The term “due diligence” is a legal term originally used primarily in the securities industry. But these days, it may apply to a wide range of endeavors, including selecting an online business opportunity.

Essentially, it means “do your homework” or the perennial favorite, “look before you leap”.

In other words, know what you’re getting into (or considering getting into) before you commit your time, money or other resources in that direction.

And in this age of Attention Deficit Disorder, instant gratification and disposable everything, few people perform proper due diligence before going off the deep end and making a financial commitment to a web-based business offer.

Maybe it’s the fact that there is normally a fairly low start-up cost associated with the offer, or perhaps the money-back grace period attached to most opportunities that makes people so spontaneous when making a decision about an internet money-making opportunity.

No doubt the cleverly written sales letters for internet marketing opportunities, systems and products that promise vast riches virtually overnight with minimal effort play a large part in such surrender to emotions over basic logic.

Granted, the term due diligence is normally associated with the process of acquiring a business - the brick and mortar type - but it can also be easily applied to many other important decisions as well.

And just because an online business has a small initial or monthly cost, doesn’t make it any less of a business than a multi-million dollar enterprise. It’s simply a matter of scope and scale.

You can buy extensive due diligence checklists for business acquisition purposes, but you’ll rarely find one that deals with what to look for in an online business opportunity.

So, here are a few things anyone with a computer can do to perform due diligence on any opportunity they may be considering getting involved with:

1. First and foremost, carefully read the entire sales letter and all other pages on the site dealing with the opportunity. Make sure you understand exactly what they are offering and what will be required of you in time, money, additional resources and commitment.

This may seem like common sense, but internet marketing sales letters, with their grandiose promises, have a tendency to cloud-over the eyes of even the most skeptical of us at times.

2. Perform a WHOIS search. This is the first of several checks to acertain and verify the background and legitimacy of the company. The following sites are just two among many available that allow you to look into a company’s registration, contact information, date the domain was registered and when it is due to expire, and its hosting company.

http://www.whois-search.com/ or http://www.domaintools.com/

Simply type in the domain name and you’ll be presented with the information.

If you’re evaluating a network marketing, MLM or other monthly fee or large initial investment type of business opportunity, some things should ideally be present in the WHOIS information.

a. The domain has been registered for more than a year - longer is better. Unless they say on the salesletter that they are a startup (i.e. new company), they should have been around for a while. This also ties in with our further research.

b. The domain should ideally not be due to expire any time soon. Big businesses don’t normally mess around with year-by-year domain renewals. They register their domain for multiple years out, meaning they intend to be around for the long haul.

c. The WHOIS info should provide multiple ways to contact the business/domain owners. Serious businesses don’t hide in a cave, they want people to find and contact them and they make it easy to do so.

3. Perform a reviews search. In Google or any search engine of your choice, type the name of the company or opportunity, followed with the word “reviews”. So, if you were investigating a business called Profits.com you’d simply type “profits.com reviews” (minus the quotes) in the search bar and see what you come up with.

4. Perform a blogs search. This time, you’d type it in this way: blog: profits.com You will probably get some non-related results, but you should also get quite a few results where people are talking about the company or opportunity. Since they won’t necessarily be trying to sell you on the company, you’re likely to see some honest assessments.

5. Perform a forums search. Do this the same way as you did with the blogs. Again, most of the results you’ll get will be honest appraisals from real people who have personal experience with the company or opportunity.

For the reviews, blogs and forums searches, you can also type the request into the search engines in a more literal way: profits.com reviews, profits.com blog and/or profits.com forums. Or, you can simply enter profits.com and see what comes up, though those listings will mostly be sites trying to sell the opportunity.

The longer a company has been around, the more feedback you’ll find on it - both good and bad. Be sure to take the bad comments with a grain of salt, as some people make it a point to assail a company or opportunity after they have “failed” with it. These emotional types of reviews are usually more indicative of an individual who didn’t do their due diligence and quit, rather than someone who gave it their all and the company failed them in some way.

6. Check out free services that provide reviews. Two of my favorites for internet marketing or make money online types of products and services are The Warrior Forum and Ratings Hub. The reviews are written by the members, which is great. And these folks have personal experience with the product, service or opportunity in question and they usually give frank, no-holds-barred reviews.

That’s more than enough, I think. Obviously, the more you potentially have at stake, the more due diligence you should put into checking out the business.

The internet makes it easy to check into pretty much any and all business opportunities - both online and off - so use it to look, before you leap. Happy hunting!

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