Chapter 1

Introduction to Online Business

 

There are many different ways of making money online. Some are legitimate and others are illegitimate. But beware, many are spam techniques aimed at short-term cash flow.

 

Turning to the internet for quick, short-term cash is not what this book is about. But do it right and you could be making money faster than you think. For those who are focused on making money online, you should look at the concepts of offline business owners and consider how you may use them to expand beyond the internet.

 

Even if you want to focus on the online marketing side only, the potential for partnering with offline businesses in your niche is almost infinite. By approaching traditional business owners with joint venture opportunities is something that is rarely done, yet holds massive, passive potential. For those who already operate an offline business, you should read this book with an open mind. If you consider yourself too busy to implement these strategies, or they’re simply not your passion, then consider partnering with someone who can. You will be glad you did.

 

Advantages of Running an Online Business

There are so many advantages of running an online business. These include:

 

1. Economic Leverage

You can leverage your business by employing staff or contractors from developing countries that you couldn’t afford in a first world country. You can work with highly-skilled individuals at a fraction of the price. You’re not exploiting anyone when you pay above-average rates. It’s a win-win situation that makes great business sense.

 

2. Minimal Set-Up Cost

If you have a computer and an internet connection, that’s all you need to get started. Even if you don’t own one personally, there’s always access to one—at the local library, an internet café or at a friend’s house. Other than that you will need some form of hosting and at least one domain name. This should set you back no more than about $80 or so per year. Compare this to traditional businesses with large fixed overheads, material prices and fuel bills; the internet is a business paradise. If you already have an offline business, the potential for expansion through the internet is huge, and likely to be a fraction of trying to expand via normal offline methods.

 

3. Anybody Can Do It

Despite what you may think, you don’t have to be a computer programmer to run a successful internet business. The internet is simply a means for you to market your business through. In fact, many of the top internet marketers do not know anything about HTML, servers or editing graphics.

 

The internet makes a level playing field for people of any gender, race, age, social background or education. There are successful marketers who are still in their teens, some from third world countries, men and women, black and white, some who have university degrees while many never even finished school.

 

There are several multi-tool platforms specifically designed for on-line business owners to easily create their entire online business without having to know anything technical.

 

You can create multiple streams of passive income and manage them all from one central place (all without knowing a single line of code). An intuitive, simple ‘drag and drop’ interface removes many obstacles. You don’t have to worry about being computer literate or hiring a mass of expensive programmers.

 

Any modern computer today with a recent browser installed and an internet connection are all that is needed to get started. Bottom line is this – there is no excuse for not being online. It’s time to leave behind any and all reasons you have created for yourself for not taking action before. Ten or fifteen years ago, getting online could have been costly, time consuming and may have had minimal impact on your business. Today it’s very different.

 

Ways of Making Money Online

There are basically three ways you can make money online: as an affiliate, as a product creator or as a service provider. Everything else is simply a variation of one of these methods.

 

1. Affiliate Marketing

This includes models such as AdSense and Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). They’re all the same whereby you are creating traffic for someone else and either paid per click, per lead or per sale. The fewer variables that you can have in an equation, the more sustainable and passive your business can be (and the less chance there is for failure). Being an affiliate for somebody else’s product can be a great way to get started with minimal setup. However, you are at their mercy.

 

2. Service Provider

Being a service provider could be anything from offering hosting, to providing copywriting or SEO services. There is a lot of potential in this market, but be warned, it usually requires long-term investment of your time or money. Services can be difficult to scale. For example, if you are a copywriter the only way you can take extra work past your limit is hiring more people to do the work for you. Being a service provider can create great value for your customers and produce some excellent long-term income. However, it does require long-term maintenance. This model is very difficult to set and forget and may not be the best for anyone just getting started. If you get it right though, you will be rewarded. For offline businesses already offering services, then this is not a problem. The trick then is knowing how to leverage what you already have setup, and find ways to use the internet to scale or add backend income.

 

3. Product Owner

The other option is to own and market your own product. It’s true that product creation is the best way to create sustainable income that’s more likely to last in the long-term. This is because you can control the variables much better and you’re usually not reliant on any third party. You can control your product, the sales process, payment, delivery and your own terms of service. Even if you are totally new to Internet Marketing you can create your own product. Yes, you may feel overwhelmed or intimidated by the idea, but the truth is, it’s easier, more fun and more profitable than you think. One advantage of having your own product is you can leverage the power of having your own affiliates working for you. Affiliates are a great way to get high converting traffic with no upfront costs.

 

So now… the reason you should become a product owner before becoming an affiliate… As a product owner you build a list of buyers, build authority and create credibility. You also have sales funnels, autoresponders and mailing lists. All of which can be leveraged to make your affiliate promotion efforts exponentially more successful than trying to be an affiliate without them.

 

 

Benefits of Creating Your Own Digital Products

Why own your own product and why make it digital? Let’s take a look at these five main benefits in more detail…

 

1. Leverage

When you have your own digital product, you own an asset that you can leverage over and over again. You’ve already done the hard work in creating your product in the first place. To turn your existing digital product into a different medium to make a new product is very easy. Provided you drive traffic to your product, it will go out and work on your behalf 24 hours a day, 7 days a week while you get on and create your next product.

 

2. Instant Authority

Just like an author gets instant credibility for writing their own book; you too will gain instant credibility when you have your own product to put your name to. You will be seen as an expert in a specialist area and you will be viewed as a credible source. Note that authority and credibility is not the same thing, however they do often go hand in hand. Credibility with authority will give you the best potential in business. This is something that many offline businesses in particular do not take advantage of.

 

A massage therapist for example, may take advantage of their qualifications to build credibility. However, a massage therapist who has a product (such as a book or DVD training program) will also have authority. If asked to choose between the two, the answer is simple for most potential clients. The therapist with authority will win 9 times out of 10, and can usually ask for more money too. We are preconditioned to expect to pay more for services from an authority.

 

3. High Return on Investment

Creating digital products doesn’t cost much; in fact, production costs are minimal. In contrast, the amount of money you can make with a physical product (compared to what you put in) can be very high. What you mainly need is your laptop and some good software. Perhaps the biggest advantage of physical information products is the increased perception in authority. The author of a physical book will command more respect than the author of an e-book. I recommend you make the most of both.

 

4. No Packaging or Postage Headaches

With physical products, you have to pay and organize your product to be packaged and then shipped off to each customer. Even if you have a company taking care of this for you, it still costs. With a digital product there is nothing to package....