The Best Online Business Ideas

You hear them every day — people complaining about their bosses and their lack of income. And while some very lucky people happened to fall into jobs they love, and the income to go with them, most people are yearning to be in control of their own destiny. They realize that having a good job is not necessarily the panacea everyone thinks it is.

Since the Internet is the emerging mega trend of our age, you don’t have to have a PhD to realize that you can take control of your life by earning money online. In fact, the best online business ideas don’t even require you to quit your job. You can get started part-time, and when your part-time income starts to exceed your full-time income, you can simply step away and leave a good job vacant for the next person who really wants it.

A lot of people will tell you that earning money online is easy, but I never say that. It’s simple, but easy is in the eye of the beholder.

For example, let’s look at the skill of making videos. Some people market their online businesses by making tons of videos and flooding social media with pictures of themselves. That might be an easy thing for some people to do, but some don’t have the technical skill, and others are incredibly camera shy. So, this skill might be easy and simple for some, but not for everybody.

There’s another important skill that you need — you have to narrow down all the offers out there.

When you’re shopping for a business opportunity online, you’re going to discover in a fairly rapid time that there are literally thousands of them out there. And, if you’re like most people, you’re going to be attracted to a lot of offers and start making investments, only to find that the next offer seems to be ten times better. This results in what we often call “shiny object syndrome,” where you can get caught up buying one thing after another, and never implementing any of the opportunities. Read More

Can you make real money as an affiliate?

If you’re new to the online business world, then you may have heard about affiliate marketing but not known what it is. Some people say you can’t make any money by being an affiliate, but some people think it’s the best way. So let’s demystify it.

Remember that there are a ton of ways to sell products online and make money. The easiest way is to sell something that’s easy to ship. You can make money selling and shipping fresh meat or fish, but is that the easiest way to go? That could be a nightmare. How about shipping books? That’s a lot easier, so let’s start there.

Let’s say you don’t have a lot of money to start an online business, but you want a fairly quick income. You could decide to sell books online, and sit down to write one. Well, that might take awhile. Or, you could sell someone else’s books and make a commission for each one you sell. Much faster!

Amazon does this. IfI enter into an affiliate agreement with Amazon, I can post a review for a book I like on my website. I put a “buy now” button on my website with something called an “affiliate link” embedded into it. Anyone who clicks on my “buy now” button gets routed to Amazon, where they buy the book. My link automatically flagged Amazon and told them that the sale was generated by me. So, congratulations, I get a commission.

Interestingly, the price is the same to the person who buys the book, whether they buy it from me or from Amazon. Amazon just gives up a little of their profit and throws it my way for finding a new customer. This is an easy way to make profits, but very small ones!

Here’s the juicy part. Let’s say I enter into an affiliate agreement with someone who sells products that cost $2200, $5500, and $15,000. Wow! wouldn’t it be nice to make a commission on something like that? Continue Reading

Is it true that Being Your Own Boss was a headache?

 Being Your Own Boss was a headache! Not only did you need enough for start-up, but you needed enough to last through the first couple of months until you got traction. You also needed a lot for lawyers, real estate people, infrastructure, and employees. You had to be aware of stocking inventory and rotating it, all the laws around storage, and all the many laws around employing people. You had to invest a lot in advertising, and you had no idea whether or not it would pay off. To top it off, you had to deal with customer complaints!

The Internet changed all that. Nowadays, you can go independent and get out of the rat race without a huge financial investment or a lot of 18-hour days cleaning up behind the janitor! In fact, with certain business models, you can learn the essentials very quickly and start becoming profitable almost immediately.

Here’s some cost-comparison info for you: Opening an Arby’s costs anywhere between $399,000 to $2,347,500 depending on whether you lease or purchase the site, and what options on the menu you choose to serve.

In addition, there are ongoing fees of 4% of gross sales, advertising co-op fees, training fees, ownership transfer fees, association membership fees, additional training fees, sample fees, attorney’s fees, insurance fees, and your own taxes. These could easily run you up to another $40,000 – $80,000 per year.

Opening a business online is a whole different ball of wax. First of all, there are a million choices. You have to be careful when you work online, because there are some people out there who will just take your money and deliver nothing. But there are some really huge business opportunities that don’t cost as much and don’t carry the same headaches.

Going into business used to cost so much that it was impossible for about 99% of us.  Continue Reading

About The Author:

Mike is a professional affiliate marketer educating entrepreneurs and small business owners to set up and build online digital income streams.

The products promoted, offered, and recommended on this website are products Mike uses and trusts. Products supplied from global industry leaders in their fields.