Are Moneymaking Ebooks Useful, or Just a Scam?

Anyone who has spent any amount of time surfing the Web has probably come across Websites that offer to show you how to earn money at home. The headlines, in large fonts, usually tout some seemingly outrageous claim, such as "High school dropout discovers secret of earning $9547 a day online." These headlines are usually followed by a long sales pitch designed to get you to buy an electronic book, or ebook, about making money.
A tremendous number of people are interested in learning how to make money on the Internet. So many, in fact, that a Google search for the phrase "make money online" yields nearly two million results. Obviously, there's a large market for books about making money. Are these books worthwhile, or are they just a scam designed to take your cash?
If you think that a $47 ebook is really going to teach you how to make thousands of dollars per day with only a few minutes' work, you're probably going to be disappointed. The figure quoted in on the seller's Web page undboubtedly represents an extreme example that probably cannot be duplicated. While many of these ebooks do suggest plans that are capable of making money, the sheer volume of people who buy them may render those methods ineffective. What works when one person does it may not work anymore when five thousand people try it. That doesn't mean that the information in any given ebook is entirely worthless; it just means that you may have to go through some trial and error in order to make it work.
Although the promises of earning a lot of money quickly are generally overstated, most of these ebooks do offer some useful information. A book that touts "five plans for success" might have one thing that works and four things that don't. Another book may promote a moneymaking method that won't work for you but might also tell you about a useful piece of software that you otherwise would not have known about. That, in turn, might lead you to something that works.
Most people who earn a living online have multiple sources of income; they don't get all of their money from just one thing. Anyone who is thinking about buying an ebook about making money should keep that in mind and not expect life-changing results from a single 60-page document. On the other hand, exposure to ideas presented in multiple books may give you ideas for something that will work for you, and that, after all, is what you're looking for in an ebook.