Business Overview:

If you’re looking for a truly lucrative online business opportunity, consider learning how to start an internet marketing business. With this business idea, you consult with offline business owners and do online marketing for them to help them increase their revenue. By doing so, you’ll be producing a highly valuable service as many small and big business owners lack the time and/or knowledge and ability to do online marketing themselves, despite the powerful impact that it can have on their bottom line. Recent studies have suggested that a major shift is taking place away from traditional media and towards online forms of marketing, with online marketing expected to steadily increase as times goes on. Therefore, by providing online marketing services to small and big businesses you’ll be providing a service that could be essential to the survival of your clients’ business in years to come—making this a very rewarding business opportunity. Two of the main online marketing services which you will provide to promote your clients’ businesses online will be search engine optimization and social media marketing. When people go online they typically use search engines to find businesses, products and services. You will help the businesses you promote to attract more clients through search engine optimization by creating a website for them (if they don’t already have one) and optimizing it to attract customers through popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo. You will do this by optimizing your clients’ websites to rank highly for specific search terms and phrases that are related to the products and services they provide. In addition to search engine marketing, social media marketing will be another major form of online marketing that you will do for your clients. Social media has grown immensely in recent years and has become a very effective medium for marketing businesses online. This is because it provides a mechanism through which people and businesses can build relationships and trust with people in their market. With your internet marketing business, you’ll make use of this relatively new and valuable medium for online marketing by promoting your clients’ businesses effectively on popular social media websites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Other forms of online marketing that you can offer to promote your clients’ businesses might include pay per click marketing and banner ad marketing. If you are not currently an expert on online marketing this may all sound intimidating. However, there are quality training products and courses that you can take to acquire the necessary expertise in the various forms of online marketing. Alternatively, you can outsource your search engine, social media and other forms of internet marketing to experts for a relatively low cost and still make a good profit. As mentioned earlier, the demand for internet marketing is set to grow in the years to come, meaning the demand for your services is likely to increase more each year. One internet marketing project can land you contracts of $3,600 USD to $12,000 USD or more per year. Because of the recurring nature of internet marketing services, most of your clients will pay you on a monthly basis, meaning you’ll be able to build up a solid and dependable residual income. Top internet marketers earn six or even seven figures or more annually, and this type of income can definitely be within your reach if you are committed and work hard to make your internet marketing business a success. Despite the high income that you can potentially generate with this business, the start-up costs are relatively low—and this is one of the best online business ideas to start from home and run part time initially. Learning how to become an internet marketer, therefore, truly does represent a fantastic business opportunity to anyone willing to seize it.

A Day in the Life of an Internet Marketing Business Owner:

As a successful internet marketing business owner, a typical day will begin with a review of your calendar. You may have several appointments booked with business owners with whom you will meet (either in person if they’re local, or over the phone or internet chat if they’re not) and consult with on the best internet marketing services and strategies for their business. Having determined your marketing strategies for each of your specific clients, you will then set about marketing your clients’ businesses online. Each of your clients’ businesses will be unique, but the online marketing strategies that you employ will be fairly universal. All of your clients will require a website, which you will create for them if they don’t already have one. You will then optimize their websites for search engine marketing, and you will set up search engine and social media marketing campaigns that are best suited to your clients’ businesses and the type of services and products they provide. You may also set up pay per click campaigns, and promote your clients’ businesses via online banner ads. Of course, you can outsource the various elements of your online marketing (search engine, social media, etc.) to experts who will do it for you—and with a thriving internet marketing business you will likely take this approach as it will allow you to be more effective and gain more leverage and time. In this case, in addition to meeting with prospective clients, a typical day would be spent focusing on growing your business by marketing it effectively to attract more clients, as well as overseeing the general smooth running of your current internet marketing projects.

About Your Customers:

Your customers will be small, medium, and large business owners who want to market their businesses online.

What You Need to Start:

• A strong all-around level of knowledge and expertise in internet marketing methods (search engine marketing, social media marketing, pay per click etc.)
• A website on which to market your services
• Marketing to promote your business
• A high speed internet connection
• A business license

The Good:

• You can start this business at a low cost.
• You can run this business from your home (or from anywhere in the world with access to an internet connection).
• You can outsource your marketing services (search engine, social media, etc.) to others and still make a strong profit.
• It can be very lucrative—top internet marketers earn six or even seven figures or more annually.

The Bad:

• If you aren’t currently an expert in internet marketing, it can take some time to acquire the necessary all-around expertise in the various forms of online marketing.
• Achieving success as an internet marketing consultant won’t happen overnight and will require commitment and dedication.

