My Buy Essay

Posts Tagged ‘internet business’

If you are new to the net and interested in making money ethically then this article will educate you in the various methods of making money online.

It uses a blog as an example of various types money making paths. Blogs cost nothing and are provided free to build a community on the internet.

First of all you can sell a product directly. Have a website and sell as you would have in a mail order catalogue, except thanks to the internet you can automate most of the process, other than shipping and handling. You also still have to stock a product. However this becomes limited when compared to your traditional shoppping mall because while Wal-mart, K-mart, Big-W or whatever can have thousands of products on display, attempting the same on one website becomes very difficult. This is why most people to sell products direct online have a limited number of products for sale. I do participate in a variation of this same theme and you probably have as well, selling on auction on ebay is a type of direct product selling, courteousy of a third party provider.

Next go to the resource box and you will see examples of all the rest of the things I am going to be talking about. (just copy and paste the address to your URL – thats the address bar)

Firstly, you will note that there are no direct products for sale. I don’t want to ship hundreds of items, I want to leverage my time, so the first thing for sale is a product available through an affliliate. At this stage it doesn’t matter who it is for, its the concept that is important here. You don’t have to sell a product directly to make money on the internet. You can become an affliliate member which gives you the right to advertise a product and if a sale is made you get a commission – kind of like your old door to door salesperson, but this time the door is via the customers internet. In order to succeed here you need traffic to your website, the more targeted traffic the better. (by targeted I mean something that the customer is looking for, you don’t want someone who wants to buy a dog to come to your cat website, as its unlikely to result in a sale). Eventually given enough traffic the sales will come. Remember the higher the cost of the product the less sales are likely, most people are on a restricted budget, but the higher the cost or the product normally the large commission payout. This is a balancing act, if one thing pays out $500 dollars you would only have to sell one a week, if another paids you a $5 commission then you would have to sell hundred to make the same money.

It is important to understand that as an affliliate you are provided with a code embedded into your links which tracks you are being responsible for bringing the company the sale. Hence in any banner, links, code to put in, make sure its your own.

The second item for sale is a viral type of product or similiar to the old MLM’s.

In this case GDI – Global domains International, which has the rights over the .ws web address ending (in this case .ws is advertised as standing for website). What they are selling is a hosting service provider as well as a domain name and a variety of other internet services, quite cheaply really considering what your getting. But the real money making deal here is that by signing up others you make a $1 per person per month, and you make another $1 for each person they sign up and so on to five levels deep. Why would a company do this. Because its cheap advertising for them and explodes their growth. In the case of GDI they have made it very clear that they want be the dominant website address .ws, in order to accomplish this they are willing to share money with anyone who helps them grow. By clicking this link the company knows you brought them another customer and your share in the profits. I call it viral because like a virus it catching from one person to a few more to many more, to hundreds, well you get the idea. $1 dollars is not alot, but $1 times 5000 is. Once again you are not selling a product, you are as an agent, and you are not selling a tradtitional goods but in this case a service. This is a viral type or MLM type of system. Often MLM gets a bad rap, but I believe it is because people buy the SYSTEM, instead of buying the PRODUCT, whatever you buy make sure you are happy with the PRODUCT.

The third one is an ebay link. Once again this earns money through affliliate program. It is easy to sign as an affliliate, just look on any web home page and your will normally find a link to “affiliates” In this case the affliliate it run through a third party – commission junction, who acts as an independant company to make sure affliliates are not ripped off, paid on time, etc. This isn’t even directly selling a service – its straight out promoting another website.

The four one is EPI – Emerald passport Inc. which is a total online product, namely financial education materials, self improvement, hours of video and audio, information store on line. Its an example of selling INFORMATION online.

Don’t think information is valuable consider this short piece of information

for anyone who has sold on ebay.

Do you list a product at $20 or $19.99. Which will make you the most money?

The $19.99! how you ask, because the listing fee difference between $20 and $19.99 is 25 cents (don’t tell ebay I told you this, that might lose some of your money). Hence if you list and sell at $20 you earn 24 cents less than the person who listed and sold at $19.99.

