Over the last year it’s been interesting to watch the fallout from the recession, especially in the business opportunity world.

It’s a funny thing selling business opportunities – you are selling a product that is supposed to make the customer money.

Therefore if you sell products about making money, your company should be able to make money. If you can’t make money and admit you can’t then you lose all of your credibility. So it’s very important for biz opp publishers to keep up the pretence that they’re still making a lot of money.

Over the past couple of years the market for selling “make money” products has become more and more difficult. You won’t hear this from many people because they can’t admit this.

What you will hear more and more are such claims as; “it’s easier to make money in a recession because more people are looking to make money“.

Rubbish.

The usual buyers in the business opportunity market aren’t buying as much as they did two or three years ago, this is something that is being talked about in the bar at seminars, during mastermind sessions and via gossipy Skype chats.

We’re seeing some big biz opp and internet marketing people suffering in this downturn – but they’ll never admit it simply because they can’t. Their methods are supposed to work in all climates but cracks are beginning to show.

Take for example the £2,000 one-year mentoring course from a big UK publishing company that is now offered at £750. It wouldn’t usually raise any eyebrows except this is a company that never offers discounts and never reduces the price of its products.

Something’s very wrong if they’re suddenly offering huge discounts…

And there are other examples.

Take a look at the high-profile casualties of the recession:

Tim Brocklehurst – Tim closed his “MyViralSpiral” site with no warning and it later turned out that he was having financial difficulties:

What happened to Tim Brocklehurst’s MyViralSpiral?

Andy Shaw and Greg Ballard – Andy and Greg claimed to be millionaires who had made it big via property investing and information publishing. It was less than a year ago that they both were declared bankrupt in Brighton:

Andy Shaw and Greg Ballard from Passive Investments – Bankrupt?

(Greg seems to have vanished but Andy is now trying to sell a financial trading opportunity)

Pat Lovell and Sean Roach sold Rip2It as a complete business-in-a-box that anyone could use to make money, even if they’d never build a website before. Their whole business partnership collapsed late in 2009 and Pat appears to have left the internet marketing scene completely:

Pat Lovell is No Longer Associated with Rip2it

Sometimes Things Happen for a Reason

Which leads to…

The lastest offering from Streetwise Publications.

This is of lower quality than their usual offerings and certainly isn’t something they would’ve released a few years ago when they were able to sell 10 CDs for £2k (remember the Insider Signal?)

I can’t say I’m impressed with the Complete Computer Cashpoint and that should be obvious in my write-up:

The Complete Computer Cashpoint from James Walker and Streetwise Publications

When will things improve? No one can say for sure.

I’d imagine that we’ll know that the economy is improving when the quality of business opportunity products begins to increase and we see less and less “get rich quick” opps being offered.

It’ll be nice to write about some good opportunities for a change…