And this would have cost the earth, by the time you took your travel into account, your cost of finding your way around the country, various meetings, presentations, etc.
But now, with the World Wide Web, a person can simply set his or her business up on line with a website and start selling. Oh, there's a lot more to it than that, I know. I'm more than over-simplifying, but then again, I can advertise a product I wish to sell on a worldwide basis, and it may cost me $10.00 a month.
I don't need a store, bricks and mortar, which can cost an arm and a leg and a foot thrown in. And a store is static. Apart from a great deal of advertising, I can really only attract those people who live in my area.
In the old days, manufacturing companies used teams of salesmen to represent them, men and women allocated various areas of the country to visit the shops in their particular 'patch.' This is still the case, I know, but the times they are a-changing.
Now, instead of salesmen, a company can advertise for affiliates, people who can work from home, set up websites and sell the company's products. This costs the company very little, and the affiliate can set up even without a website.
True, it's a lot better if he or she has one, but there are excellent companies out there who help people to set up sites for nothing, except hosting, and that can be done for between $10 and $20 a year.
On the other end of the scale, you have the big, global companies that cater strictly to the affiliate. Joining such corporations can cost a considerable amount of money, but in some cases, you do receive a lot for the amount you have to pay out.
But you have to be very careful whom you join. There are those out there who are little better than scams. Well, they are scams. They promise the earth, and never deliver.
Then there are the critics. They take great joy in bad-mouthing these perfectly respectable organizations, simply because they do charge a lot of money.
The cash flow you can expect varies enormously. Old men like me have to learn from scratch. We weren't brought up in the computer age, and have to learn a science that to younger people comes naturally.
Kids use computers at school and some of them make enormous incomes on the Internet when they're not even out of their teens.
The main problem with us older types is that we have to learn to use computers first, before we do anything like learning how to earn money.
A lot of younger people know the ins and outs of computers backwards, and so this particular learning curve doesn't affect them.
Speaking personally, I really did have to learn from scratch. I could turn the thing on, read and send E-mails and that was me, finished! The mysteries of copying and pasting were completely closed books to me, something probably akin to Black Magic.
Still, it's amazing what you can do if you try. My, admittedly very limited, experience has constituted three little words. "Keep at it."
The worst scam artists on the net are those who tell people they can make a fortune just by a couple of clicks of their mouse. Then sit back and the loot will roll in. And pay a couple of hundred dollars for the privilege of the information.
That's why people give up. You can make lots of money, but it takes time, application and hard work. Provided you're prepared to accept these facts, then even old goats like me can do well.