How much is this information worth – well at least 24 cents, but to those who sell hundreds of items, much more if they are making this basic mistake and costing themselves money.

Obviously quality information that saves money, creates money or increases your knowledge is important.

Finally you see an short article on clickbank. Like comission junction they act as an afflitate provider and users. This link sells NOTHING yet still makes money. HOW? because anyone who travels down your link to clickbank and joins in makes you a small commission. Once again its a company paying you to advertise, in this case to help them advertise.

A similar thing is google adwords where you are paid to advertise and then pay a small amount per ad click through.

Some other links are included as examples, but you get the picture. Some links make NO money but are their to try and generate traffic, see instantBuzz.com, traffic swarm, etc. Not everyone can be listed in the first pages of a search engine, so you can either accept that fact, be in constant competition to optimise and re-optimise your web page to stay near the top.

There are people willing to do this. Why you may ask? Because the free advertising generated by being in the number one spot is a virtual goldmine and drives huge quantity of traffic to your site, especially if you are listed with a big search engine like google or yahoo. However if you aren’t going to be listed high on one of these search engines (in fact sometimes its even hard to be found and cache by these engines) then you are going to need alternative ways to bring traffic to your website. Another option to marketing is to pay for it, like with google ads word. Another is to advertise offline in a variety of traditional media, magazines, newspaper, radio and TV.

I hope this article and the website at have helped you increase your knowledge of how business takes place on the internet. There may be other ways I haven’t yet covered, but this is a good base for you to start.

(This article is written by Alastair HARRIS and is the property of the HARRIS family, you have permission to copy the article and share it as much as you want, but do not modify the article in any way. I will respond to criticism, but remember I’m new to writing articles so don’t be too harsh)

The author may be contacted at anhharrisandsonsprimusonline.com.au

Happy netting.

The race for supremacy in the internet based businesses has been really heating up and many sites have been put up to help others to get ahead for a small fee. But there are also ways in which you don’t have to pay so much to make yourself a good list of loyal followers. Having a satisfied web traffic and visitors allows you to put up a foundation wherein you can build an opt-in list and make it grow from there.

An opt-in list allows you to provide newsletters to your subscribers with their consent. When people sign up, they know that they will be receiving updates and news from your site and the industry your represent via an e-mail. But that doesn’t mean that all of those who subscribe read them at all. Many lists have been built due to an attachment with free software or for a promotional discount and such. Some are not really interested in receiving e-mails from companies and just treat them as waste of cyberspace and delete or trash them without so mush as opening the e-mail and scanning them.

You can change all that. While forwarding an email message is relatively after producing your newsletter. Getting people to open them is not as easy. You don’t want to waste all the time and effort used in making the newsletters, you want people to read them and have their interests piqued. Interested enough to go to your website and look around and most especially purchased and acquire your products or services.

One of the numerous ways you can tempt or persuade your subscriber is by providing a well thought out and well written subject. The subject of an email is what is often referred to when a person or a recipient of an email decides whether he or she wants to open or read an e-mail. The subject could easily be regarded as one of the most important aspect of your promotional e-mail.

Your subject must be short and concise. They should provide a summary for the content of the e-mail so that the recipient will have basic knowledge of the content. This is really vital in grabbing the attention of your readers and subscribers. You want your subject to instantly grab the attention of your subscriber and get them to be intrigued to open up your mail. Remember, it is not necessarily true that a subscriber opens up subscribed mails.

A good subject must always be tickling the curiosity of your recipient. It must literally force the recipient to open the mail. A certain emotion must be ignited and get them to open the mail. It is essential to use specific words to get the reaction you need. Keep in mind that the recipient or subscribers spends only a few seconds looking over each subject of the e-mails he receives. You must grab your reader’s attention right away.

There are many forms you can use for your subject. You can provide a subject that says your e-mail contains content that teaches them tips and methods on certain topics. An example of this is using keywords and keyword phrases such as, “How to” , “tips”, “Guides to”, Methods in and others like that.

