The Internet was christened the ‘Information Superhighway’ by former US Vice President Al Gore. Every day millions of people turn to the internet to seek information of every kind relating to every subject imaginable. It is fairly certain that if you are looking for information, you can go to your computer, hook up to the internet and find what you are looking for. It is a rich source of data which is almost instantly available. This makes it the perfect research tool of our day in an age when people want anything and everything – “NOW!”
It didn’t take the marketers and business people long to see the massive potential of the internet as a money-making opportunity. The ever-growing marketplace and ever-developing technology has created a boom time for the entrepreneurs of the world. Because of the nature of an online business it has been possible for anyone to run a highly profitable business from his or her own kitchen or spare room. All that is required is a computer and an internet connection and you are up and running, ready to make money by selling information online.
When I was first introduced to the concept of internet marketing it really caught my imagination as I could see the huge potential there for the taking; millions of people available to communicate with who are hungry for information on every conceivable topic. “Great!” Once my initial excitement had died down, Then, as with many others I suspect, came the inevitable questions: “How do I reach this marketplace?” “What products can I offer?” “Where do I find out how to go about it?” At that point I went very quickly from being excited to feeling overwhelmed.
The information superhighway is a perfect name for what the internet offers. Any entrepreneur who can find a way to provide the information that the surfers are looking for is going to make money, and, with the size of the marketplace, the potential is there to make a great deal of money. However, with the vast number of internet users, how can you deduce what they want and find a way to provide it. The fairly obvious answer is, through research. The rather incestuous process is that we use the internet to find the information we need to provide other internet users with the information they need.
This immediately raises another question: “If that information is there on the internet why can’t people find it for themselves?” The answer to that question is fairly obvious. Either people don’t know how or, more likely, they can’t be bothered to do the research. As marketers we seek out that information and present it in a form which our customers will appreciate; we present it to them ‘on a plate’. If someone wants a pint of milk, they could go out and buy a cow and learn how to look after it and milk it, but it’s much easier to pop up the road to Tesco and buy a bottle. Tesco offers their customers what they want in the form that they want it. All the customers have to do is get out their cash or credit card.
From an internet marketer’s point of view, information is the perfect ‘product’ to sell. Once we have found our hungry marketplace, sourced a suitable product and decided on the best way to actually market that product we have a business. A particularly appealing aspect of an information business is the profit margins are substantial; far, far greater than in traditional business. The reason for that is the nature of information. The information on a DVD might be worth hundreds of pounds to the purchaser but the disc itself costs £2 or £3 to produce, complete with case and artwork. We are being paid for our research and product creation rather than for the physical item itself. An additional advantage with this kind of business is that customers pay for their product with their order, so we always receive payment before a product is sent out.
So, to summarise, selling information online is one of the very best ways to generate a good income these days, especially if you are running your own business from home. Let the information superhighway lead you to a life lived the way you want to live it.
To discover more about the possibilities of an online business, please click on this link: http://www.internetmarketingmanual.com.