In the very first day, I would like you to understand several things before jumping into the Internet business world:
• Why go online?
• Can you still make money online? (I mean, look at the Dot-Coms...)
• Roadmap to profitable online business
Why Should You Go Online?
Some of you might be seeking for general home-based business opportunities when you first found out my web site Working-At-Home-Business.com
However, I guess you've noticed that I didn't mention traditional home-based business at all at my site. I'm not indicating that traditional home-based businesses are dead. You can still make a comfortable living with most of the old businesses - if you put in enough effort.
(Same for Internet business. You HAVE TO put in effort in order to make real money. Forget about those get-rich-quick schemes!)What I'm trying to say is that, with today's affordable computer technology and Internet accessibility, going online is a better choice if you:
• want to make more money with less effort;
• have no or very limited budget;
• want multiple income streams;
• want to work with the comfort of your home and schedule;
• want the profit coming in by next week;
• want unlimited profit potential;
• ...
With online business, you have, at least, these advantages:
* Wider Potential Market
For the first time, you, as an individual, can reach a worldwide market. Billions of people are surfing around everyday. And a rapidly increasing number of people around the world use the Internet to purchase items they can't find locally or just don't care where the product is shipped from, as long as they want it.
(Or even better, if you sell info products that can be downloaded immediately after payment is processed, it doesn't make any difference for your customer where you live or where your web server is.)
If you're fast on your feet, you have the opportunity to make some of them your customers. Think about it. The Internet provides a small business in Peoria, Illinois, or Johor Bahru, Malaysia, the opportunity to be a global player, with little expenditure except time given to learning.
A global opportunity awaits you! Isn't it exciting?* Lower Costs
If you already have a product to sell, what's the initial cost to put up a web site to sell it? Here's a round down:
--Domain name registration, $8-35 per year
--Web hosting, $0-35 per month
--Advertising, $0-100
Actually you can get everything done for free except domain name registration. So the minimum cost to start selling online is $8!
I mean it, everything. And in a professional way. Web hosting (without ad banner), affiliate program management, credit card processing, mailing list, CGI script...I'll let you know where to get these services in the following lessons.
Even if you would buy all the most professional and expensive services and software right from beginning of your online venture, it shouldn't cost you more than one thousand dollars.
Typically, $100-200 is what you need to start an online business from scratch.Online business is much cheaper to run as well. You don't have to pay for office rental or equipment. You don't have to employ anyone before you make 1 million dollars.
Once you put everything into autopilot (we'll talk about that later), your running cost will be nearly zero.
* By-pass Middleman
Internet was regarded as advertising medium several years ago. It's not the case any more. A web site is now better understood as place of doing actual business, actual transactions.
Online direct sales enables you to jump any distribution chain that ratchets up prices to the end user. It means much higher profit margin for you, lower price for your customer, or both.
In traditional business world, distribution and retail cost can be up to 90% of the selling price! Now you can pass part of that savings to your customer and keep the rest in your own pocket.
In fact, a really scary development to many manufacturers is the growing temptation to sell directly on the Web and by-pass the complex distribution chain they have built over many years. The manufacturer doesn't want to anger distributors and dealers. But buyers don't care. Neither do you.
* Sales Process AutomationNearly everything can be put into autopilot for an online business.
From product presentation (the site itself), information inquires, price quotation, to payment processing, order fulfillment, customer service, just to name a few. Even the profit will go into your bank account automatically!
All these can be done while you are sleeping or having fun with your family at beach!This is rather impossible for off-line business.
It then translates to more leisure time, or better, more time and opportunities to develop your next online project. Therefore, more money ahead.
Above all, automation itself means much higher profit margin. You don't have to spend time or money on routine operations. You don't have to employ anyone to run it. It runs by itself, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!
* Multiple Income Streams And Unlimited Profit PotentialThis is the natural result of advantages discussed above.
Automation frees up your valuable time and makes it possible for you to repeat the success time and time again. Over time, you will be able to build multiple web sites selling different product lines.