Resources:

• Internet Marketing Association
• Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization
• International Internet Marketing Association
• Bureau of Labor Statistics on Management, Scientific and Technical Consulting Services
• Wikipedia on Internet Marketing

Technorati Tags: how to become an internet marketer, how to start an internet marketing business, starting an internet marketing business

Business Overview:

If you’re looking for a rewarding and highly lucrative online business opportunity, you should learn how to start an information product business. With an information product business, you create, market, and sell quality electronic products based on topics of information that people are looking for online. When most people go online they do so to look for information. For example, someone might go online to look for information on how to healthily lose 10 pounds in 30 days, or they might search for information on how to become more attractive to the opposite sex and get more dates. With this business idea you conduct research into the types of information people are looking for and then you create and market information products that provide the information that people want. It’s important that your products help the people reading/listening to/watching them to solve the problems that started their search to begin with. You’ll find a deep sense of satisfaction with this online business idea because you’re genuinely helping people. By providing information products to people looking to know how to become more attractive and get more dates, for example, your product will help your clients solve their relationship problems. While you may choose to create information products based on subjects that you have knowledge and expertise on, you don’t have to be an expert on the information products that you create and sell. You could interview experts on your chosen topic (over an Internet connection using special software). The fastest way to start an information product business is to research subjects people are looking for information on, and then hire a writer or expert to create a high quality information product for you. Often online information products are delivered in the form of an eBook which your customers pay to download. However, there are many other ways to deliver information products. For example you can deliver your information products via online audio or video, or via physical products such as DVDs and workbooks. One of the most attractive things about this business idea is that the cost of delivery for information products is usually very low—yet high quality information products can often sell at high prices. For example, you might create an eBook on how to lose 15 pounds in 30 days which sells at $47—yet the cost of delivery is virtually nothing as your clients simply download your eBook to their computer without any printing or shipping costs on your part. Even physical products such as DVDs and workbooks can be produced and delivered at a relatively low cost, and some information products sell for thousands of dollars. Added to this, as an information product creator you can arrange for other online marketers (affiliates) to market and sell your information products for you in exchange for a commission (typically around 50%). Once you’ve created a quality information product and have an effective system in place for selling it, you can reach a point where others do the majority of your marketing and sales for you. Top information product creators earn six or even seven figures or more annually, so starting an information product business certainly represents a very lucrative opportunity. Additionally, you can easily run this business from the comfort of your own home (or from anywhere in the world as long as you have access to the Internet) and it is possible to start your information product business at a relatively low cost. Therefore with dedication and commitment you can achieve fantastic financial success and a great deal of personal freedom by starting your own information product business.

A Day in the Life of an Information Product Business Owner:

As an information product business owner, you’ll have the luxury of choosing your own hours of work. Added to this, as a successful information product business owner you’ll be in a position where you’ll have products and sales systems in place that generate much of your income for you automatically. This is because you’ll have successful information products that are being sold for you by affiliates. You will have to be committed to continually growing your business, which is why you will periodically set about researching and creating new information products. To do this you would spend time researching what types of information people are looking for on the internet. You might assess which information products people are already buying, and consider how you might be able to compete with and improve upon the products that are currently available with your own product. Alternatively you might use search engine data, for example, to look for information that people are searching for but about which there might not be existing information products available. Once you have identified something that people are looking for information on (how to lose weight if you are diabetic, for example) you would then set about creating your product. If you are an expert on the subject, you might decide to create your information product yourself. Alternatively, you would hire someone to create it for you (for example, you would hire a freelance writer to create a quality eBook for you). Having created your product you would then set up a sales system which would allow your customers to buy your product. Usually this would consist of a sales page with a checkout allowing your customers to buy your product via credit card or PayPal payment. You could write and set up your sales page yourself, or you could hire someone else to do it for you. Having created your product and set up your sales system, you would then go about marketing your product. You would do this either by notifying affiliate marketers in niches relevant to the subject of the information product you created so that they sell your product for you (in exchange for a commission), or by setting up websites to market and sell your product on—or both. Of course, researching your product, creating it and setting up your sales system may take you more than a day (and possibly a week or more depending on the approach you take). If you decide to have someone else create the product for you, a typical day will be spent overseeing the smooth running of your business and reviewing and approving the information product ideas your subcontractors will present to you. You will also spend time networking with other information product creators and building your associations with affiliate marketers (so that you have lots of people available in related niches to sell your information products for you).

About Your Customers:

Your customers will be people looking for information on specific subjects. Usually this information will help them solve a problem (such as in health, relationships, money etc.), or it may be related to something that they are very passionate about (or a combination of both).

What You Need to Start:

• An information product (such as an eBook, audio or video program, DVD, workbook, etc.)
• A website to sell your information product through
• Marketing (i.e. having affiliates to market and sell your info product for you, and/or having your own online marketing via search engines, ads, etc.)
• A business license
• Financial tracking software

The Good:

• Information product businesses can be very lucrative (top information product business owners generate six or seven figures or more annually).
• You don’t have to be an expert to create information products (you can hire experts to create your information products for you).
• You can run this business from the comfort of your own home—or from anywhere in the world as long as you have access to the Internet.
• The start-up costs for this business can be relatively low (especially if you choose to create your information products yourself).

The Bad:

• Achieving success as an information product creator won’t happen overnight—it will take time and commitment.
• Big markets for information products (such as weight loss and dating) can be competitive, so finding lucrative information product opportunities will require good research and persistence.

