Getting started with your own online business can be extremely overwhelming…too many choices and so many different potential directions to use your limited time/energy.
For instance, one of the first posts I received from a new member at InfoMarketer’sZone wondered if she should begin with…
- Buying a domain name?
- Putting up her first website?
- Finding products she should sell?
- Setup her own offline business name
- Setup a blog?
- Get a Paypal Account?
- Start writing articles?
- Put together a few YouTube videos?
- Take more courses on website design and internet marketing
- And dozens of other tasks she had rolling around in her mind
Remember, THIS Is The First Step To ANY Successful Online Business
Do you really know how money is made online and what kind of business you want to build?
Before you begin worrying about the operational or tactical side of building an internet business, you MUST know which market you are targeting and what value you will bring to that market in exchange for sales and profit.Â
Somehow people looking to start a business online seem to forget that the heart of business on the internet is the exact same as offline…you must exchange value for dollars.Â
The first week of Information Product Profit Secrets goes through the different online business models so you can easily understand how people are really making money online and so you can choose the method that appeals to your passion and skills the most.
Following The Breadcrumbs…Tapping Into Profit Online
To start with, online business models fall into roughly 4 categories:
1. Affiliate Websites:Â Here, you sell other people’s products to niche markets (Amazon affiliate marketing, infoproduct affiliate marketing, etc…) where your objective is to better target market niches placing YOUR website between the demand and end retailer
2. InfoProduct – “How To” Products: With this business model you become the trainer that helps those online be, have or achieve a desired outcome they have been frustrated with accomplishing. You do this through ebooks, reports, training programs, seminars, home study courses, online memership sites, etc…
3. E-commerce – With this model you setup retail websites where you have licensed and/or own a physical product that you sell to the end customer. An example, would be the case where you license a quantity of Yoga Mats from China to sell in North America on a website you design for Yoga enthusiasts.Â
4. Selling Tools/Services – Another type of online profit center can be developed by selling one’s services (via coaching, teleseminars, or establishing leads online for offline business) or software tools/templates or content (ex. mobile apps, PLR content, etc… to those who run varous businesses online)
Obviously the ways money are made are quite different in each of these categories, so nailing down your business model is always the first critical stage to building strong internet businesses.Â
Once you have narrowed down your market and method of making money within a given online business structure you can then, more easily, decide what your next steps must be…putting tactics ahead of knowing what business you are in though will not work.Â
