Is Starting An Online Business For You?
Copyright 2006 Prepaid Solutions
Working at home has been a dream of many that goes back many
years. Staying at home and enjoying watching the kids grow up is
a goal worth fighting for.
Let's take a look into making a living or part time living from
the comfort of your home. You owe it to yourself to gain the
freedom a home business can offer.
In the past, there have been multi-level marketing plans to sell
everything from vitamins to soap. There have been mail order
catalog opportunities. Many tried buying and selling real
estate. Each of these opportunities made many people a lot of
money, but each of them also cost many people more money.
More people have spent money than have made money in every
business venture.
The problem is many inexperienced people get into moneymaking
schemes after attending a meeting somewhere. The offer may be
legitimate, but most people fail in business.
According to the US Small Business Administration, over 50% of
small businesses fail in the first year and 95% fail with the
first five years. That is a scary statistic.
This means that the average business is doomed to fail from the
beginning. It also means that you will lose a lot of money if
you start a business. WOW! No wonder you are leery about putting
up your hard-earned cash for what is statically a crapshoot, a
roll of the dice.
So, what is the answer for the average person who does not want
to lose their savings and even their home equity in a business?
Start building a "digital business" online. Create a website
that generates its income without you needing to invest in
inventory or even lease a building to house your business. Then
create two or ten more websites generating income for you.
You may not know how to create a website today. It is an easily
learned skill. There is software you can buy or download free
that will help you. There are tutorials on making a website
profitable. You can do this.
Once you have a website online you can put other people's
advertising on your site and be paid when someone buys one of
their products. This is called affiliate marketing. If this was
my baby toys webpage and I mentioned a great baby toy with a
link to my advertiser's toy page you might go there and buy the
toy. If you did, I would get a commission.
You could also put ads on your pages that only require someone
to click on the ad for you to be paid. Again, if you were on my
baby toy page and an ad talks about a toy. You click on the ad
to go see it and I am paid for you clicking on the ad.
The advertiser feels their sales page is compelling enough for
them to sell enough of that toy to cover their cost of the
clicks that got you there.
Some advertisers do not require you to buy the product when you
click on an ad, but you will not be paid unless you fill out
their application. This is usually seen on sites like insurance
sites or loan application sites. You do not have to get a policy
or take out a loan for me to be paid. When you fill out the
form, I qualify for my commission for sending you to the
advertiser.
These are typically the ways a beginning website entrepreneur
starts generating income on the Internet. Once you understand
that part of internet marketing, you may move on to selling your
own digital products.
A digital product is one that can be downloaded from your
website. You can sell your own ebook you wrote yourself or an
ebook you purchased and have the rights to sell online.
If you are a programmer, you can sell you own computer program
from your site.
You could also sell someone else's program that you purchased
the rights to sell. Notice that not all of the above ideas
require you to invest in a lot of inventory. Even the products
are free if you create them yourself. Not everything you are
doing so far requires a large investment of your hard earned
money. It does require a large investment of your time.
All of the material you need to create a website can be found
free online if you do not want to purchase some popular program.
Your only expense SHOULD be a domain of your own, such as
yourdomain.com. You can get free hosting from various places but
for moneymaking venture, this is not advised.
For a small investment, you too can be PRESIDENT OF YOUR OWN
COMPANY.
Maybe the statistics are the same for success online as they are
in other businesses, but this is a chance to find out without
losing the farm doing it.
The reason most online / home based businesses fail or never
make any money, is because of the lack of a plan. As with a
brick and mortar, offline, business you
have to know where you want to go, how you will get there and
when. The old saying, "those who fail to plan, plan to fail" has
never been more true than building an online business.