You can also put your subject in a question form. These may include questions like, “Are you sick and tired of your job?” Or “Is your boss always on your case?” Try to stay on the topic that pertains to your site so that you’ll know that your subscribers have signed up because they are interested in that topic. This form of subject is very effective because they reach out to your recipients emotions. When they have read the question on your subject, their mind starts answering the question already.

You can also use a subject that commands your reader. Statements such as “Act now and get this once in a lifetime opportunity”, or “Double, triple and even quadruple what you are earning in one year”. This type of subject deals with the benefits your company provides with your product and services.

You may also use breaking news as your subject to intrigue your subscriber. For example, if you deal with car engine parts you can write in your subject, “Announcing the new engine that uses no gasoline, It runs on water”. This creates curiosity with the reader and will lead them to open the mail and read on.

There are many factors to keeping someone’s interest on your web page or site. It is not an easy task. Your ultimate goal is to get them to come back repeatedly. There is one precious commodity that most of us do not have much of – time. Face it even you do not have the time when surfing to read in depth every site you want to. Naturally, you bookmark it because it was impressionable enough for you to want to put it in your favorites. Now read about what will keep the customers coming back for more!

Before you consider setting up a web site, you will need to have your goals in mind. Answering a few targeted questions will help you decide how to best approach setting up the site. Targeting your customer is very important. Their age, economic status and gender will play a part in deciding how you will need to have your site designed. For example, you would not sell jeans in larger sizes and higher waist styles to a junior teen sized woman. Good market research is the foundation for setting the goals of your site, and marketing and designing your site with your customer in mind. This is only the beginning and a mere part of the story of getting customers and keeping them

You will need to look at how your customer interacts with the graphics and total site layout. Ask yourself is there any design flaws that stop them from going to the next page? Is there too many banners, buttons and graphics that confuse them? Is the text on the site clear and easy to understand? Is it confusing on directions about information on ordering? Consider having others evaluate the site to give an honest opinion on site layout.

Next, consider if your site leaves the customer with a feeling of confidence in your product and service. If the writing is timid, sparse or overtly braggadocio, it is more than likely, your customer will click away without so much as a thought of returning. Take some stock of others review of your site, and work to improve on the writing. Remember though you will not be able to please everyone. Keep tweaking it until it is in line with the image you want to portray and the product it represents.

The third step is looking at the content of information on the site. Is the information relative to what you are selling? Is it up-to-date and does it helps the customer decide what they want to buy? Do you offer other content that will give your customer a sense that you care more about them than your wallet, such as information on a subject they might be interested in? This is where your market research will come in handy. A person that is in the age bracket of 30 &ndash 35 will be much more interested in a retirement fund than a 20 &ndash 25 year old. It is, of course, not a standard to cling to, but it is a market idea theory that you will need to tweak and refine for your site.

Does your site generate interaction with your customers? Do you provide easy ways for them to tell you about themselves like providing surveys about other interests and hobbies? Are there fun things to do on your site? Kids are not the only ones that will enjoy entertainment. Do you have jokes of the day, puzzles or a pleasant inspiring story to read? Communicating with your customer is a nice way to get them to come back and visit too. That is a real shot of personalization that will set your site apart from the others.

Finally, consider the whole package. Does the whole website design entice them, make them want to come back and visit because it was a very user-friendly experience? Without trust and pleasant user experience, most customers will not return. Trust is a key value to happy customers and returning customers too.

It does seem like a lot of work to get your website up and running. The Internet is an impersonal arena with many busy people with limited time. To break through that barrier and capture their attention takes a lot of hard work and dedication on your part. As time goes by though you will be able to capture a loyal customer base that will want to return and buy again. It will not be because of tricks or just slick words. It will be because you care about your customer, and are determined to give them the very best website you can. You will love it when it happens.

Joel Comm, the Internet Marketing guru, has developed and refined one of today’s most well-known and revolutionary industry books, ‘What Google Never Told You About: Making Money with Adsense’. In his highly sought-after third edition, fully beefed up, updated with the latest techniques and expanded to include even more money-making Adsense techniques than ever before, Comm gives us the architecture and toolbox every to-be online entrepreneur and Internet Marketer requires to truly prosper.

