Business Ideas

I know hundreds of people who right this minute are making a full-time income online through providing services that other Internet Marketers desperately want and need like: Web Design, Web Promotion, Search Engine Submission, and more. 

This business will only expand as time goes on.  Every business on the planet is being told that the next generation in commerce is on the web...and they are all heeding this advice.  If you start learning and providing services in this area today, your market is
bound to grow in the coming months and years as all of the businesses expand onto the web.  Don't be trapped in a declining market...move over to the wave of the future in providing Internet services.

Although the information product business can be extremely lucrative (this business along with software probably make up the two Hottest Businesses on the Internet), you can actually make more money in many cases by providing the actual service along with having a product about it. 

For example, although a product that teaches people how to get traffic to their site can sell 100s or 1,000s of copies easily on the net, there still would be 1,000s of people who would prefer that you do the work for them.  As a matter of fact, using a report/book/audio as a front-end sale about the subject of web promotion can be an awesome way of making dozens of backend sales for your much higher priced "Full Service" web promotion services.

The big disadvantage to offering services on the net instead of some type of product is simply that you only have so much time available to you.  Your income is limited to your ability to work more hours. You are still trading hours for dollars. 

You could sell hundreds of books this week without that much effort, but you could NOT provide 100s of extra services to different customers without a major shift in your time management.  Eventually, if your site and business continues to grow, you will hit a barrier for your time and your income.

The two major advantages of doing a "Full Service" business online are:

1.  You will be able to charge a premium price for people to actually have you do the work for them.  Many people will have a smaller front-end product such as a $29.95 report or a $97 report and then have their full services at $1,000 or more.  For example:
You may write a report on "Search Engine Positioning" and sell it for $97. Then, your "Full Service" price may be $150 per month or more.

2. You will continually learn more about your service and be able to create an information product out of your experience.  As you can see, information product sellers and service providers need to both see the other side of the coin.  If you are currently
providing a service now, think about how you can create an information product out of your knowledge to increase your profits in this area and possibly provide even more leads for your service.

What do you do if you don't know how to do any of these services, but you want to start a service business?  Start learning.  For most of these subjects, you can't just go to a college class and have everything taught to you...you will have to search it out on
your own. 

You need to do five things especially to start the learning process:

1.  Find any models of that business online.  Do some searches on the search engines and find out if anyone is currently offering that service and start taking notice of what they are doing, what can you learn from them?   Some of them even offer "Mentor"
programs to teach others.  If either one is available, you should take advantage of it!

2.  Find information products that deal with the subject.  What books, audio's, videos, and software can you find that deals with that subject?  You will find most of the successful people online are avid learners...constantly expanding what they know about their subject.

3.  Go to http://www.forumone.com and find message boards which discuss your subject.  There are thousands of discussion boards online about every subject you can imagine.  Find some that apply to your site and get involved in the discussions.  Don't
be afraid to ask questions.  

4.  Practice on Yourself.  One of the funniest things you can see is when a "Web Promotion" expert is going around begging everyone to show them how to get traffic to their site.  If you can't promote your own site, don't try to do everybody else's. Start
practicing on yourself first!

5.  Do your first services for other for free or for a reduced price. Get more experience and some testimonials under your belt before you really go into this business.  Remember, these markets aren't declining. They are only growing, so you don't have to be in a hurry to get involved in them.

Web Design

Designing web sites is a skill that can actually be learned extremely quickly, but most people just aren't willing to do it.  Find a web design program which you really understand well (Go to http://www.download.com and do a search for web design). 
Purchase books to increase your knowledge of the program.  Then, start studying what type of web pages make sales and what kind doesn't.

The easiest way for you to do this business is for you to design a few templates which you use for the majority of your work.  In other words, put together some basic designs which seem to work for many sites and then basically fill the blanks on them and put in pictures and colors.  This will greatly speed up your work and help you to provide a good service for all of your clients (look for a FrontPage Templates Package for killer designs to be coming out soon from Business Systems 2000 - Make sure you are subscribed to our newsletter from the main index to find out when it comes out).

Search Engine Positioning

The best traffic you could receive would be from endorsements and referrals from satisfied customers.  The close second is from the search engines.  When a site learns how to get Top 20 positions under targeted keywords on the search engines, they can be assured of receiving targeted traffic to their site day after day.  Combine it with good web design and good copywriting and watch your income soar.

Everybody wants that coveted Top 20 position, because if you don't have it, you may as well not be listed.  So, the biggest disadvantage to this service is your competition from other search engine submitters.  The second disadvantage is that the search engines themselves don't like people who try to get these top positions so you will always have to stay on your toes and keep learning to stay ahead of whatever advancements they put in place.  Do your work though, and you could be the person who can guarantee traffic to any site.

yberCopywriting

Did you know a different subject line on your emails or web site could mean 18 - 50 times as many more readers of your ad? Many web site owners concentrate completely on traffic, but never stop to spend some time with their copywriting on their site...they don't even know if it is convincing.  Don't let that be you!