Even if one of them couldn't pull in orders after some time due to saturated market, you can rest assured that you have other income generators still making money for you.A worldwide market enables you to exploit varies product ideas. Your imagination is the only limit.
* Easy Communication With Customers And Visitors
Just imagine, how I can deliver this e-course to you in the off-line world? How can you sign up in the first place? I don't know you, I have no idea where you live, what you like, how old you are...There's no way I can contact you in the off-line world.
On the Internet, you just fill up a form and my course is emailed to you automatically.(This ebook is compiled from my online 7-day email course which is a free gift for my newsletter subscribers. You will also receive 7 valuable gift ebooks (over $100 value) on Internet business when you subscribe to my free newsletter “NetBiz Clasroom”: http://www.working-at-home-business.com/newsletter/index.shtml
You will receive free informative issues teaching you all of the insider secrets to Internet business marketing, search engine promotion, copy writing, traffic generation, affiliate program tips, and more every month.)
This communication capability doesn't end here of course. You can easily inform your visitors/customers new content at your site, give them special gift or discount, keep in touch with them via mailing list, answer questions by email...the list goes on and on.
The best part is that, you capture their name and email address simply by setting up a form, just like the one you filled up 5 minutes ago:). A big time and money saver!Better communication means higher chances to:
• build your credibility
• get more traffic
• sell to your visitors
• have better customer service
• build a mailing list which will bring in advertising dollars
• sell more backend products
* Short Summary
I can easily name more advantages of Internet business: test and adjust your marketing methods fast, don't need to talk to strangers, you can start as a hobby first while keeping your full-time job, you can work whenever you want to (if you are as lazy as I am, you should know what I mean)...you have the idea.
What more can you expect?Just go online!
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Can You Still Make Money Online?
You've heard of enough bad news. Economic downturn, dot-com fallout, weak stock market, all the online scams...Some people just don't believe this "e-business" kind of thing any more.
But before you walk away, I want you to think about something for a moment. Did you know that between 1998 and 2000, online shopping within US grew a staggering 580%? It's true. Forrester Research reported growth from $7.8 billion US in 1998 to $45 billion US in 2000. And online sales reach $5.7 billion in December 2001, - up 14% from December 2000, in spite of bad economy.
You can read more detailed and latest report here.Now think about this. Online consumers couldn't care less about the dot-coms dropping off the Web. More and more people are coming online to shop, and the number of purchases that they're making each year are continuing to increase. Those new to eshopping are making 9 purchases a year and those with more web experience (5+ years online) are making 20 purchases a year.
So what's going on? Online spending is growing at fantastic speeds. e-Shopping is becoming a routine part of consumer life. Yet all we're hearing about right now is failed dot-coms. One by one, companies like Furniture.com, Pets.com, MotherNature.com, Toysmart.com, Living.com, Mortgage.com, Garden.com, etc... have closed their doors, and each time the pink slips are handed out, the media has a feeding frenzy. Feature stories promising easy wealth and overnight success have now turned into the dot-com obituaries. It's enough to make your head spin.
And that's why these statistics I've just shown you are important. Obviously the whole story is not being told. If online shopping has reached 5.7 billion per month, all of this money must be lining someone's pockets.
But whose?A large portion goes to individuals just like you, and small businesses who sell unique products directly at their web sites!
Small is a big advantage. Big businesses dominate the traditional business world. The Wal-Mart's and Microsoft's have steadily forced smaller, family-owned businesses out of the way. Not so on the Internet. Three out of four Internet businesses are very small, often only one person working from home.
You can find many direct sales web sites popping up online everyday. Some will fail. The ones making money all have something in common:• Focus on a well-defined, easy-reachable niche market
• Sell a unique product or have a unique selling proposition
• Streamlined sales process
• Active and effective web site promotion
• Develop backend products
(I'll guide you through each aspect in this ebook.) There is still plenty of room for new businesses on the Internet. Now is an excellent time to be starting or promoting your e-business. Take advantage of your competitor's hesitation at this dramatic turning point and scoop up your share of the market!