Resources:

• Product Development and Management Association
• Information Marketing Association
• eBook Developers Association
• Wikipedia on E-Books

Technorati Tags: start an information product business

Business Overview:

Running a link building business could be your key to a profitable and freedom-enhancing online business. With a link building business, you build links to online business owners’ websites in exchange for a fee. On the internet a link is viewed like a “vote” by popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo. The more links to a website, the more important it is seen to be. Therefore websites with lots of links to them tend to rank higher in search engines. By building links to business owners’ websites, you will be helping business owners rank higher in the search engines, meaning they’ll receive more traffic and as a result make more sales. Therefore, you’ll be contributing to the success of other online businesses through your work. Building links is relatively simple and can be done in a number of ways. For example, you can write useful and informative articles for other websites in exchange for a link or two back to your client’s website. As another example, you can post a useful comment on a blog or forum which contributes to the discussion—and which also contains a link to your client’s website. Of course, with this business idea you could also hire link builders to do the link building for you and focus more on the marketing side of your business. The great thing about starting a link building business is that you can start the business at virtually no cost, and you can run it from home (or from anywhere in the world so long as you have access to the internet). You can also run this business full time, or you could run it part time as an extra source of income. You will need to have an understanding of link building techniques (this is a good idea even if you don’t plan to do the link building yourself). If you don’t currently understanding link building there are plenty of courses and information products available for you to build your knowledge and link building skills in a relatively short period of time. Another advantage with this business is that once you have established a client base, so long as you provide an excellent service, your clients will likely use you repeatedly as many internet business owners build multiple websites which will require link building, so you’ll likely gain lots of repeat business. If you’re dedicated and committed then starting a link building business could well be the online business idea that allows you to generate a great profit contributing to others’ success while living and working in the location of your choice.

A Day in the Life of a Link Building Business Owner:

As a link building business owner you’ll have the luxury of setting your own hours. At the start of a working day the first thing you will do is to review the projects you are currently working on. Most likely you will have multiple link building projects to work on for several clients. Having selected a project, you would then carry out your link building technique. To do this you would build links for your clients in a number of ways. For example, one popular link building technique you will likely do on a daily basis will be to write informative articles related to the subject of your client’s business (or have the articles written for you). You would then post the articles on article directories or other related websites in exchange for links back to your client’s website. Other link building techniques you would likely carry out would include posting valuable posts or comments on related blogs and forums containing links that add value to the forum or blog and that also contain links to your client’s website. You will build a certain number of links to your client’s website each day. As link building isn’t usually too time consuming you will likely repeat your link building process and techniques for several clients throughout your working day. Of course you can hire people to do your link building for you, in which case a typical day would consist of ensuring the smooth running of your business and focusing on marketing to increase your client base. You’ll also likely be doing keyword analysis to find the best markets to get into.

About Your Customers:

Your clients will be internet business owners looking to attract more visitors to their websites and make more sales by improving their sites’ rankings in the search engines (which you will help them do by building up links to their websites).

What You Need to Start:

• An internet connection
• A strong understanding of effective link building techniques
• A website to advertise your services
• A business license
• Financial tracking software

The Good:

• It can be very rewarding as your work will help contribute to the success of other online businesses.
• You can start this business at virtually no cost.
• You can run this business full-time or part-time.
• You can run this business from the comfort of your own home (or from anywhere in the world with an internet connection).
• You’ll likely gain lots of repeat business as many of your clients will likely use your link building services for multiple projects.

The Bad:

• It can take time to build up a solid client base, so it may take a while for you to see good profits.
• You will need to acquire a good level of expertise in effective and ethical link building techniques, as some methods of link building can harm your clients’ websites in the long term and therefore damage your reputation.

Resources:

• Internet Marketing Association
• International Internet Marketing Association
• eMarketing Association
• Bureau of Labor Statistics on Advertising, Marketing, Promotions, Public Relations and Sales Managers
• Wikipedia on Search Engine Optimization

Technorati Tags: running a link building business

Business Overview:

