Making Money Online (The neatest little guide to ...)
- — 05 January, 2000 17:14
Like many books dealing with the Internet, Making Money Online omits key information and is full of irrelevant fluff.
The first half of this book has very little to do with making money: it covers topics such as buying a PC, picking your ISP and Web hosting. While this information may be of general interest, it is not the reason people are buying the book.
What's worse, the review copy was not localised, so much of the ISP Web hosting and many Web sites are tailored to the UK market. Is anyone from Australia at all interested in connecting to www.aol.co.uk, or discussing UK local timed calls for ISP access? Even if I was living in the UK, this book is not a guide to getting online or a general discussion about Web site design - it's about making money from Web sites. To spend half a book off-topic is a tell-tale sign of little substance.
By the time you have waded through this fat and gristle, it is apparent that tips and strategies are not well covered. There is some general discussion about a few well known techniques, but the variety and specific details are lacking. There was plenty of room in this book to discuss ways to maximise income from your site - or the associated pitfalls - but after a while it is apparent that most of the content is a plug for the author's site.
What you will get after 188 pages is a handful of Web sites, incomplete lists of resources and some general tips. Distilling all the useful information in this book will leave you with about two or three pages. Why pay $20 when you get all this in the February 2000 edition of PC World; or, visit pcworld.idg.com.au, and head to the "Web and you" section for free. Keep the money for something more helpful.
