Let's be honest; we all want to be wealthy. Wealth, whether it's gold, buildings, land or livestock, gives us a lot of what we want out of life. Although wealth can also be defined in many other ways, for this brief article, I want to use the normally accepted concept of wealth; money.

There are really only three ways to get money; you can win or inherit it; you can take it by force or coercion; or you can earn it. (I think lawsuits probably come under the 'by force' category).

By far the most certain, ethical and safe way is to earn it. However, most people who choose this option usually do it by exchanging their time (and effort and skills) for money.

Business owners typically know that this is not the best way to go about earning money. A man (or woman) may start a business and employ people to do the day-to-day chores for him. By doing this he leverages his time by getting paid MORE (by his customers) than his employees cost him.

Most people, however, don't have the initial money (investment capital) to start a business, so they end up working for somebody else all their lives. There could well be an alternative!

There's some buzz going around the internet at the moment about a company called 'The Private Millionaire'. At first glance, it appears to be nothing more than another MLM or Viral Marketing system, but I thought I'd dig a little deeper, as I'm not one to judge the proverbial book by its cover.

I had to laugh at the initial web pages that suggest you can make $4 million and retire comfortably very quickly. This, I thought, is going to be fun to read. Let's face it, most of us have seen similar offers that promise ridiculously high earning potential, and I thought this one would be no different. But I read on mainly because the sales pages are so expertly written.

On further inspection, this United Kingdom based company seems to have hit upon a really great concept. This is how it works:

The products they are selling are downloadable reports; nothing new there. But the way they market these reports is very clever indeed. As many people now know, even an average product can be the most successful in its market if it's marketed well, McDonalds being a prime example.

The potential customer is taken to their initial page which very briefly explains that there are four downloadable reports, all of them about wealth and money. Two of the reports cost $16 each. The first report is free, and then you buy the second report from the person who referred you to the website.

The third report is also free, but then you buy the fourth report from the person who directed you to the initial sponsor's website (i.e. the sponsor's sponsor). Total outlay for all the reports is $32. These are extremely well written reports by the way, and arguably, are easily worth $16 each, even though the average price would actually be $8 per report, because 2 of the four reports are at no charge. What you do with the information within each report is of course entirely up to the reader, which is, of course, the case with any and all information products.

They operate this way because the person who promoted their company website gets paid this money directly. The money NEVER goes to the company itself the way most Networking Marketing companies operate. See how this is clever? It gets better.

The Private Millionaires company manages this direct-pay system by allowing you to set-up your own PayPal (or SafePay, Or AlertPay) account so that your details are directly linked to each webpage.

Once a person has purchased the second paid-for report, they are then walked through a very thorough explanation of how to advertise their own webpage to other people. They explain how to advertise free of charge and also suggest several paid methods.

They even make having your own website easy.

For a one-time fee of $72 which will last as long as they are in business, they will create your web pages for your AND host them on their servers. Officially they use a company called Website Developments for hosting your website, but I suspect this company is closely affiliated with Private Millionaires.

If you already own your own website and don't want to use their hosting, they make it easy for you to do that as well, giving you all the relevant pages, links and technical details you'd require.

Like I said, when I first heard about this, I thought it was just another ridiculous get-rich-quick scheme. However, now that I've looked into it a lot deeper, I believe it's really going to work.

While I don't think it will actually make anybody a millionaire, with the possible exception of the Private Millionaire company owners, I DO believe that it will make whoever joins it a lot more money than the $104 that it costs to join. And I mean a LOT more!

Thinking about the longevity of a viral-marketing company like this, I initially thought that they would reach saturation-point by about 2014, however, I didn't take into consideration the fact that currently, internet usage is doubling each year, adding millions of new users every month.

The world's population is growing exponentially, and added to this is the fact that technology is making it increasingly easier for people around the world to access the internet at ever decreasing costs.

In 2008 there were over a billion internet users. There are an estimated 500 to 2000 people getting on the internet for the very first time every day, many of whom will be looking for ways to improve their lives by making more money.

With these all of these things in mind, I believe that companies like this are going to be around for a very long time.