If you’re looking for a lucrative opportunity to help others to achieve business success online, you should start an internet marketing training business. With an internet marketing training business you will train people how to market their businesses online. You can also teach people how to gain the skills and knowledge they need to become internet marketing trainers themselves. In order to start this business you will need a solid and well rounded understanding of internet marketing as a whole. There are many ways to market products and services online, and you will need to have a strong knowledge of them all. For example, many people use search engines like Google to look for products and services, so you will need a strong understanding of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in order to help your clients research and market themselves successfully through the search engines. Social media has grown immensely in recent years and has become a very effective medium for marketing businesses online. This is because it provides a mechanism through which people and businesses can build relationships and trust with their market. Therefore as an internet marketing trainer you will also need to have the knowledge and expertise to show your clients how to market themselves and their businesses effectively on popular social media websites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Other areas in which you will need a strong level of knowledge include branding, pay per click marketing, and copywriting. If you aren’t an expert in internet marketing this may all sound intimidating—however there are plenty of great training courses available which you can take to gain the required skills and experience needed to start this business. While it may take some time to build up your internet marketing expertise, you may find it to be a very worthwhile investment. Many of the top internet marketing trainers earn six or even seven figures or more annually, and with the right commitment and dedication you can definitely achieve the same level of success. In addition to the potentially lucrative opportunity offered by this business idea, you’ll also have a lot of freedom as to how you deliver your training. While you can of course personally train people one-on-one or in groups or at seminars, you can also deliver your training through audio or video courses online—meaning you’ll be able to train high volumes of people from all over the world. To do this you could create a course and charge a one-time fee up front, or you could start a membership site and delivery your training that way—and charge your members a recurring monthly fee to receive your training content over a period of 3 months, for example. Others ways you could deliver your training online include through weekly or monthly webinars. Added to the freedom you’ll have in regard to how you deliver your training, you’ll also gain a great deal of personal freedom by achieving success with this online business idea. Not only can you easily run this business from home, you can run it from anywhere in the world with an internet connection (and a phone connection, if you choose to offer one-on-one coaching). Top internet marketing training courses sell for $1,000-$2,000 USD or more, and with the ability to deliver your training online to a virtually unlimited number of people, this truly can be an incredibly lucrative and freedom enhancing online business opportunity for those with the dedication and commitment to making a success of their internet marketing training business.

A Day in the Life of an Internet Marketing Training Business Owner:

As an internet marketing training business owner you’ll have the luxury of setting your own work hours. Whatever the hours you choose to work however, a typical day will likely begin by reviewing your diary. If you’ve chosen to provide one-on-one coaching, either in person or through phone calls, you will note who you are scheduled to coach and prepare in advance of coaching your client one-on-one later that day. If you deliver training online, you will likely spend time during your day creating new content for your training courses. In order to stay on top of your game you will likely also invest time during your day keeping yourself up to date with the latest internet marketing methods and techniques.

About Your Customers:

Your customers will be individuals or businesses that want to learn how to market their products or services online.

What You Need to Start:

• A strong all-around level of knowledge and expertise in internet marketing methods (SEO, social media, branding, PPC, copywriting, etc.)
• Good teaching skills
• A website advertising your service
• A business license
• Computer with high-speed internet connection
• Financial tracking software

The Good:

• It can be very lucrative indeed – top internet marketing trainers can earn six or seven figures or more annually.
• You can deliver your training in many ways – one-on-one coaching, training courses, membership sites etc.
• As long as you have access to an internet connection, you can run this business from anywhere in the world.
• It’s very rewarding — you’ll be helping people achieve success with their businesses online.

The Bad:

• If you aren’t currently an expert in internet marketing, it will take some time to learn the all-around skills you need to be well qualified to train others.
• Achieving success as an internet marketing trainer won’t happen overnight and will require commitment and dedication.

Resources:

• eMarketing Association
• Internet Marketing Association
• International Internet Marketing Association
• Wikipedia on Internet Marketing

Technorati Tags: start an internet marketing training business

Business Overview:

If you’d like to own a lucrative online business helping other businesses become more successful, considering learning how to run a keyword analysis business. Today whenever people search for products, services or information they typically go onto search engines and enter a phrase that they think will turn up search results that will help them. For example, common search phrases are: “how to lose weight,” “work from home jobs,” and “natural hair dye.” These phrases people use are referred to as keywords, and businesses and website owners use keywords as a way of researching their market by finding out what people are looking for. They also use keywords to attract targeted visitors to their websites by getting their sites to rank highly in search engines for specific keyword phrases that are related to their products and services. With a keyword analysis business you save businesses a lot of time and help them become more effective in their online marketing by doing keyword research and analysis for them. You will provide a service where you research keywords for businesses that are related to the products or services they provide. You also analyze these keywords to see how viable they are in terms being able to rank well for them in the search engines. This is because some keywords are extremely competitive and therefore would be very difficult for your client to rank highly for in the search engines. As a keyword analyst you will ideally find a good amount of keywords for your clients that are targeted and that aren’t too competitive. Your clients will then be able to use the research you provide as a form of market research and as a plan to base their online search engine marketing strategy around. Your clients will also want to know which keywords will come from clients prepared to spend money and which ones are not. As a keyword analyst, you’ll know how to look at the numbers and help them determine this. One of the best things about this business idea is that there are virtually no start-up costs. Indeed, you don’t even necessarily need to be a keyword analysis expert yourself as you could hire people to do keyword research for you. With that said, keyword research isn’t a particularly complex skill to learn and there are plenty of courses available which you could take to learn how to do keyword research and analysis relatively quickly. Keyword research is the lifeblood of any business looking for online traffic. Therefore, you’ll find this to be a very rewarding business, as you’ll be providing research and analysis that will be foundational to your clients’ business success. In addition, you can easily run this business from the comfort of your own home, or from anywhere in the world as long as you have an Internet connection. Starting a keyword research business, therefore, could become both a rewarding and a freedom-enhancing online business idea for you to pursue.

