When you delve into Internet marketing (which if you haven’t already done so, you soon will ;) ) you do find that there is a dark under belly. A contingent of unethical Marketers that will sell anything… to anyone… in any way, to make a fast buck. You may have come across the odd Internet pyramid scheme yourself.
But then there are the genuine Marketers, with real passion and value to share.
It’s no secret that I love the Internet and it’s business culture. The fact that it affords me the freedom to work anywhere, anytime is priceless.
I wouldn’t be where I am right now, living in the my dream location in the Caribbean, if I didn’t run a business online.
I’d be in some big city, sitting in traffic. Not that I’m knocking cities per se. I quite like some. It’s just nice to have the freedom to try something new.
Here's one type of business you can run online, with the freedom to work and live anywhere you choose:
The Information Website
People go online to find information. Where do you go when you need to find the answer to something quickly?
I’m betting it’s the Internet. There are literally millions of people searching for gazillions of things every day. Some of them quite bizarre I’m sure!
Is there something you’ve got a lot of experience or knowledge of? It could be related to your job or hobby. Do you have a passion? Like shoes, or horse riding, or even crochet! If you do, it’s likely that you’re carrying around a lot of information about that passion in your head. Information that other people are desperate to know. Information that you could bring together and present in your website.
At this stage, you may be thinking: “But I don’t know anything!”. Well, I’m here to tell you that you do. There’s a book in everyone as they say.
Is there something that you don’t know that much about, but you have the passion and thirst to learn? Then you can build an information website with what you learn!
If you add a forum or blog to your information website people can have discussions and add comments. This makes for lots of potential user generated content.
All that said and done. If you want to earn an income, the key to this business model is traffic attraction and retention.
You need to make sure:
1. There are enough people searching for the information you have
2. You can convert those searchers into website visitors
3. You have the quality and quantity of information to keep visitors coming back
And because you need lots of information and the site will need a lot of attention, you MUST make sure you are passionate about the subject. Otherwise it will just get on your nerves!
How Can You Make Money With An Information Website?
There are various ways that you can monetise an information site.
You can:
* Sell advertising space. Some examples are banner adverts, google adsense, classified ads, paid listings, text links and advertorials.
* Join Affiliate Programs. You can join affiliate programs that pay you whenever someone clicks a link on your website and buys a product from the affiliate website. You can also find some programs that pay you per newsletter sign-up, click or even page impression. When the visitor clicks the affiliate link a cookie is downloaded onto their computer. This means the visitor doesn’t have to buy on that first visit. You’ll still get paid even if they buy something three months later. Three months is typically the time limit, although in some affiliate programs you get paid on every purchase that visitor makes for a year!
However, you shouldn’t just sign-up to a load of random affiliate programs. You need to make sure that the products you refer to your visitors are good value.
The major logistical advantage of an affiliate program is that you don’t have to deliver any goods, or deal with customer enquiries yourself.
* Sell your own physical products. You could produce, or buy wholesale, your own products to sell and deliver. However, the advent of dropshipping means you don’t have to. Dropshipping is where you sell products through your website and collect the money from your customer. You then purchase the product from the wholesaler at a reduced rate. They then ship the product on your behalf. Just like an affiliate program you don’t need to handle storage, shipping and after sales. However, the rates of commission for dropshipping are much higher. I mention dropshipping here because you can add an online shop to your information website. But really dropshipping needs a whole post to itself!
* Sell you own information products. You can take premium content and package it into an ebook or ecourse. People like to absorb information in different ways, so you could also record the information in mp3 format for customers to download from your website.
* Membership area. If you’ve got some really juicy nuggets of information to share, you could open a members area on your website and charge for subscription.
There’s some food for thought anyway :) . Time to ask, do you have a passion or interest that could earn you an income?
