Getting Started Online – Online Business Ideas For Beginners – Part I

There are many business models for an Online Business. It is often the Internet Business beginner’s daunting task to find these various business ideas, understand how they work, and learn ways to profit with them. It is also difficult to decide which model will work best for YOU.

In this first article I will explain 2 of the most popular online business types. I think they are a good starting point for online business newbies. The models I chose here are well-known, easy to learn, and there is an abundance of information that you can find, for little or no cost, to help you get started. These models are ideal if you are starting out with little or no start up money and limited internet experience.

FREELANCING

The first of this type is Freelancing. Once thought to be available only to the writers and artists of the world, freelancing is fast becoming one of the most popular ways to make money online. Sites like Elance, oDesk, Guru, and Rent-A-Coder have made it extremely easy to get started to get up and running with a freelancer profile in less than a few hours. Some of the most popular freelance openings are:

Writers – These include article and report writers, eBook writers, blog posters, forum posters, copy writers, review writers and much more.

Researchers – Web researchers have grown in popularity to become one of the most sought after freelancers. Research takes time and today’s online marketers would rather spend that time on other tasks and outsource the research tasks to others. This area of freelance requires no more than internet access, a computer, and time.

Graphic Artist – Logo design, banner creation and web page design is a great way to get started in freelancing. Perhaps your background and education is in this area OR you just enjoy it as a hobby. Either way, graphic artists do very well in freelance.

Programmers – This includes every aspect of programming. It seems this area is a mystery to many and those who need this service are willing to pay very good money for a good programmer.

Freelancing jobs are abundant. Check out the sites listed above and for more information about getting started. You can also check out Escape from Corporate America: A Practical Guide to Creating the Career of Your Dreams
by Pamela Skillings. Skillings is an author and career coach who writes about her escape from the corporate world and discussed how others can do the same.

AFFILIATE MARKETING

In a nutshell Affiliate Marketing can be defined as commissioned sales online. The difference with Affiliate Marketing is that you do not need to have a sales background to get started and you do not have to do any of that dreaded cold calling or the face to face sales pitch.

Affiliate Marketers are promoters of other people’s products and services. They make a commission based on the type of product or service and that company’s affiliate program. Many of these programs are very generous offering up to 75% commission per sale.

So what types of products or services can you promote? Just about anything! eBooks, websites, dog grooming products, electronics, outdoor furniture and many consumer products that you probably use yourself have affiliate programs available. You can look for affiliate programs on some of your favorite sites. Just look in the headers, footers, or sidebars of these sites for links called AFFILIATES, AFFILIATE PROGRAMS, or PROMOTE.

Another way to find these programs is through Affiliate Retail Outlets like Clickbank and Commission Junction. These sites offer Marketplaces where you an locate 100s of products and services to promote.

How do you promote these products once you find them? There are many ways to promote as an Affiliate. If you have a website or blog you can post banner ads on your site or you can promote through list building and email marketing. Review sites are another great way to promote products. You can create a brief review and then offer the product you are promoting within the article. You can even promote products without a website through Pay-Per-Click advertising or Article Marketing.

Affiliate Marketing is one of my favorite online business models because you can get started for very little money and with limited experience. If this seems like it might interest you then I recommend you check out Rosalind Gardner’s “The Super Affiliate Handbook”. It was the first book I read on Affiliate Marketing and it is one of the most comprehensive guides on the market today. Rosalind just updated her handbook in September 2009 with the most up-to-date techniques for Affiliate Marketers. It is required reading for any new affiliate.

Freelancing and Affiliate Marketing are two great ways to get started making money online. They are very appealing to the beginner because they require little or no money to get started and are suited for individuals with a variety of experience levels.

In the next article I will discuss more online business ideas including creating your own saleable product, micro sites, and pay-per-click. Check back soon!

Ancora Imparo!

WEEKLY FREEBIE – Search Engine Optimization For Beginners

This week I have been spending quite a bit of time on SEO.  It has become very apparent to me that two of the most vital areas of education for beginners should be SEO and Keyword Research.  Collectively, these two areas will not only be the most challenging for Internet Business beginners, but they will also give the most value and ROI overall.

With that in mind, I am focusing the freebies this week and next to SEO and Keyword Research.  This week is SEO.

The following guides will prove extremely helpful to beginners. They are both free to download and are in pdf format.  To read them you will need to download and install the free Adobe Reader if you don’t already have it.

The first is direct from the source.  Google offers up their Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide as a helpful tool to understanding the basics of SEO and what you can do to make your site more SEO friendly to both the user and the Search Engines. Although the guide was written in 2008, most of what is discussed is timeless SEO information.

