Internet Business

Internet-Based Businesses www.lifethenfinance.com

Definitions: • Affiliate Marketing: • An Internet based marketing practice where a business pays an individual for each customer or visitor brought about through the individuals marketing efforts. • Click and Mortar: • A business model where a company has both offline and online presences. Also known as Bricks and Clicks. • Content Advertising: • Content based advertising placement such as that pioneered by Google, also classified ads and ‘pay for performance’ models. www.lifethenfinance.com

Definitions: Cont… • eCommerce: • Electronic commerce that takes place over the Internet. • Incentive Marketing or Pay for Performance: • A business model used in online advertising where an ad agency charges a marketer for the results achieved by the ad campaign. • Monetize: • How something earns money. • Virtual Merchant: • A retail sales business that only has a presence online, rather than a ‘brick and mortar’ storefront. www.lifethenfinance.com

Internet & Business: • The power of the Internet has leveled the playing field • It possible for anyone to start a business and earn income. • The majority of the top earning web sites in the world are run by talented young men and women under the age of thirty. • The Internet has opened up the world of global commerce to anyone, not just the big corporations that had traditionally controlled the market. www.lifethenfinance.com

Internet & Business: Cont…. • Anyone with a computer and a credit card can easily setup a website overnight and be ready to sell their products or services to customers from around the world. • The advances in technology and the new world economy also give business people access to resources and suppliers without having to leave their desk. www.lifethenfinance.com

Internet & Business: Cont…. • This opens up many more potential business models to individuals that have never before been so readily available such as importing or exporting, self publishing, software publishing, affiliate marketing, incentive marketing and virtual merchants, or e-retailers like Amazon who only have an online presence. • The explosion of E-commerce and the increasing availability of Internet access around the world, small businesses are able to easily gain access to foreign markets so they can either locate unique or less expensive products to import for sale in this country, or they can export their own products for sale abroad, either wholesale to other distributors or retail to foreign consumers. www.lifethenfinance.com

Self-Publishing: • This is the publishing of books and other media by the author, rather than a third party, is a popular example of a successful new Internet business model. • The ability to sell e-books, videos, software and other digital content directly to the consumer without having to go to the expense of a big print run or other production and packaging expenses, has made many entrepreneurs wealthy while at the same time providing consumers better access to specialized information. www.lifethenfinance.com

Affiliate Marketing: • Affiliate marketing and incentive marketing are both business models where an individual or business puts up a content based website then partners with other websites with the agreement that they get paid for either sending traffic or sales to the partner (affiliate marketing) or for getting a site visitor to perform some action like signup for a newsletter (incentive marketing). • With this model the website is monetized, or earns money, from the affiliate or pay for performance fees. www.lifethenfinance.com

Traditional Business Models: • Traditional business models have been reinvented and redefined by the Internet, such as drop shipping, content advertising, auctions, and broadcasting. www.lifethenfinance.com

Drop Shipping Business model: • It allows individuals and businesses to sell another company’s products online through their own website or auction sites without ever having to touch the products. • You simply take orders from customers then you turn around and place the orders with your supplier who has agreed to ship directly to the customer for you. www.lifethenfinance.com

Google AdSense: • Google AdSense program pioneered content advertising, where advertisers pay to have their ads displayed on other relevant websites. • The advertiser pays on a per click or per impression basis, and the website that displays the ads gets a portion of the fees. www.lifethenfinance.com

Auction Sites e.g. Ebay • Auction websites like eBay, eBid, Overstock, uBid, and Yahoo Auctions allow individuals and businesses to sell anything and everything online, either for a fixed price or to the highest bidder. • Sellers can list new or used items and are only charged minimal fees, typically an initial listing fee plus a small percentage of the final sale price. www.lifethenfinance.com

Information Broadcasting: • Information broadcasting has traditionally been limited to those companies able to make large investments in media outlets, print and/or broadcast equipment. • This business model of selling information or content through subscription services • E.g. HBO, online newspapers) or selling advertising space within content (e.g. magazines, television commercials, classified ads) has easily translated to the Internet. • E.g. bloggers earn income from the ads that show up alongside their blog posts, and membership sites earn monthly fees for access to clipart , templates, coaching, educational materials and other types of information. www.lifethenfinance.com