Start learning everything you can about writing ad copy.  Study from the masters such as Brian Keith Voilles and Ted Nicholas. Purchase products that teach you how to write your own ads.  Collect every piece of junk mail you get.   Start paying attention to good copy.  Start practicing writing headlines.  Find a "Mentor" (this is one of the areas you can find some good ones out there). Once you learn how to write good copy, you could charge by the page, by the job, or by commission (5% - 15% of sales volume). 

Web Promotion

This is what every web site wants...web promotion. Become an expert on it.  In this area, I specifically want to mention how important it is to learn how to design sites which people want to link to and to do an effective linking campaign.  You can set up scripts which automatically track links from other sites (check our traffic generator section in this book) and then go to work for your client.

Find other high traffic web sites in the targeted market and offer to trade links with them.  Look for them in the Top 20 of the search engines, in magazines, or from other sites which have their own link pages.  A good strategy when you find a site which
has high traffic is to go to one of the search engines and do a search for all of the sites which are linking to them.  Then, send an email and suggest to trade links with your site as well.  Use competitive research to your advantage to leverage your efforts.  Although creating links with other sites doesn't create as much traffic quickly as some other methods, it is one of the most consistent traffic generators as your site grows.

Banner Designer

Design banner ads.  Banner advertising is probably the most popular form of advertising on the web and the average banner being used in a search engine keyword is only useful for 2 - 8 weeks before it's click thru ratio starts to decline.  Everyone always
seems to need new banner ads...so you create long term incomes from the same clients coming back to you time and time again.

The key to doing banners is to find the right tools (I recommend you start out with Paint Shop Pro which you can find at http://www.download.com ) and that you learn as much as you can about which banners have the highest click thru ratios. Then, go to work practicing and testing different designs on the free link exchanges.

Internet Press Releases

An overlooked aspect of advertising online by the majority of web sites is using press releases.  One article in a magazine or major newspaper will do more for your traffic than advertising online for a year.  The key to this though is to become a web site that is newsworthy.  It cannot just be a sales letter.  It has to provide some unique benefit to the readers of that publication.

As an Internet press release agent, you could become the person who writes these releases and sends them out via email to the publishers of targeted industry publications.  To start this business, you should learn everything you can about doing press releases and then start collecting the names and email addresses of the media (you should personalize emails to the publication's editors and writers for best results).   

Classified Submissions

Classified ads can work, but they require a ton of effort to place enough of them online.  You could purchase some of the programs which submit to search engines, free-for-all links pages, and classified ads.  Then, start selling your submission services. 

This is a quick business to get into, but it doesn't hold nearly the value of learning how to get high positions on the search engines.  In spite of this, I have seen prices between $10 and $97 for this type of service and monthly plans for submissions done every 30 days.  So, it could be a quick service business you could start which will earn a little extra income for your site along with whatever else you are doing.. 

Multimedia

Technology is advancing!  The Internet is advancing with it.  In the future, I can see a day when the web will be interconnected with TV and video will be delivered effortless across the online world.  That day isn't quite here yet, but every day we are taking another step into that future.  You could become a Multimedia consultant who helps people deliver audio or video over the web.

RealNetworks at http://www.real.com is the company which is leading in this area at the moment and you should start yourself off by learning everything about their products.  Then, your business could be as simple as taking video and changing it into RealVideo for the web and placing it on people's servers.  Or you could decide to train small businesses how to create and use video for their online presence.  Audio and Video are going to continue to advance online so this may be a growing market for the future of internet commerce.

Website Overhauls

This would combine the skills of many of the services mentioned above, but it is also a badly desired WANT of many of the online marketers.  They have a web site online, but they want to know how to refine it for more sales.  They want to get more traffic to it.  They would like to add audio or video to their presentation.  

Once you start learning many of the other skills above, you could begin offering overhauls to other people's sites or to their marketing plans.  Many of them might just be missing the theme that we spoke of in the first chapter. They might need to combine their marketing efforts into one whole purposeful and targeted business.  Help them target their online marketing! 

Domain Name Gold Mining

I know some major courses and seminars which are teaching this a major business online...and it is a very simple one actually. Domain Name Gold Mining is simply referred to as going to http://www.internic.net and reserving the domain names which other
businesses would want.  For example, if you were able to have reserved http://www.internet.com, I am sure you would have been able to sell it for a very hefty price. 

Domain name gold mining is built on coming up with domain names that you know people will want, buying them from Internic for $70, and then selling them for a higher price (determined by how badly people will want to use it).  I know some people personally who have done well doing this, but I don't see this business as such an exciting business that many of the seminar sellers are making it out to be.

 

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