Which is the Best Online Business?

There are many, many business models to choose from before starting an on-line business. Which one is good? Rather, which one is good for YOU? Each model has its own advantages and disadvantages.

You will have to understand the basics of each Internet business model and then you will be in a position to figure out what is right for you. Here is some info on a profitable model and also a free report to collect more details.

It is not necessary one must stick to only one model. A beginner must focus on one chosen model until he succeeds in it. Only after tasting success, he must venture into other business models. Often, people read a story and then decide to experiment on that. Since they have lost their focus they often don't succeed.

You may keep studying, exploring different models because you may discover a particular type more suited to your attitude, skills, and availability of time. It is not the revenue-generating potential that is important. It is rather how it suits you. What is suitable to one may not be suitable to you.

You should take advantage of your talents, knowledge, skills and things that you enjoy doing. That way, you shall start earning more because of your focus, your enjoyment in doing your daily tasks, efficiency and productivity. Please feel free to put in your comments below.

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How to Choose the Right Internet Business Model?

Before starting an online business, you have to decide which model of business you want to work with. There are several types of online businesses. Each one has its own difficulties and merits. What is suitable to one person may not be suitable to you. One type of business may be more profitable or easy than the other. You have to take various factors into consideration.

It all depends on your budget, time, knowledge, skills and attitudes. You may start with the one that you like and after you succeed in it and gain confidence, you can add another and then other models. The idea is you should find things comfortable and manageable.

We shall briefly dwell on basics of some of these business models which are ideal for beginners. Details are covered separately.

Affiliate marketing

This is the easiest business to start with to make your feet wet. You can sell a product as an affiliate (a.k.a. partner or associate) of a company. You sign up as an affiliate with a company. The company gives you a unique affiliate link ID which you use when you sell online. This link ID is used to track your sales for commission purposes. You earn your commission according to the terms and conditions of the company.

Wondering how do they track your sales? Technology makes it possible. Every computer has an ID for itself known as IP address. The Internet browser you use for surfing (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.) saves small pieces of information related to you in your computer everytime you visit a site. These are called 'cookies'. When you visit a website, that website drops a cookie in your computer. When you visit the same site next time, the cookie recognizes your re-visit and sends information to the website. This way your computer 'remembers' your number of visits, user ID and your favorite pages.

Affiliate marketing method is the easiest way to earn online income. Thousands of companies will immediately accept you as an affiliate. You earn commissions on products you sold. The commission procedure is absolutely reliable. However, you should be careful to use the right ID provided to you in the way recommended.

Once you sign up as an affiliate for a particular product, you should learn how to promote your products on-line. Effective free methods are available. If you learn and implement them properly, there is no reason you can fail. Many are earning thousands of dollars. There are paid methods which involve spending on advertisements.

Though affiliate marketing can be done without a website, it is better to have one for better and steady income.

Affiliate marketing is the simplest of all and does not require you to have a website. However, you will need a list of addresses to send your emails. Ready-made mailing lists are available. You must choose them carefully because spamming (sending mails without the receivers' permission) is now a serious offence.

You will need to choose a product to sell. Having a website will generate more profits in the longterm. Choose a product (Read Choosing a products) depending on your interest in the topic. You will not only enjoy working but also gain some more knowledge along the way. Things will be easier.

There are many free resources on the Net to learn about Internet affiliate marketing. For one of the best sites giving away more free reliable information on affiliate marketing and more practical guidance at nominal charges **

Selling your own product

If you have the ability to create an information product you can market it all by yourself or find people (affiliates) to promote your product for a commission. Since it is your own product you get the full profit if you make the sale yourself. When affiliates are promoting your products at their expense and time, you will miss the commission portion but still you stand to gain in terms of your time and efforts. In fact, you are making a sale without doing anything. It is a win-win situation for both the product owner and the affiliate.

You can learn how to create your own product. It is not really very difficult.*


Selling on Ebay

Perhaps this is the easiest method to start with if you like selling physical products online. Ebay is the best place to sell. You can list your ad for free in ebay and after someone places an order you can rush to buy the product and despatch it to the purchaser. Remember you get the payment first. In a way, you can even start off without any money.

However, you should do some research and find out the hot selling products, where they are available at a cheaper price, and so on.

You sign up with ebay and the complete procedure is explained in the website very clearly. Here the trick is to find the right products and a cheaper way to acquire them.

I recommend this source to learn more about ebay marketing tips.*

How Much Investment Needed for Online Business...

Many people wonder how much it would cost to start an online business. They also believe that it would be very expensive as it involves technology.

It is natural when you decide to enter Internet business the first question that comes to mind is how much investment would be required. Okay, let me bare the facts.

I assume you have a fast computer and an Internet connection.

Online business has some unique aspects. You can get started without any investments at all. Of course, like in any business, the more you invest the faster and better your returns. Provided, you do things right.

In general, you should ideally start with around $100 if you are serious about it. It is possible to succeed with little or no investment. But ask yourself whether you have the right mental attitude, skills, dedication, time and efforts. If the answer is 'yes' then you are on the right track.

If you simply want to try it out as an experiment or just want to test the waters, you can literally start with nothing except for your computer, Internet connection and your time. After you taste success you can plunge full scale and expand your business to your heart's desire.

If you are willing to set up your own website then the costs as well as the returns will be higher. You will have the responsibility to get and manage the contents for your website.

You can buy related articles for a very cheap rate sometimes as low as one buck or less per article. These articles are sold with Public Label Rights licence which means you are free to modify the articles and publish them in your name. This will save your time and efforts researching and writing the articles.