A Day in the Life of a Keyword Research Analysis Business Owner:

As a keyword research analysis business owner you’ll have the luxury of determining your own working hours. On a typical day you would first consult with a client to get a good understanding of the subject of their business and of the type of products and services they offer. You would then use the wide variety of keyword research tools and software to perform your keyword research and analysis. You will be able to do this using free or paid software. Google, for example, offers keyword tools that are both free and a very popular way of conducting accurate keyword research. Alternatively, there are keyword research tools which aren’t free but which offer more in depth features. The results returned by different tools and software often differ, so in order to provide the best all-round research and analysis you will likely use a combination of tools and software. Having completed your keyword analysis you will then compile a report showing the data you have collected, and present your report to your client. Depending on the size of the keyword research project you may do several reports for a number of clients during a day, as smaller keyword research projects don’t usually take very long to complete. Of course, you can hire keyword research experts to do keyword research and analysis for your clients for you. In this case a typical day would be spent ensuring the smooth running of your business, and marketing your business both online and offline to attract more clients.

About Your Customers:

Your customers will be online businesses looking to conduct market research and improve the targeting of the traffic that they want to attract to their websites.

What You Need to Start:

• Keyword research software
• A website advertising your service
• A business license
• Computer with high-speed Internet connection
• Financial tracking software

The Good:

• There are virtually no start-up costs with this business
• It will be very rewarding—the research you do will be the foundation of your clients’ online business success
• You can run this business from the comfort of your own home (or from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection)
• You can hire staff to do keyword research and analysis for you.

The Bad:

• You will need to be dedicated and committed as keyword analysis can be competitive.
• It may take some time for you to build up a solid clientele base.

Resources:

• Internet Marketing Association
• eMarketing Association
• Wikipedia on Keyword Optimization

Technorati Tags: how to run a keyword analysis business

Business Overview:

Starting an SEO consulting business can be a fantastic way to generate a great income while helping others attract more visitors to their web sites. SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization.” When people go online they typically use search engines to search for products, services and information. With this business idea you help people attract more visitors to their web sites by helping their site rank highly in major search engines like Google. When people search for specific things in search engines, the web sites that appear higher up on the results on the first page are the web sites that usually attract the most visitors. Web sites ranking lower down tend to get little or no traffic. With this business you’ll assess people’s web sites and help them make changes in order to rank more highly and gain more search engine traffic. While the majority of your clients will probably be business owners, some of your clients will also be people looking to get their personal web sites to gain more search engine traffic. What makes a web site rank highly or not depends on a number of factors. Some have to do with the way a website is set up, and others have to do with things outside of a website such as how many links there are to it from other websites on the internet, for example. The service you provide will consist of analyzing clients’ web sites and letting your clients know what could be done to get their sites to rank higher. Based on your expert advice, some of your clients may then go and apply the changes you suggest as part of your consultation themselves. Others, however, may choose to hire you to do the work for them. In this case you will go ahead and make the changes necessary to help your clients’ websites rank higher, including optimizing their site by building links for them on other web sites. A number of your clients may not have existing web sites; therefore, you can increase your profits and improve your all-round service by offering a website design service in addition to your SEO services. If you’re not an expert in website creation and SEO, there are a number of training courses you can take to gain the knowledge and skills needed to start this business. Alternatively, you could hire SEO experts to work for you. Whichever approach you take, with the right dedication and commitment this can definitely become a very lucrative business. Big companies will pay top prices for your services, as will smaller businesses looking to rank highly for specialized search terms. Many companies and individuals will also pay you on an ongoing basis to keep their web site ranking highly for competitive search terms. Another great benefit to this online business idea is that you can easily run this business from your own home—or from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection.

A Day in the Life of an SEO Consulting Business Owner:

As an SEO consulting business owner, your day will typically be spent doing two primary things: performing SEO assessments of clients’ web sites and producing reports showing your findings, and actually performing SEO tasks to help clients’ web sites rank highly in search engines. When analyzing sites and producing reports, you will assess a website and analyze the way it has been set up to see whether improvements can be made to help improve its ranking. You will also research possible keywords that are related to the subject and purpose of the web site that could be targeted to attract more search engine traffic, and you’ll provide suggestions as to what could be done outside of the website to improve its ranking—such as building links on other sites. You will then put all of this together into a report and present it to your client. The second major thing you would do on a typical day would be to perform SEO techniques on clients’ websites. For clients who choose to hire you to optimize their web sites, you’ll spend time making necessary site changes to ensure it is optimized to rank highly in search engines. You’ll also do things like building links on other web sites—or hire people to do that for you. You will regularly produce reports to show how your SEO service is helping your clients’ web sites’ ranking improve and attract more search engine traffic. Of course, you can hire SEO experts to perform your SEO consulting and services for you. In this case a typical day would consist of managing your business to ensure it is running smoothly and marketing your business to attract more clients.

About Your Customers:

Your customers will be people looking to attract more search engine traffic to their web sites. Most likely they will be businesses looking to gain more search engine traffic in order to sell more of their products or services, but they may also be people looking to attract more visitors to their personal websites.

