An Internet Business – Starting Out

About 15 years ago, I gave up a salaried post as Head of a Music Centre to become a full-time carer for our handicapped daughter. This situation was forced on me by circumstances. Although my early retirement from employment qualified me for a moderate pension it was still necessary to try to find ways to generate some income, preferably working from home. I had heard that people were already making money from the internet so I decided to investigate that possibility.

At that time, the whole world of the internet was still fairly new and people were beginning to explore the ways that this ‘brave new world’ could be turned to business use. In my first two or three years of investigating the possibilities I went through what most internet marketers have gone through. I subscribed to courses, purchased business opportunities, dabbled with ideas which I gleaned from search engines and generally got nowhere fast! The one good thing about this process was that I gained a good working knowledge of the internet and how to use it. Gradually, I came to understand certain basic truths about how an internet business works.

In order to be successful it is essential to find a ‘hungry’ group of people with a need or a problem and then offer them a solution to their need or problem. There is no point in having the most wonderful product in the world if you have no-one to sell it to. This is the basis of “Affiliate Marketing”, where people with great ideas and outstanding products give marketers the opportunity to sell their products for them to the benefit of both parties.

Research is the key to successful online marketing. If you can find that group of hungry people, locating or creating a product to sell to them is the easy part; there are so many ways that this part of the process can be achieved. You will often hear the term “Niche Marketing” bandied around within the internet business community. All this means is that a marketer focuses on a particular specialism and sells to that market. There may be only a few people interested in a particular niche in any one town, but that small number grows into a huge potential market when the internet gives you the opportunity to sell to interested people in every town in the world. It is this massive market place that gives the internet its power.

However, it is not possible to generate a large income by simply putting up a website to promote your product and expecting those interested ‘hungry’ people to find it. The real skill in internet marketing is finding a means to make those people aware of your website so that they visit in large numbers and buy what you have to offer. Which approach you use will have a great deal to do with how much you have to invest.  By using “Article Marketing” it can be achieved quite literally for nothing, – assuming you can write your own articles. Other methods such as “Pay-Per-Click Advertising”, Web-Ads, etc. involve some investment.

The fact is that Internet Marketing is a very varied way of doing business. There are many different ways to sell, many different kinds of products that can be sold and many different ways to promote your products or services. If you wish to start an internet marketing business there will certainly be an approach which suits you; the secret is to find it! At all levels it is a question of research – research – research!