Internet Technology: • Internet is the single biggest advance for small business people everywhere and the surge in its use has led to a growing number of Americans working from home or starting home based businesses. • This Information Age, where anyone with Internet access can have instant access to information that was previously difficult or impossible to find, makes it both easy an inexpensive for people to start Internet based business ventures. www.lifethenfinance.com

Information Technology: • One of the greatest benefits of the Internet is that there is no commute so you can have more productive hours in the day if you’re able to work online from home, or you can easily “moonlight” with your online startup after hours while keeping your day job as a safety net. • More businesses today involve creating, processing, and moving information and by relying on technology like computers, fax machines, video conferencing and other tools, it makes it much less complicated to start and run a successful business. www.lifethenfinance.com

Online Marketing Methods: • Article Marketing • Auto responder Email Systems • Blogs • Directory Submissions • DMOZ Listing • Forum Posts • Google AdWords (pay per click advertising) • Google Indexing • Opt in Mailing Lists • Paid Advertisements • Partners & Affiliates • Point of Purchase Up Sells www.lifethenfinance.com

Online Marketing Methods: Cont... • Partners & Affiliates • Point of Purchase Up Sells Press Releases • Search engine optimization (SEO) • Signature on email messages • Social Bookmarking – Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon • Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, MySpace • Testimonials – Both Giving and Receiving Them • Webinars & Teleseminars www.lifethenfinance.com

How to Start your own Internet-Based Business: Terms… • Angel Investor: • Affluent individual who backs emerging entrepreneurial ventures. • Bootstrapping: • Starting a business without outside investors. • Domain Name: • The address or URL of a particular website. • Hosting: • A service where a web server maintains and serves the files for one or more websites. • URL: • Uniform resource location or web address of a site. • Venture Capital: • Money and resources made available to startup firms and small businesses that exhibit exceptional growth potential. www.lifethenfinance.com

How to Start your own Internet-Based Business: • More and more entrepreneurs are realizing their dream of establishing a business online, and now that you understand how to use the Internet for business, and the types of business models available, your next move is to go from planning to action. www.lifethenfinance.com

**The hardest part of any journey is the first step** www.lifethenfinance.com

Setting up your Internet Business: • Most important step to starting an internet-based business is to create a larger presence. • When just starting out, odds are that you don’t have an excess amount of cash to spend, so you’ll need to focus on doing everything within your power to make it appear that your company is established and perhaps larger than it is in reality. • The best way to appear big is to avoid doing things that will make your business seem small or inexperienced. • E.g. Every company needs business cards, but it’s surprising how many startups go for those fancy but “free” business cards that come with the printing company’s logo on the back. • This not only makes an enterprise seem small, it also makes the company look cheap. www.lifethenfinance.com

Setting up your Internet Business: Cont…. • This same principle goes for your email address and web hosting—do not use free services and expect to be taken seriously. • Free hosting accounts typically come with advertising banners that you can’t remove, and you don’t want to waste your efforts to market someone else’s business. • Using a Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail or other free email account as your main business address will make your potential customers question your professionalism www.lifethenfinance.com

Setting up your Internet Business: Cont…. • Set-up a website for your business once you’ve registered a domain name. • No matter how large or small the business, every company needs a website in this Information • Age, even if it is merely a one page site with contact information. • A website is the best marketing tool you can have for your business as it will help you to build your company’s identity and brand around the clock. www.lifethenfinance.com

Importance of Dressing the Part: • Wear business attire whenever you visit with potential customers, partners, or if you’re attending business related functions and seminars. • Share that people really do form an opinion of you based on their first impression, so dress professionally and people will think of you as a professional. www.lifethenfinance.com

Tools: • There are technology tools that you can use to make your small business look big, • such as virtual phone systems that allow you to route call and faxes to and from all of your phone numbers so you don’t have to hire a receptionist or secretary until you can afford one. • Tell them if you need an actual meeting space to get together with potential clients, then look for office or meeting space that you can borrow or rent by the day or by the hour www.lifethenfinance.com

Tools: • Many home-based businesses do not need this much. Many times you can have a phone conference or video chat to do this. • However, if your business needs full-time office space, but you can’t really afford to hire support staff yet, then you could also look for co-op style office space where you rent an individual office and share a receptionist with others in the same building. • Have a professional sounding voice mail. www.lifethenfinance.com

Internet Business