He begins his book with the basics, a refresher course for more experienced Adsense users and an outstanding core foundation for those just beginning. He speaks clearly and understandably, avoiding highly technical jargon and defining terms in the books comprehensive glossary. He explores techniques anyone can use to launch an unlimited stream of cash with no money down, no experience, no inventory and minimal time investment.

Readers acquire a thorough understanding of website development, profitable domain naming, web hosting, content creation and search engine optimization. In his book, Comm also demystifies the lucrative world of blogging and how anyone can use this new medium to make money working from their home, office and abroad. He explains, in easy to understand language, the secrets to profits, what makes some websites sell and others falter right down to fine details like the colors and link locations on a page.

In addition to offering guidance on what you should do, Comm also explores frequent pitfalls and mistakes both new Adsense users and seasoned professionals need to know. He discloses the biggest (and often costly) mistakes Adsense publishers fall into, along with practical ways to avoid them. His techniques, followed step-by-step, can help anyone earn significant advertising revenue online.

Comm leaves some of the most powerful information geared toward established Adsense Internet Marketers for his chapter on troubleshooting. This chapter dispels the myths and sheds light on common obstacles faced in ad publishing. Through years of experience, Comm is able to rectify why publishers might be getting low revenues, traffic levels, click through rates and click prices. He shows why too many public service ads may be running through your ad stream and why ads may have a low relevance to your page. Each chapter, page and lesson is powerful as a whole or individually as a reference.

It never ceases to amaze me how often new webmasters set about their online business at the start without actually having clearly defined strategies on how to market and promote the website and the product.

Now this article is for internet marketing newbies, so the strategies for website promotion are fairly basic therefore experienced internet marketers are under no compulsion to proceed.

If you are a newbie, however, please pay attention as these website promotional strategies are what you will need to employ over and over again every time you have a new product to promote. Apply these basic techniques and the bedrock of success is laid for you.

Remember, no traffic, no sales.

Free listings in Search Engines: Everyone loves to get something for free. The same applies to free traffic.

Consider building a keyword list related to your product before you build your website. This way, you write your website content crafting in those keywords for which the site needs to be optimised. Don’t overdo it though as the search engines are becoming too smart and may think you are attempting to trick them. The more pages you have, the easier it is to have your site optimised for your chosen keywords.

Pay Per Click Advertising: Here the search engines list your site based on your bid for a particular keyword(s). Your position in the search listing strongly depends on how much you are prepared to pay for those keywords and the bidding price is also dependent on the popularity and competitiveness of your niche. This Pay Per Click (PPC) listings are the ones you see on the right side of your screen in the search results in, for instance, Google and Yahoo who now own Overture.

It’s always a good idea to know your website statistics especially conversion rates to determine how much you will be prepared to pay for those keywords &ndash what I call your bid price affordability. This way you don’t operate your PPC Campaign at a loss.

Know Your Numbers!

Ezine Advertising: You search for popular ezines (these are electronic magazines or newsletters) in Google or Yahoo by entering Keywords ‘ezines directory’.

Visit these directories and look out for ezines that fit your products and also the subscription base of those ezines. You then choose to place Solo ads, Sponsor ads or Classified ads on ezines of your choice at an agreed price. The choice of which type of Ad and what ezine(s) to place your Ad would depend on your personal preference and your budget as well.

Linking Your Website: You need to set out linking strategies that can boost your business in two ways. First is that the more links you have, the more the search engines will rank your site and consequently your position in the organic search engines. Secondly, you get traffic deservedly from your link partners website. I’m sure you will welcome targeted free traffic from any source.

Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate program are a great source of free traffic and income at no cost to your good self. Affiliates are business partners who sign up to sell your product for an agreed commission. You can make a fortune on the internet from a great product if you have tons of affiliates working for themselves and you. An affiliate software is necessary to track your affiliate sales, visitors. Don’t forget to provide your affiliate with marketing tools and training materials to assist them.