The second guide is from Dan Thies.  It is the SEO Fast Start guide.  Dan is an SEO expert who has been at it since the days of Netscape.  Dan’s guide is 100 pages packed with essential information on SEO in easy to understand terms.  Dan discusses key areas including keyword research, usability, site structure, and link building.  It is a great guide for beginners.

I hope you will check out both guides and please leave me some feedback on them.

Next week my freebies will be focused on keyword research.  Stop back or just sign up to our newsletter for updates.

Here’s To FREEBIES!!

ps.  If you have a great free resource that you would like to tell us about, please leave a comment below and share the FREE!

Tips For Affiliate Newbies

I have recently started studying information on becoming an Affiliate / Super Affiliate. I have been at this for about six months now and have spent a majority of that time doing a load of research on both products and programs. I have found a lot of useful information but have also found a lot more useless information, scams, and bogus content.

If becoming an Affiliate or an Internet Marketer is something that you have been looking into then I hope these tips will help you on your way and save you some time.

1. Do your research! Read all you can from other Affiliates and see what they are doing and how they got there. Reading their stories and How-Tos has proven invaluable and has helped me to avoid many Newbie mistakes. Two books I suggest are “Make a Fortune Promoting Other People’s Stuff Online” by Rosalind Gardner and “Affiliate Millions” by Anthony Borelli and Greg Holden. Both books are packed with vital information for understanding and mastering Affiliate Marketing. (You can link to both of these books from the bottom of this post.)

2. Don’t fall for all the scams. There are 1000s if not tens of thousands of products out there that promise to make you an overnight success…JUST SAY NO! One thing I have learned is that there is an abundance of free information out there via blogs and podcasts that can serve the same purpose as those $97 programs everyone is selling. Search iTunes for podcasts on Affiliate Marketing and Internet Marketing. Search for blogs on Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing. You can learn so much by just listening/reading.

3. Don’t expect immediate results. Growing a good Affiliate business will take time. Don’t expect to start receiving $1000 checks in the mail tomorrow. If you do…more power to you! (and uh, send me your secrets!) but chances are you will not. Don’t get frustrated…it will come!

4. Expect to put the time in. Building sites, writing quality content, and researching Affiliate programs takes time. Expect to put your nose to the grindstone a bit. If you already work fulltime, spare a few hours each night. Turn off that TV and get to work!

5. Know the products and programs you are promoting. Read the terms and conditions. Also, try to promote products and services you are familiar with. It makes writing reviews and promotion so much easier. If you have never ordered or used the product before, then order it…read through the material…scrutinize the ship time and Customer Service. Offering your customers quality products and services will build trust and keep them coming back.

6. Keep it real. Avoid content generators and programs that write articles for you. Although these tools will save time, they will lack quality and quality is what you want to build…not a lot of useless words on a page.

7. Promote it! Promote yourself…DONT BE SHY!!! Get out there and tell the world what you are doing, what you are writing and what you are reviewing. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Squidoo, and Tumblr will help you spread the word and share stories with other Affiliates…so get on it!

I hope these few tips will help you on your way and don’t forget to check out these two great Affiliate Marketing books to get you started.

To Your Success!

JUST DO IT! 3 Quick Things Newbies Can Do Right Now

Got 15 Minutes? (No I can’t save you 15% on car insurance).   What I can do is get you started on setting up some necessary Internet Business accounts that you will need or may want to use.

Here are three actions you can do take right now to get moving along.

1. Set Up Two (2) Email Accounts – Unless you live under a rock the term SPAM is a household word and a bad one at that. When you get started in Internet Business there will be MANY accounts, forms, and email lists that you will be putting your email address into. It just becomes part of the daily MO of Internet Business. Doing this, however, can potentially turn your email Inbox to a spam collection receptacle. Trust me when I say that it will only take a few times before filtering through all that junk to find 1 important email is going to drive you nuts! My solution to this has been to maintain two email accounts. Use one account as the account you use for signing up to anything you come across and might be interested in (blogs, Internet Marketing products, account sign ups, etc). We’ll call this the bad and catchall account. You will begin to see just how quickly this will fill up with daily if not hourly emails. Use a second account as your main or good email account. This would be the account you will provide for very important business emails and select information requests. Be very selective on where you input this email address and be sure to unsubscribe to anything you don’t want in there as soon as you see them appear. Keep in mind that anything you send to the bad email account can always be moved to the good account later by simply updating your email address for that particular product or person.

