The top online businesses

Top Online Businesses

There are many ways you can start an online business and the purpose of this article is to show you some on the most popular and lucrative so that you can decide which is the best one for you.

An online store has been popular for years and with Ebay you can have one set up in minutes.Cafe Press is another where your designs can be on T shirts and mugs at no up front cost to you.

You need to know if there is demand for the product you are going to offer and a good way of checking this is go on ebay and see if your proposed product is already for sale.Then check if people are actually buying it.

Try also entering the search term in Google and see if there are any paid advertisements along the top and right side of the page.If there are you know that the product is selling as people are paying Google to place those ads.

Once you know there is demand you need to go a little deeper to ascertain the depth of demand.You do this by using the Google keyword tool which will bring back any search terms which use your phrase.Ensure you use the “exact match” function when performing this search.

The key here is to find a keyword where there is good demand but only little or medium levels of competition.Too many people go after high demand keywords create a site and then wonder any they are on page 22 of the Google search results.

You will make more money by selling a product you yourself made or had made either a physical product or an online product such as information.Then you know the product is unique and you will keep all the profit.You can then seek out affiliates to market the product for you.Now you will need to pay those affiliates a commission to make a sale typically 50% to 60% but as they do all the work why would you not do this?40% of something is better than 100% of nothing.

Payment options

If you are selling products online then you need a system to take credit card payments.Probably the most widely used is Paypal.Most people who buy stuff online now have a Paypal account.Paypal do a take a commission of the sale but otherwise it is a free service.If you have a bigger budget then use Infusionsoft which will also take all credit card payments if the customer does not Paypal but this is a paid service.

Blogging

Blogging has become a popular basis for an online business with WordPress the industry standard platform.Once you have a domain name registered and a hosting platform in place you can have a WordPress site up in minutes.

Again do keyword research to find a niche that is popular but does not have too much competition then start blogging.Do not make every page a sales pitch as people are on the net to find information about stuff not to be sold to.If you give them the right information to make an informed choice they will grow to like and trust you and be more likely to buy from you.

Once you have written a blog post you must syndicate the content to social media and social bookmarking sites via  Ping.FM and Onlywire.This will expose your content to more readers and provide much needed back links to your blog.

Affiliate marketing and Google adsense

These are probably the two most popular methods of starting to earn money online as they can be done at no cost and do not require you to create a product.Once set up they will run on auto pilot.Adsense is the other side of Google adwords.Google gives you code to put on your site and then Google will place ads there that have relevance to the content of your blog or website.How much Google will pay depends on the competitiveness of the keyword used.

Once the code is on your site Google record the clicks and monies due to you which goes straight into your bank account when the income threshold ( set by Google I am afraid) is reached.

With affiliate marketing you promote someone else’s product on your site and if a customer clicks through from your site to the sales page special code on your site will show the customer came form your site and you will get a commission.

Clickbank is the most popular site for digital affiliate products.These are the easiest to sell as there is no shipping beyond the customer downloading the product.You do not have to worry about customer service that is all handled by the merchant.The bonus with Clickbank is it will ensure you are paid for a sale.You have no fear of not being paid by the merchant.

Autorepsonder

With any site you have it’s a good idea to offer a free report in return for gaining a customer.Once you have the email address of many people you can market products to that list.The important thing is to build a relationship with that list so that they come to know like and trust you.Then they will be more likely to buy from you.If you give your list value and training this trust will bring you sales.

I recommend Aweber as the tool to build your list.It allows you to place opt in forms on your website as a means of growing a list of email subscribers that you can market to over time.

So these are some of the options open to you as you consider starting an online business.Start with affiliate products and Adsense.Then develop your own products.

For free internet market training go to thenSix Figure Mentors and sign up for 7 free training videos.