Do you have what it takes to start an online business?

Do you have what it takes to start an online business?

by G. Widmann

If you think you can build an online income without having to work for it, or paying someone to do it for you, you're in for a disappointment. There will be many slick and experienced marketers waiting to capitalize on your somewhat unfortunate outlook. They will promise you, that if you will just follow their proven system, you will be well on your way to independence, seducing you with pictures and videos of expensive cars and exotic holidays.

What they don't tell you is that there is a learning curve that almost every successful entrepreneur has to go through, and while some learn very fast, these are usually also the guys who work the hardest in order for their business to succeed.

As soon as you start to look for an online income you will be bombarded with all kinds of opportunities, one even sweeter than the other and it is only natural that you'd pick the one that fits you best and try it out.

What I would stay away from are the ones that promise you instant riches for a small investment (or a big one!). Examples of these are gifting programs, where you gift an amount, get some more people to gift, after which you qualify to receive gifts yourself. Most (if not all) of these programs are scams, don't let yourself get suckered in by all the hype reviews and remarks left online.

One step up from these programs, we have the 1-up, 2-up 3-up and what not-ups. This is basically the same as gifting, only there is a purchase involved. You buy some (usually) useless product which you probably do not have any interest in, get some people to buy it too and then just sit back and watch the money roll in, isn't that fortunate. The truth is that you will have to refer people and then they have to refer people in order for this to work. This is a lot harder than it sounds, since most people can smell something is fishy here. If you think that you can succeed in this however, more power to you!

MLM (Multi Level Marketing) is another option you could consider. In MLM you have to build yourself a team of people under you, who also build their own teams, and so on. Just like 1-up and 2-ups, there is a product involved, which often is not the reason people join, because they are really just interested in the business itself. If done properly this strategy can certainly make you very wealthy, but it is very hard work with a lot of competition and, as many have found, it is often not very rewarding. If you choose to pursue this path, please do yourself a favour and don't try to get your friends and family involved, that is usually not very effective and it's just not worth straining your relationships with them.

Next on the list are the Investment programs known as HYIP(High Yield Investment Programs), autosurf, manual surf etc. Basically this is the same as gambling. You put your money in a website which promises you ridiculous returns, which often do get paid for a while, until the whole thing goes belly up and you lose your money. A lot of people have made money this way, but only at the cost of others who joined too late. The problem is that you don't know when "too late" is, and that's why it's such a gamble. In order to make some decent money here, you would have to invest a lot and I really think it's not worth the risk. Better to invest your money into something constructive, like learning how build your own business.

Which brings me to affiliate marketing. In my opinion this is the best way to get started if you are serious about online income. There are countless businesses out there who are willing to share their profits with you, if you can send paying customers to their products. We are talking 30%-75% commissions here. There are many strategies you can implement in affiliate marketing and it's probably best to pick one (or two) and just really give them a go. Make no excuses for yourself, do the work, learn everything about this particular approach and see if it works for you. Don't go hopping from one thing to the next, as you will almost certainly fail to see the results you hoped for and give up in despair. Give yourself some time to learn the tricks of the trade, don't expect to become a master overnight.

It is said, that by far the most profitable way to make money online is to create your own product, and I am not going to argue with that. A product can be anything from an e-book, video, song, membership website or maybe T-shirts. Find something that people want or need and create a fitting product. Of course it's best to pick something that interests you or that you already know much about, that will make the process of creating it a whole lot easier and fun to do. Once you have your product there are many ways of selling it online, but the easiest way would be to find affiliates who will sell it for you for a percentage of the price. It will look like you're giving money away needlessly, but when you have a lot of affiliates, a lot of people who would have otherwise never heard of your product will be introduced to it, which can result in a lot more sales. Just think of the amount of work that can save you. Unless you are very knowledgeable about a subject, or already have a great idea, I would recommend starting off with affiliate marketing first to get a hang of online marketing before making your own product.

There are other ways of making money online. One of them would be to build a website which gets a lot of traffic and selling advertising space on it. Like placing Google Adsense code in your website. If you pick the right subjects and get lots of traffic, this can be very profitable. However if you know how to get traffic, it might be better to monetize your website differently because Adsense and the likes don't pay all that much, unless you target the expensive (and very competitive) keywords.

Whatever you choose to do, make sure to check the "easy money" mentality at the door. Unless you are fortunate enough to have been chosen from above, this attitude is going to be a major obstacle to your success. Nothing worthwhile comes without effort and there are few things as satisfying as putting your talents and creativity to work, and proving to yourself that you can achieve what you've set out to do.

Good luck!