting some direction. Besides, without a plan and destination how would you even know if you achieved success? Do some dreaming about what you would like your home based business to be in 2 years. Then set some attainable but challenging goals based on your vision. With your goals in mind, chart a plan for your home business.

2) Do nothing. "If you build it, they will come." Wrong - who told you that? One of most frequent mistakes made by newcomers to online business is belief that if they can just build a nice looking website then they will earn money. Of course some marketing ploys feed on that assumption, luring Internet marketing rookies to purchase only website they will ever need. Just like an offline business, your online opportunity does not usually sell itself. You need to somehow bring potential customers or clients to your business website. This takes hard work, consistency and determination to succeed.