------------------------Roadmap To Profitable Online Business
Although I can't discuss in very detail because of time and volume constraint, I would like to share a step-by-step roadmap for those of you who are either considering starting, or have already started a business on the Web. If you already have a web business, at least scan it for items you may have missed. You really do need every single one of these components if you want your business to grow into a source of financial security.
• Find an easy targetable, reachable niche market. Don't try to be everything to everyone.• Develop a product you can control. Ideally you should sell something that you own completely. Or at least you have resell rights.
• Make sure your product can solve some problems for your target audience so that they want it.
• A professional web site with your own domain name. Yes, you have to buy your own domain name. And professional doesn't mean complicated.
• Sales copy that is proven to sell. If there is one aspect that kills web site sales it is poor sales copy.
• Accept credit card payment at your site. Offering a fast and secure way for your customers to purchase from your web site with their credit card is a must on the web.
• Customer support that keeps your prospects and clients happy. The best is simply by offering contact forms at your site and answering email every day.• An affiliate program for your customers. Nearly all successful e-commerce sites offer some form of affiliate program.
• An opt-in email strategy. You must grow a list of prospects. It's the only way you can capture a percentage of the folks who visit your site and do not buy the first time, which is nearly all of them.
• Backend products. Either new products/services, or promoting other's products via their affiliate programs.• Active marketing strategy including free promotion and paid advertising. More than 80% of your time should be focused on marketing and promotion. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, don't worry. This ebook is exactly for that purpose. I'll explain every component in the following lessons.
Seems a lot of work? Well, not really. The initial effort to set everything up may cost you just one day - if you know how to do it.Once you put everything into autopilot, the business will take care of itself, leaving you with more time to enjoy or develop your next online business.
You need to do it in the right direction from day one. The best way to succeed is to copy, or model, the ones who have been successful. Copy their strategies, not their products;-)
You can learn more on starting and marketing an Internet business from Corey Rudl - the most successful online business expert today.
Internet millionaire Corey Rudl has built up his successful business, the Internet Marketing Center, along with all his other businesses on the Internet to the point where he is now...
Earning $6.2 million in revenue and attracting 6 million visitors to his sites every year...all based on 4 basic principles!
As the author of the #1 best-selling Internet marketing course online, Corey's business is to help e-business owners like you succeed. And because he has always referred back to these four steps himself to find the rock-solid foundation required to guarantee his success, Corey has realized that this foundation is exactly what so many Internet entrepreneurs are missing!
And so he has decided to reveal his secret formula! Corey has written a new guidebook that tells you exactly how these four steps can be applied to ANY business to lay the foundation for extraordinary success!
It's called "How to Create a Fortune on the Internet in Just Four Simple Steps"... and now it's available to those of us whose success relies upon this key formula.This four-step process does not take a genius to use and profit from. In fact, this process has been used by EVERY successful e-business - whether they knowingly used it or not.
To find out how you can claim your copy in the next five minutes and instantly learn the exact four surefire steps that are ultimately responsible for the success of not only Corey's multi-million dollar business, but also every single profitable business on the Internet today, click here.
Whether you currently have a business on the web or no business idea whatsoever, once you implement Corey's four basic principles, the success and profits will literally fall into your lap!
What you are about to see is a hard-hitting look at how discovering these four simple steps took Corey from near bankruptcy with only $25 in his pocket and a computer on his desk to making $6.2 million dollars online in just a few short years. So do not hesitate, because if you are willing to put in the little effort it really takes, you can literally duplicate his success if you click here.
------------------------That's all for today. In next lesson, you will learn:
• The 2 profitable online business models
• Find the right niche market
• How to develop or find the product your target market will cry to buy
Zac Hewlett
Webmaster
Working At Home Business
http://www.working-at-home-business.com