What You Need to Start:

• Expertise in search engine optimization methods (or you can hire SEO experts to work for you)
• A website advertising your service
• A business license
• Computer with high-speed Internet connection
• Financial tracking software

The Good:

• You can easily run this business from home (or anywhere in the world with an Internet connection).
• It can be very lucrative—businesses will pay you a lot of money to help their websites attract more search engine traffic.
• The start-up costs for this business are low.
• Many of your clients will pay you repeatedly to keep their web sites ranking highly for competitive terms.
• You can increase your profits by offering additional related services such as website creation and design.

The Bad:

• SEO consulting is quite competitive so you will need to offer an excellent service and great customer service to make your business stand out.
• It can take some time to build up your reputation and attract clients.

Resources:

• Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization
• Internet Marketing Association
• eMarketing Association
• Wikipedia on Search Engine Optimization

Technorati Tags: SEO consulting business

Business Overview:

As a pay per click marketing business owner, you will have within your power the ability to help many businesses gain new customers. With a PPC marketing business you will help businesses promote their products online by creating ads that appear in search engines for specific phrases that you have selected. You will also have ads appear on highly targeted websites that are related to the product that you are promoting for your customer. People then click on these ads, and your clients receive highly qualified visitors to their websites. Typically your clients’ websites will be designed to capture each visitor’s email address, which your client can then use to generate profits by marketing products or services to the visitor. Your client will pay a certain amount each time a customer clicks on the ads you’ve helped to create, but the aim is to have your client earn more than he or she spends through the sales that are generated as a result of receiving highly qualified traffic. The major advantage with pay per click marketing as an online business idea is the fact that your client receives highly qualified traffic almost instantly. One of the major challenges for many businesses is traffic generation. Many businesses rely on generating organic traffic through search engines. However, the problem with this approach is that it is usually very competitive and it can take a lot of time and effort to get a website to rank high enough in the search engines and receive traffic (and therefore to make money). With pay per click marketing, you bypass this process and receive qualified traffic straight away. As long as you’ve done your market research well so that your client receives quality traffic that converts at a profitable rate, you can help your clients make money very quickly—which will only help your business grow as word is spread about your PPC skills. It can take a little time, training and experimentation in the beginning for you to fine tune your pay per click campaigns. It’s important to learn how to do this properly before you advertise your services as you can potentially cause your clients to lose money. One of the best things about building a pay per click marketing business is the freedom it can give you. You can target and promote all kinds of products–from physical products such as fitness machines or golf clubs, through to eBooks and training courses, and there’s no limit to the amount of profitable campaigns you can set up. You can approach local businesses that want to develop an online presence or you can target online businesses who are looking for more traffic. How you get paid for your services can vary greatly. You may work for a percentage of sales. With other clients you may receive commissions without generating sales–many merchants will pay you for each email address received. You may find some businesses want you to train them on how to run their own PPC campaigns, using you more as a consultant than anything else. Added to the freedom of choice that you’ll have in regard to what products you help your clients promote, with a successful and profitable pay per click business you can also live and work anywhere in the world.

A Day in the Life of a Pay Per Click Business Owner:

As a pay per click business owner your day would typically start by logging into the pay per click accounts that you are using for your clients (the most popular pay per click service is Google AdWords) to review your campaigns and ensure that they are running smoothly and profitably. You would check the amount your clients have spent and compare those numbers with the amount they made in sales or email collection, making sure that they are still making decent profits and getting a great return on investment on the money they’ve spent on their pay per click traffic. Having done that, you would then determine if any tweaks needed to be made to your PPC campaigns, and you’d make any necessary adjustments. As you take on new clients you’ll be spending time learning their markets and their products. Then you’ll be researching which keywords people use to search for those products. Once you know the best keywords, you’ll set up a pay per click campaign on a service such as Google AdWords. Then you’ll monitor your campaign to see how well your keywords convert into sales so that you can fine tune your campaign and assess which keywords provide the best return on investment. As your business grows, you might want to hire others to run the campaigns so that your time is freed up to acquire more clients.

About Your Customers:

Your customers will be businesses looking for a PPC expert who knows how to promote their products or services online.

What You Need to Start:

• A solid knowledge of how pay per click campaigns work
• A website advertising your service
• Business license
• Computer with high-speed Internet connection
• Financial tracking software

The Good:

• PPC marketing a highly sought after service.
• You will be providing a genuine service to businesses in helping them broaden their customer base.
• You can outsource the creation of profitable pay per click campaigns to someone else as your business grows.
• This business idea can be completely run online from your home.

The Bad:

• You will need to be careful and take time to learn how to do pay per click marketing correctly, as you can potentially lose your clients’ money quickly unless you know how to set up campaigns properly.
• Pay per click marketing can be competitive, so you will still need to have patience and be willing to spend time testing and refining your campaigns in order to make them profitable.