Offline Advertising: This is quite often ignored. Just because your business is online does not mean you cannot generate traffic offline. You will be surprised at how potent this weapon can be. Write Press Releases about your product, Product review etc and send it to editors of newspapers and magazine. The one I love most is what we refer to as web ad. Here you use classified ads in newspapers and magazines to drive traffic to your site.

These are basic strategies you must have mapped out before commencing work on your website. This way you can start marketing the very day your website goes live.

Always think marketing first.

Millions have tried, millions are trying right now and millions will continue to try in the years ahead. There is so much misinformation out there regarding making money online, that you can easily be forgiven for thinking that all these millions are enjoying unbridled success.

The real truth of course is that the vast majority are failing. Their hopes of earning a healthy living from home are usually shattered before they have even begun. There is no single reason for this. It’s usually down to a combination of factors, and I intend to look at some of the reasons for the now infamous quote, “95% of people fail in their online business”. Some of the things I list below will doubtless be contested by many people but the harsh facts are that making money online, whilst entirely possible, is not the cakewalk that a lot of people will try to convince you it is.

So, let’s get down to debunking some of the nonsense – hopefully this will save a lot of people a lot of time and frustration.

1) Affiliate Marketing – so much rubbish is spouted by so many people who have never made an affiliate sale in their lives. The affiliate marketing model is indeed a powerful one and has made a number of people very wealthy. However, you are very unlikely to succeed with affiliate marketing without going through an arduous and sometimes lengthy learning process.

A huge swathe of articles you read about affiliate marketing are no more than rehashed PLR articles being used by lame hopefuls who are incapable of writing anything original on a subject that they are hoping to convince you they know all about. You can spot these peddlers of fifth hand information easily enough – look at the sites they link to, check their traffic rankings. Ninety Nine times out of a hundred you will find a cookie cutter website just like thousands of others or a direct link to an affiliate program that they foolishly believe you will sign up for having read their blindingly convincing pitch.

Are they the people to look to for advice? Think before you answer…….

2) Freebie Seekers and Freeloaders – this encompasses so many people it’s laughable. They talk about their “business” and seriously expect others to follow their blind lead. The term “business”, at least to my mind, indicates some sort of investment on behalf of the owner of that business – both in terms of time and money. Those most guilty of this faux pas are usually those who sign up to a free program, usually in the network marketing or MLM arena, and use every useless and pointless form of promotion as long as it’s free.

Much is said regarding failure rates in MLM schemes being so high, but one of the biggest is the freebie mentality. Don’t get sucked into believing you will ever make money online this way. The freeloaders are kidding themselves, but don’t let them kid you. The programs they sign up to for free often offer a paid upgrade and they live in hope (if they ever manage to recruit a single person of course) that they will grow fat on the subscriptions of others. Naturally this rarely happens, simply because they advertise to other freeloaders who have no intention of spending any money on their “business” either, and so the vicious circle continues.

If you don’t believe me, visit any free traffic exchange and look at some of the webpages circulating there. These people are dreamers – they will never make money online until they accept that they are eventually going to have to spend money to make money. Let’s get real here – when you’re looking for potions or energy drinks or some other latest greatest product that is no more than a copy of an already well established brand, is the first place you think to look going to be a free classified site on the internet? Maybe you’d head for the closest traffic exchange? Think – you don’t have to do it for more than a few seconds to see why these things do not work!

3) Throwing up a blog on a free platform and filling it up with Adsense or other PPC ads is unlikely to deliver much success. This applies whether we are talking one blog or fifty blogs. Adsense is great, but it’s also a numbers game – you need big numbers in terms of pages and visitors to make big returns. By big, I mean big – tens of thousands of pages receiving tens of thousands of visitors and you will probably start making a nice income. Throwing up fifty, a hundred or more useless blogs or splogs won’t work even if some people tell you that all you need are a couple of Adsense clicks a day on each one and you’ll be raking in the money. Great theory, but you won’t get the traffic to even generate those occasional clicks in the first place. Throwing up such poor quality free pages will achieve nothing – in fact, you’re more likely to get banned from Blogger and Adsense to boot if you’re not careful. Oh, and don’t think you’ll be smart and use auto surf sites to rack up huge numbers of impressions – using any kind of traffic exchange in conjunction with Adsense will get you banned very quickly.