The free method involves using free-to-publish articles from article directories. There is no cost here. However, you must follow the terms and conditions. You have no rights to make any changes to the article and must publish the author's name and his/her personal details at the end of the article (known as 'bio-box').

You can design the website yourself or get it done by professional designers. If you outsource the work, you can start working from day one (provided your web designer does it faster than you could). Outsourcing increases your cost but leaves you with ample time to focus on promotion which in turn can pay off quick returns.

The designing charges may vary depending on the location, expertise and experience of the designer.This job can be outsourced cheaply on the Internet.

Web designing is not difficult to learn but takes quite some time. However, you must be willing to learn with patience and persistence as in any walk of life. Believe me it is not at all difficult as there are video tutorials available to take you step by step along the way.

If you are new to web designing and want to do it yourself it can take much longer to set up your web site on the Net. It is not necessary you should have a perfect-looking design when you start with.

With today's technology you can design a page yourself quickly. You simply type your articles or sales letter on sample pre-designed page of your choice (known as 'template') and your website is ready. And then you simply learn to upload your web pages to your hosting server so that people can access your site via Internet.

To run and maintain websites means you will have to update your web sites with fresh content periodically. For this you should put aside some money for contents.

Since the Internet world has too many suppliers - whether it is contents, design or programming - you get them all at cheap rates. But you should be aware of possible problems that may arise when you outsource everything on a budget. This is where some basic technical knowledge on your part helps. When you understand at least some basic aspects of the technical part people cannot take you for a ride. Also, you can make small but important changes on your web site at any time without depending on your designer or web master.

After your websites are done, there will come hosting expenditures. Web hosting is a recurring expenditure and costs start from $5 upwards. A reliable and efficient webhost will charge you $20 upwards. You may find some offering very cheap rates; but remember you will have to check out the hidden costs.

Cheaper hosting always comes with add-on expenses. For example, a cheaper web hosting company cannot provide fast and efficient services and will bill you for some essential add-ons at a later stage. And you may not be happy with them. However, to start with, you can always try out a cheaper company. And later you can upgrade to a better hosting service plan with the same company or another.

Besides hosting, you will need the services of a mailing company to send and receive hundreds of mails,newsletters, special offers to your prospects. Here again, there are free and paid services. The best paid service in the market comes with the price tag of $20 per month. So you will have to budget for your recurring expenses which are likely to be at least in the region of $10 - 20 per month.

I shall be providing you with both free and paid web hosting, mailing service sources along with comparison.

So in general, you must be prepared to shell out about $20 - 30 per month minimum on your website alone. As I said earlier, you can always try out free or cheap sources till you start earning enough to afford a better service.

Ater putting up websites comes traffic. What is a website if no one visits your page? You need people to visit your website. How will you do it? There are again several free and paid ways to do it. This will be covered in detail in the web traffic section. You will need to reserve some amount for advertising and other promotional expenses. The amount you spend is entirely up to you.

When you spend money on various methods of promoting your site, you should also know which method is bringing in better returns on investment (ROI). In Internet, it is possible to track your ad spend and identify the sources which is bringing you the moolah. For this, you will incur tracking expenses.

Here again, you have a choice of free, low cost and high cost sources to track the profitable as well as loss-making methods. This is covered separately. Tracking and analysing the results will also take away some of your time.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Business

Advantages and Disadvantages of Internet Business

While talking about Internet business only the advantages come to mind. They are plenty and obvious. And the disadvantages are only a few and are applicable to some only. Since the merits outweigh the demerits, we tend to safely ignore the disadvantages.

However, you must be aware of the disadvantages. That's because Internet business may not suit everyone's attitude, mentality, beliefs and knowledge and skill levels.

So let us deal with the disadvantages first.

• You need to cope with technology or employ people to handle the technical part of it. In other words, you must be familiar with Internet and computer usage. (But believe me it is not at all that hard as you might think because of the terminology you hear often. The factors you must consider are:
  

* You must be willing to face technical failures or problems which may arise occasionally leading to financial losses.
* You have to learn a lot in order to succeed. The learning curve may be steeper for some. Most people who fail have done it the wrong way. It is important you follow the right way in a systematic manner.
* You should take it up in a disciplined manner. Daily allot some time for this work.
* You should be willing to do research where needed to select the right profitable business area (niche).


The advantages of online business are obvious to the general user.

• Little or no investment to start with
• No overheads like office space, warehouses, billing and management employees; everything is fully automated
• Can be operated from any part of the world
• Can work with flexible timings - day or night
• Can take long vacations
• Financial freedom in the long run
• and many more...
  

These are the reasons why many people jump on it. Why should you suffer the 9 to 5 job after all if you can earn from home?

In a survey conducted, about 40 percent of US office goers expressed their desire to work from home. However, one should not enter Internet business by suddenly giving up the job.

The fact is not everyone can appreciate and tackle the work involved in Internet business. The sales letter you read from Internet marketers will claim things are as easy as opening a car door and life will become smooth as a bed of roses. Don't be carried away by such fancy sales letters. It is their business to try and trick to win clients. It is your business to exercise wisdom, control and judgment. Never get carried away by get-rich-quick schemes either. There is no such thing as free lunch. You have to work hard in the initial years to get yourself up step-by-step.

That's why I have included a page on the life of an Internet marketer. So you get the idea. If you believe you can do all such work given there, then it is for you. If you are capable of learning the basics, then it is for you. If you have very little money but are willing to give your best in terms of time and efforts, then it is for you. If you have huge money to invest in order to get it managed by others then it is for you.

So go to the next section and take a look at the work ahead.