Resources:

• Internet Marketing Association
• International Internet Marketing Association
• eMarketing Association
• Wikipedia on Pay Per Click

Technorati Tags: pay per click marketing business

Business Overview:

Starting an affiliate marketing business could be your ticket to an incredible income and a lifestyle you may now only dream about. Affiliate marketing is a simple business idea: an agreement is made between you (the affiliate) and an online merchant, and then you are paid a commission in exchange for generating sales, leads and/or clicks for the merchant’s web site. In other words, you are paid a commission in exchange for promoting someone else’s products or services online—usually by creating websites that get traffic and that lead people to visiting a merchants website and buying their products or services. As an example, many credit card companies will pay you between $5 and $20 USD in commission for each visitor that you send to their site who completes a credit card application, and up to $55 USD for those whose applications are approved. Another example: the Elite TR6633 Treadmill sells for $6,495.00 USD. As an affiliate of MegaFitness, who pays you a 10% commission, you would earn $649.50 USD for every sale of the treadmill that you generate. As you can see, the money making potential of affiliate marketing is enormous, as are the options available to you. In addition to promoting physical products that you might see in stores, you can also promote digital products such as eBooks. Because the delivery costs of products such as these are so low, many merchants will pay you as much as 75% in commission (and many eBooks sell for $47 USD or more). Recent statistics show that online affiliate marketers are earning $6 billion USD worldwide, so without a shadow of a doubt, the profit generating potential for you is incredible with affiliate marketing. This is because affiliate marketing can become an automated income generating business. This means that with affiliate marketing you can get to the point where you earn a great income doing very little work once your system is all set up. For example, you work once to set up a website that gets traffic and generates sales (through search engines like Google, for example). Once that is done, you won’t have to do any further work on the site, yet it will earn you money 24/7. In other words, you can make money as an affiliate marketer while you sleep, and there’s no real limit to the amount of income generating websites you could set up. What’s more, starting an affiliate marketing business costs next to nothing. All you need is a hosting account for your website (typically they are $10 USD a month or less), and a website domain name (these are also around $10 USD each). Therefore, learning how to start an affiliate marketing business is a great online business idea with little to no risk since you never have to purchase the product upfront before you sell it.

A Day in the Life of an Affiliate Marketing Business Owner:

As an established affiliate marketing business owner, a typical day would start by deciding whether or not you actually want to work or not. With a successful affiliate marketing business you’ll be making money automatically once your systems are in place. To initially set up this business though, a typical day will include going onto a merchant’s website and looking for a good product to promote. You’ll constantly have your ears and eyes open for a good product to be an affiliate for. Having picked out a great product, next you’ll do some research into how to successfully promote your product. Most commonly, affiliate marketers use search engines to get traffic to their web sites and generate sales. Therefore you would typically spend time on Google researching the keywords that people use when searching for the product that you have chosen to promote. You would then create a keyword targeted website with valuable content on it that is interesting and useful to the visitors you are targeting, and that naturally leads them on to click through to your merchant’s website and buy the product. To do this you would typically write a quality review article of your product, with a recommendation at the end that you buy it by clicking through to the merchant’s website. Once your website is up, you’re basically done. It will take some time for the site to be indexed and rank highly in the search engines (and consequently, for you to start receiving traffic and generating income through it). Bear in mind however that you don’t even have to go through the process of product selection, keyword research, and website and content creation yourself. You can outsource the work by hiring someone else to do it for you. In this case, your typical day would simply consist of overseeing the smooth running of your affiliate marketing business, and checking your account to find out how much auto-pilot commissions you’ve earned.

About Your Customers:

With affiliate marketing you won’t have customers per se because you will earn your money by generating sales for a merchant. You will, however, have online leads that you aim to convert into customers for your merchant.

What You Need to Start:

• An account as an affiliate for a merchant
• A website (with some affiliate marketing you don’t even need your own website, but in most cases you do)
• Hosting and a domain name for your website
• Business license
• Computer with high-speed Internet connection
• Financial tracking software
• An affiliate marketing business plan

The Good:

• There are virtually no start-up costs.
• You get to a point where you earn money virtually on auto-pilot.
• Affiliate marketing is a $6 billion+ USD industry—the profit generating potential is enormous.
• You can outsource a lot of the work.
• You’ll have massive freedom in your daily schedule.

The Bad:

• There is a challenging aspect to this business: you will need to be motivated and to work hard in the beginning as it can take time for you to build up a solid level of income online as an affiliate marketer.
• Learning how to set up web sites can be technically challenging in the beginning if you don’t outsource this work.

Resources:

• Performance Marketing Association
• Wikipedia on Affiliate Marketing

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing business plan, how to start an affiliate marketing business, starting an affiliate marketing business

Business Overview:

Starting a social media management business is the perfect way for Internet savvy entrepreneurs to put their skills to work for other businesses. If you are unfamiliar with the practice, social media is the broad term used for social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, as well as blogs and other Web communities. In today’s technological environment, it is crucial for businesses to use these outlets to market their goods and services. In a recent report , over 90% of surveyed businesses used social media marketing and one-third of these businesses said that social media helped them make sales. Other advantages of social media marketing reported by these businesses include an increase in web traffic and sales leads, a rise in search engine rankings and a drop in marketing expenses. As you can see, this business idea is hot right now and there’s no better time to jump in and help struggling businesses take advantage of this technology. There are several different services your business can offer. You could offer consulting services that would analyze a company’s current social media presence and offer recommendations for ways to improve their marketing efforts. You could create and implement a new social media marketing campaign for businesses who either don’t have a social media presence at all or need improvement. Finally, you could offer evaluation tools that would effectively measure a new marketing campaign. Since these social networks are entirely online, you can operate this online business idea part-time from your home, unless you prefer to build it up into a full-time business venture. You will, of course, need to have experience with social networks and be able to show your clients measurable improvements in order to be successful in this business. But with a few happy clients under your belt, your client list will grow and you soon may need to hire additional staff to help you with your efforts.