Our freebie seekers of course will tell you otherwise, expecting you to believe that their PR0 blog with no comments is really generating a thosand dollars for them every month, and that all you need to do is visit this or that site, where you can learn to do exactly the same. You will naturally be directed to a page through an affiliate link – Clickbank or similar – to purchase an ebook that the freebie seeker has naturally never laid eyes on, let alone read.

4) Making millions with PPC advertising. This is a no brainer – all you have to do is pick some keywords, write a snappy ad, link to an affiliate program and gve your credit card details to Google, Yahoo, MSN or whoever. You will wake up rich beyond your wildest dreams.

OK, maybe too heavy on the sarcasm, but it’s really not that easy. Ask anyone who has rushed blindly into PPC and lost their shirt in the process, paying for a truckload of clicks but generating nary a sale. I have a little more sympathy for these types than the freeloaders; after all, they have accepted that they need to spend money to make money, but unless you do your homework, it’s likely to prove costly. Even if you do your research beforehand, there are no guarantees that PPC campaigns will work for your business. Having said all that, PPC can be a very profitable tool, just don’t believe overly hyped claims from the totally inexperienced.

5) Start a blog and you will soon be collecting checks on a regular basis. Don’t believe this one either. There is a lot to be said for blogs as a marketing tool, don’t get me wrong. Blogs can and do increase your exposure tremendously, but apart from an elite few, blogs are usually not their direct revenue generators. A blog is a tool, and used wisely it will help an online business to grow, but it’s unlikely to pay the bills all by itself.

6) Article marketing – another area where a lot of ill informed and overly hyped prose is written. As a long term strategy, carried out correctly, article marketing can be hugely beneficial to a business of any kind, but it takes time to see results and there is a learning curve to go through.

I actually saw someone advocating the tactic of blanket bombing article directories with PLR articles and slapping affiliate links into the resource box. This was in an article submitted to one of my directories. They even went as far as to claim that this would guarantee a huge number of hits and sales. This is just one piece of foolish nonsense from a clueless fool, who, no doubt is wondering why article marketing is so useless, whilst trying to tell others how rich it will make them. It is a fact that most article directories do not permit linking directly to affiliate programs in the resource box! It follows that this is hardly the way to proceed.

7) Work from home opportunities have become a breeding ground for scams and hucksters the world over. Global oppportunities for peddlers of schemes and tricks to make themselves rich have never been more plentiful.

There are several “opportunities” circulating at the moment that are borderline illegal and when they disappear into the ether there will no doubt be plenty to replace them.

Promises of overnight riches rarely hold much water if you examine them even superficially. Just because you see a video of someone opening envelopes full of cash does not make it so. One “gifting” program of this nature has obviously sucked in a fair number of gullible souls who really believe that people will be queuing up to send them three thousand dollars just because they show them a poor quality video on a traffic exchange.

Have you ever managed to sell a product online for three thousand dollars or more? I’m guessing the answer in most cases is – probably not. If you fall for this kind of scam, you probably deserve to get rooked – after all, how difficult is it for someone to get three thousand in cash (there are plenty of ways), go to FedEx, mail it to themselves and then film it’s arrival and subsequent opening on a webcam. If that’s all the proof it takes to convince you, you have some painful lessons to learn.

Whenever you read outlandish claims offering boatloads of money and retirement before you’ve even started working, in conjunction with proclamations that you don’t have to sell anything, don’t have to advertise, don’t have to do anything at all really, other than sit back and watch the money roll in…..and you find yourself believing it – my advice is to seek professional help.

Making money with sites that pay you to read ads, emails, visit sites, sign up for free offers etc etc etc I’m not saying that none of them work but in terms of time expended set against financial reward, they are usually a dismal prospect. Would you go and do a job for $20 a month?

There you have just eight of countless things that you should not believe. Trust me there are plenty more.