2. Set Up A Twitter Account – In less than 5 minutes (less customization) you can be up and running on one of the largest social networking sites on the planet. Twitter has grown to become a necessity in Social Networking and a great Internet Marketing tool (plus it is a lot of fun). I strongly suggest opening an account. You will want it later. I would definitely give some thought to branding here if that is your end game. You may want to use your own name or a brand name you may be thinking of using in the future. Once you start to gain a following you will be very reluctant to scrap the account for a ‘better’ name. Once you get set up take some time to look around and watch. Don’t start ‘tweeting’ until you have an idea of how the platform works and is being used by other Internet Business Marketers. There is a definite etiquette here and you want to be aware of the dos and don’ts.

3. Open and EZineArticles account – If your plan on diving into Article Marketing or just want to populate your site or blog with content, EZineArticles will become a staple. The set up is quick and pretty much painless. I love the site and have found many hidden tidbits written by internet gurus before they were gurus. I think it is worth the few minutes to set it up.

So there you have three quick actions you can take right now to get you on your way. So go on now…get moving!

Thanks for listening!

Getting Started With IB – Where Do I Begin?

“Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.” ~ Abigail Adams

I think one of the hardest things for Internet Business Newbies is digesting all of the information that they find, read, watch, and hear.  Just getting started can be a task when you are not even sure what half the stuff you are reading even means.  One of the things I always recommend to anyone starting out with Internet Business is to take a few weeks to learn as much as you can and become familiar with some of the big players and the common terminology used.  Just getting the basic vocabulary down will help you tremendously and will make it so much easier to locate more information and useful tips that you can apply to your business.

Where To Look

There are so many great sources of information out there on Internet Business and some not-so-great sources.  Luckily for you, I have wasted all my time weeding through it so you don’t have to.  Here are some places you can go to get started on your lessons.

1. iTunes – iTunes has some really great podcasts on Internet Business and Marketing.  Even if you don’t have an iPod you can still listen online.  If you do have an iPod even better!  I have an hour drive back and forth from work and I consistently use this time to listen to the podcasts I find in iTunes.  It makes my commute fly by and I am learning something new daily as I drive!  Win/Win!

If you are not familiar with locating podcasts in  iTunes, Butterscotch.com has made this quick tutorial which can walk you through the process.  If you don’t already have it, you can download iTunes for free HERE.

One podcast that I highly recommend is Internet Business Mastery.  This is run by Sterling and Jay who have both escaped their cubicle and designed their dream lifestyles.  They offer many great business tips and their podcast is one of the most professional ones I have found.  Look around and you will find there really is some great content on there.

NEWBIE TIP: Be sure to check the dates of the podcasts.  If you see that one has not been updated in awhile, you may want to avoid it.  The content may be old and have no current relevance in this fast changing arena.  Also watch out for very short podcasts (under 5 minutes).  Most often these are simply promo spots or ads disguised as value content.

2. Blog Talk Radio – BTL has created a format that makes it very easy to set up and distribute podcasts.  This is both good AND bad.  Good because it gives many talented people a platform to showcase their wares and get their information out to the world.  Bad, because it makes it very easy for ANYONE to upload content.  I would proceed here with caution and follow the same rule as above.  If the content is old, just look for something a bit more recent.  You can find their site HERE.  Some good hosts are Bob The Teacher, Willie Crawford, and Steve Weber.  Just  look around.  There is quite a bit of talent on there.

3. YouTube – I am the type of person that learns much faster by watching than by reading.  I think that is why YouTube is one of my favorite places to gain new information.  There are literally millions of videos on there that can show you everything from setting up a new blog to creating a eBook.  YouTube has probably been one of the most useful learning tools I have found for myself on the web.  I highly recommend it and I hope you will take some time to use it as well.  You can link to it HERE.

4. Blogs - Blogs are great for so many reasons.  They are so versatile and you can find one on just about any subject on the planet.  If you want to find some really good Internet Business tips and information check out some of the blogs at WordPress and Blogger.  These are two of the bigger sites and will hold most of the content. Just so a quick search for Internet Marketing or Internet Business and you will find a host of blogs to search through.

I think that should get you started.  Check back often for more great tips and make time each day to learn a little more than you know today!  Soon you will be on your way!

Ancora Imparo!

WELCOME GUESTS

I thought long and hard about what I would include in my first post but it seemed the more I thought about it the more irrelevant I felt it might be say….a year or even two from now.  So, I stopped thinking about it and decided to just offer a simple WELCOME and THANK YOU to my Internet Business Newbie site.

I hope you will find some helpful information here.  I would suggest searching by topic and not by date as many of my posts, at least in the beginning, will be entered in masses from my previous blog.

Please leave me your comments and questions.  I will always be looking for ideas and suggestions to improve the site.  Your input, as the reader, is vital!

Ancora Imparo!