A Day in the Life of a Social Media Marketing Business Owner:

Your day will begin with a check of Facebook, Twitter and any other blogs you and your clients are involved with. You will monitor and record any comments and follow up on any message board threads your company has an interest in. You will search for individuals and businesses to follow and become fans of. You will spend a portion of your day marketing your own business, which you can also do on social media networks. You will also market on different industry websites and in publications. If you have a staff working for you, you will coordinate their efforts and check in on their progress.

About Your Customers:

Your customers will be business owners and marketing managers of both small and large firms who need your expertise and recommendations on how to better their businesses using social media.

What You Need to Start:

• Expertise in social media networks and marketing
• Computer with high-speed Internet access
• Financial software

The Good:

• This type of service is in very high demand today.
• You can easily run this business part-time and from home.
• This is a great way to stay current with the latest social network inner-workings.
• It is rewarding to help businesses become more successful.
• Your schedule is flexible; you don’t have to work regular business hours.

The Bad:

• You may find yourself working irregular hours to stay on top of the social network scene.
• You will need to get a few small clients on your list before any larger firms will hire you to handle their social media.

Resources:

• Word of Mouth Marketing Association
• International Social Media Association
• Bureau of Labor Statistics on Public Relations Specialists
• Wikipedia on Social Media

Technorati Tags: social media management business

Business Overview:

If you are an expert in your field or have specialized knowledge and want to start a business, you should consider learning how to start a membership site. There is a huge market these days for subscription-based websites that offer valuable information on a wide variety of subjects. People will pay a monthly fee—month after month, often for years—to have access not only to the information you provide, but also to be able to interact with other people on the site. To get started, you’ll need to decide what type of content you will provide. It could be video training or written articles on the subject that you are an authority on. You could also hire someone to write them for you if you’re not an expert on that particular niche. You could offer weekly or monthly conference calls to your members as part of their membership. People love to watch a good interview, so you could find experts in the field you are focusing on and interview them and then post the recording—either video or MP3. Most membership sites have forums so that members can interact with each other and give one another the support they need. Here are just a few ideas for membership sites: weight loss, parenting, technical assistance, health issues, dating, etc. If you are a technical support specialist during the day, consider starting a membership site that helps people with computer and software issues. If you are a registered nurse who stays home with your children, you could start a site addressing general health questions that new mothers often have with their first baby. If you know what it’s like to be a single parent desperately needing support, you’ll understand the value of a membership site. As you can see, the options are unlimited as far as what subject you can offer your valuable advice and training on. Perhaps the best aspect of this business idea is that you can do it entirely online. You don’t need a storefront or even business hours. You can work on your website as much or as little as you want and you can easily keep your day job while you ramp up your member list. If you aren’t familiar with how to start a membership site, you should know that this online business idea can be started with very little financial investment and very little technical knowledge. Free software can be found online that will help you get your website up and running. Then you will need to set up a payment page to handle subscription payments. Next you will need to market your new site. Start by spreading the word to friends and family. Frequent non-membership site forums that are focused on your topic of choice and leave helpful comments in response to questions asked there. You could also advertise on a website where your target audience spends a lot of time. If you’re looking for people with health concerns, you could advertise on health-related websites. As word of mouth grows about your site, the more subscribers you will get.

A Day in the Life of a Membership Site Business Owner:

Your day will begin by checking on any new subscriptions. You will check to see if any members have any questions or concerns that need addressing. Once your administrative duties are taken care of, you will get to work writing content for your website. If you have a staff working for you, you will coordinate everyone’s efforts to ensure no one is duplicating work. You will also need to make sure subscription payments are going through as they are supposed to.

About Your Customers:

Your customers will be individuals looking for high quality information, support and advice on various subjects.

What You Need to Start:

• Expertise in a particular subject—or to be willing to hire or interview others who do
• Computer with high-speed internet connection
• Financial tracking software
• Website

The Good:

• This is a great way to run a lucrative business from your knowledge.
• Helping people with their problems is highly rewarding.
• Start-up costs are low.
• If your site offers valuable information, you can charge more for subscriptions.
• You can operate this business part-time, at any time of day or night.

The Bad:

• It can take some time to get your first few members.
• You need to do some work to get your site populated with important information people will pay for.

Resources:

• Online Publishers Association

Technorati Tags: how to start a membership site, start a membership site, starting a membership site