If you are serious about making money online, you are going to need a plan. You are going to have to spend some money to get yourself set up to do business. You will need a website of your own for starters (unless you intend to buy a hundred ebooks and courses telling you how to succeed without even this most basic of needs). This means hosting fees. If you are starting from a position of very little technical knowledge, you will have to dedicate a lot of time to learning the ropes or you will have to pay for the services of others. With most things online, the sooner you bow to the inevitability of having to lay out a little cash as you go along, the sooner you will start to open up some real possibilities.

There are countless ways to make money online, there are many people who are living proof of this, but try not to get caught up in the rubbish.

I have not mentioned things like stock or currency trading simply because they are not scams. Trading online can be lucrative and you won’t need a website of your own for this kind of venture but you will need capital, and you need to understand the risks, which are not insignificant.

However that’s all a subject for another day. As grandpa said, free advice is often pretty much worth what you pay for it. Just be careful what you believe in your quest for online wealth and you’ll avoid a lot of wasted time and disappointments.

There IS plenty of free information on the internet and there are also plenty of free tools and software and services that may help you – but – you are starting a business and business means you will need some business capital to get off the ground. If you think otherwise and persist in looking for the elusive, no cost magic bullet, you are destined to fail and I don’t care what any rehashed nonsense some self help book tells you about irrefutable laws of nature or anything else. You need to do a lot more than just dream about online success if you wish to achieve it.

A closing thought – money may well make the world go round. If nobody spends any, nobody receives any. If you can find me something that disproves that 100%, tell me where to sign up.

The other day I was talking to a couple of my friends at a coffee shop and we were discussing the inability for average workers to get ahead. John had just received some money from a relative and had spent the day trying to get a good rate for his investment. He had only been offered 5.5% and wanted more.

He had $10,000 to invest and was happy with an interest rate of 5.75%. The best “at call” rate he had found after much research with financial institutions. He was after a safe investment during these uncertain times.

My other friend responded, “I wish I had the spare $10,000 to invest in the first place!”. He went on to say that how difficult he found it to save any money after paying his bills each week. (Something you hear all the time)

We got out the napkin and a pen and looked at the situation. He had put all his efforts into running around to get an extra 0.25% on his money!

So instead of getting $550 in interest on his ten grand for the next 12 months, he would now be receiving $575…. Big deal….

An extra $25 for the year! He probably spent that much driving around and in phone calls.

What a waste of time and energy if you think about it!

My other friend on the other hand would love to have an extra $10,000 to invest. However, his day job does not allow him to save enough to “get ahead”.

But…. He possesses a crucial ingredient that can earn the extra money he desires…. The ingredient is…. His “spare time”.

Without changing or giving up your “day job”, asking for a pay rise, or finding a second part time job….

The average PC literate person can earn a substantial extra income from home just by selling simple information products they create themselves based on what they “already know” and all in their spare time.

Marketing information…. Information people want, in the form of ebooks, ebooklets, special reports, audio tapes, video’s and CD-roms is still the best home based Internet business you can start.

It’s as true today as it was four years ago on the Internet.

People often ask me if it is really possible to earn decent money on the Internet if you only have a few spare hours in a day to devote to your online business. Surely the law of business prohibits you from “gaining a lot for very little”?

Here is the key that many people new to online business MISS….

You might only work 2 spare hours a day on your little Web business BUT your Web business (your website) WORKS FULL TIME 24 hours a day for you!… This is the reason why it does not take much of your time and yet can return far more than an hourly wage for the ACTUAL hours you put in.

Having a well-constructed website that sells for you 24 hours a day, 365 days a year on “autopilot” is like having an “electronic employee or salesman” working for you and presenting your product perfectly every time.

It’s a business that works unmanned… Like a shop that never closes.

But you know…. It’s not just the money you make, it’s about establishing something else….A “safety Net” in hard times….

A small insurance policy should the worst happen.

Nobody can retrench you from your own business. A business that can never go broke either…. You can even set up a free website and perform zero cost marketing promotions. Zero overheads. Maximum profits.

That’s how I started and you can do the same.

Even in hard times…. War, Anthrax scares, recession, have not effected my online business. Sales may not have increased, but they have not declined.

