You may wonder how you might choose something for your internet business? Where do you start?
These ideas will help you to brainstorm what your first website will be about and might give you some ideas as to what you are going to call it too. This “ideas list” will also serve as useful notes for future websites and will form the basis of your research later on too.
So, your list might look something like one of these:
- cross stitch patterns
- football teams
- baby shower ideas
- accountancy software
- running your own nursery
- golf tip
I reckon this part is one of the hardest things – this takes the most creativity. The rest is just straightforward steps which I will show you. It’s well worth investing time on this “brainstorming” as you will return to this list time and time again as you are building your business.
Action Point
Get a pen and paper and write down your interests and hobbies. What skills do you have what information do you know or be interested in finding out? Each time you think of something over the next day or so, write it down.
Different Types of Internet Businesses
There are various ways of making money on the internet.
- Selling goods on your website – an e-shop
- Selling affiliate items – recommending other peoples goods and getting paid a percentage when someone buys them
- Creating a website and being paid for advertising space
Selling Goods: This requires money to stock goods for your store in the first place or the use of drop shippers.
Affiliate Sales: The sale of affiliate items requires an element of expertise in creating websites and writing advertising copy.
Both of these types of business can earn good money but require a higher level of expertise and financial input than the option which is the focus of this article:-
Earning money on your website
This internet millionaire business can currently be set up for less than $10 and doesn’t require any detailed technical knowledge. Once set up it will continue to make money with very little further input. The first website I created and haven’t done anything to for several months brought in an income of $170.20 in the last seven days.
That site is just going to keep on making money for me, and I haven’t made any changes to it for weeks! That is one of the keys to this business, to set up websites, get them up and running and then leave them alone whilst they continue to earn you money.
Why you don’t need to sell anything
I often get asked about my business and people simply don’t understand how you can make money without actually selling anything.
If you can create a website which attracts visitors, you can use either a pay per click (ppc) program or an affiliate program to earn money. This means placing html code (website language) on your site, you are paid when someone clicks on them. The html code is provided for you and the adverts displayed are automatically related to the content of your site. For an example of this, visit http://www.toujours-provence.com where you can see relevant Google Ads displayed just below the photographs, all created by code placed on the website.
If you can create a website with useful, relevant information, or in other words, content, the search engines will love you and so will the ppc advertisers. Search engines love content – plenty of pages, plenty of words. The key to ranking high in the search engine results is “content”.
By using Google Adsense, you really can be on to a winner. Using Google Adsense to place related ads on your site means that they pay you each time someone clicks on an ad. You’ll find more information on Google Adsense further on. Essentially, to make money on your website, you create pages of content and Google pay you money for every visitor that clicks on their ads. It’s that simple. You could also use Overture, but Google Adsense is easier to add to your site and is where most people are earning good money.
Online Store
If you are really interested in setting up an online store on your website, I’d like to recommend Andy Jenkins and Audrey Kerwood Online Store Profits. I’ve used this with success for selling online. It’s an excellent and detailed step-by-step guide to setting up your online store. It literally tells you everything you need to know! You can find out more about building an online store at Yahoo! Store Profits. For an example of a store created using these techniques, visit http://www.a2armory.com/lordofrings1.html
Dropshipping
If you’d like to explore the idea of using dropshipping to create a store, then I suggest you visit Dropshipping resource to find out more.
A Virtual Store
A virtual store is something which looks like a store to your customers, but for each product, you actually refer them to another online store. Your visitors get what they are looking for and you get the commission for their order. You can also set up a “virtual store” with Commission Junction.
Creating a virtual store is a good way to make more commissions. It also keeps your users coming back to your site and doesn’t annoy your visitors with ads all over your site trying to get them to go to a site they know nothing about.
It may be even better to do direct comparisons between one online store and other online competitors. This encourages your visitors to buy through your affiliate links.