You may also think that you need “talent”, writing skills and a certain level of education to succeed in running an online information product business. Not so, the world is full of educated and talented failures. What you do need however is “persistence” and a dogged determination to succeed.

So if you don’t have spare money to invest, like my friend did, don’t worry, 12 months from now you will have much more than my other friend who has invested his money to earn a measly interest of $575!!

You could have the same $10,000 plus an ongoing income from investing your “spare time” instead.

So next time you put your feet up in your spare hours, consider investing some of those hours up online!

Do you know that 95% of the people starting out in their internet businesses fail? In the middle of all the noise and hype on the internet today, not many people realize that all the ideas and techniques you can find are useless if you don’t first understand what your business model is or how are you going to make money on the internet. Even the most remarkable internet marketing technique will not work if you don’t understand how to apply it to your business.

The 3 most popular business models are:

1) Affiliate Marketing

Perhaps the most popular one out there, affiliate marketing provides a good start for newbies. Almost anyone can sign-up for an affiliate program for free and start promoting the chosen product or service. Commissions start coming in if someone will buy or participate in the programs promoted. Affiliate marketers don’t carry any risk, since they do not pay for the creation of the product, they do not handle customer service, they need not know the innards of internet transactions, like merchant accounts, autoresponder (what is that?), reciprocal linking, etc. It’s also possible to be an affiliate even without a website.

Some affiliate marketing programs you may participate in require little up-front investment. Some are free. It’s no surprise therefore that almost everyone and their neighbor promotes an affiliate program or another. In fact, if there is a single reason why the Internet today is so proliferated with ads and banners, it’s because of affiliate programs.

With the millions out there involve in affiliate marketing, only 5% ever make any money and only 1% makes really big money. The “Super Affiliates,” so they are called, do it very differently from the rest, therefore they earn the big checks.

2) Writing an eBook or other type of information product, recording an information CD.

This is a great strategy because there are thousands of possibilities for the type of product that you can create. There are so many niche markets that you can write about. It could be a course on Japanese gardens, how to start your own babysitting business, how to sell your artwork, taking care of your dog’s ears … there are endless topics and still many that have not yet been explored by online marketers. You don’t have to write the information yourself, you can get a ghost writer or hire someone to produce the CD.

EBook authors need to invest more than affiliates do. While affiliates can get something for nothing, the same is not true for the eBook type of business. EBook authors need to learn a lot more than affiliates are required to. They need to spend some amount of money getting the business up and running. However, when done right, the payoff in this online business model is much more rewarding.

These marketers make more money because they have very, very low production and maintenance costs. Once the product is produced, it doesn’t cost a cent to reproduce thousands of copies. Start-up costs can be covered by selling just a few copies of very high-margin eBooks. You can even recruit hordes of affiliates to do the selling for you.

3) Adsense

This has taken the internet by storm. There are tons of testimonials from people making outrageous income from adsense.

Adsense is Google’s advertising program wherein webmasters display ads from Google’s extensive list of advertisers. Unobtrusive text-based ads are served in member sites, who then earn a commission every time someone clicks on the advertisers’ links.

Google Adsense uses a technology to deliver ads that are highly relevant to the content of a page. Google’s engine will scan through the content of the page to determine its topic, and will then serve ads that are relevant to the page’s content. Running Google Adsense is quite simple. First build a website full of content of your desired niche or topic, and then register in Google’s adsense program. Once approved, you then paste a code in your page, and the ads start appearing immediately after you upload the changes to your server.

Google is silent on how it shares the revenue per click with their partners, but how much you will earn per click depends on the topic and the product being advertised. Products with profit margins of $10 for the advertiser will most likely give you a smaller pay per click than a product with a $100 margin. Similarly, ads with high conversion rates will normally give you higher payouts than less effective ads, since they can afford to pay more dollars per click, with a portion of that money going to you.

These are the top 3 most popular online business models today. No matter which model you choose, make sure you understand the basics. Stop buying courses or information not applicable to your business. Information overload can stop you before you even get started.