BUSINESS
MODELS FOR MAKING MONEY ON THE INTERNET
RETURN
TO BOOMER HOME
There are many different ways to make money on the Internet and the best
strategy is to implement two or three of these methods.
This is called “multiple streams of income”.
To do this, we need to identify the beginning point and get the first
stream of income flowing into your bank account.
Let’s consider some of
the possibilities.
Sell
a Product
The majority of money in e-commerce is made by selling products – either hard
goods or digital. Many of the same common sense rules apply whether you are
selling online or "offline." Look for products with high margins, high
demand, low competition, etc.
See the next topic for how to sell your product.
John
Howe, Inc. has its own product called a BackTracker. This is sold
on the website www.back-tracker.com.
A great
way to sell a product is to sell on eBay
If you have
not heard of eBay, go to to www.ebay.com
and look around. Type in the search
box the name of an item that interests you and see what offerings you get.
This is the world’s largest marketplace.
This is the best place to start you education.
You can find some items around your house that you intend to put in the
next garage sale and sell them on eBay. I
have purchased all kinds of items on eBay (lawn edger, stainless steel sink for
utility room, Southwest Airlines drink coupons, computers, electrical
connectors, obscure Cisco cables, etc.) I
use eBay to establish the market price for anything that I am buying or selling.
We will stop at this point since there are several additional lessons on eBay, and we
will cover more later.
Information
Publishing
During your career, have you developed an expertise that you feel might be
valuable to others? The Internet
gives you a vehicle to develop what is called an eBook (electronic book).
You can publish it and sell it to others.
This is one of the most lucrative Internet professions.
The cost of development is your time.
The publishing cost is low since you email the book to the customer and
they read it on-line. This will
depend on your skills, desire, and availability of time. If you have a story to
tell, but you are concerned about writing, you can find a “ghost writer” to
write the book for you if you have the idea.
Create
a Newsletter
On
on-line newsletter is called an eZine (electronic magazine). If you have
expertise in a particular field, you can publish an eZine on your topic.
Once you have a reader base, you can sell advertising and recommend items for
sale as an affiliate (See below for affiliate information). You can
also include what is called "Adsense" adverting which we will cover
later. It is what you see along the lower edge of this page. Go to www.Boomer-eZine.com
and sign up for the eZine for Boomer Entrepreneurs. This will give you a
feel for how an eZine works and you will get some good information in the
process.
Create
a Blog
Service Businesses
You can offer a service related to your particular expertise, but this type of business is more hands on and will probably not allow you the flexible schedule
that you as a retired Boomer may desire. You can build a
client base, whether clients are local (ex., organizing children's
birthday parties) or global (ex., assessing value of antiquarian books).
What do you know or do that is of
value to others? Think about this and you may develop your new business.
Another example is converting VHS tapes to DVD's. You can use eBay to sell
this service too. There is a website called eLance which matches buyers with skilled suppliers who offer a service. If you
have a service to offer, you might consider registering on eLance. I use
it for various projects and it is an amazing site. Click
on the box at right to go check out eLance.
e-Goods Creators/Sellers
Are you a programmer or do you have an idea for a program to help you?
If you cannot program, you can hire someone to write the program for
you. There are websites that allow you to post specifications for a job and
very talented individuals from all over the world will bid on doing the job for
you.
Sell
hard goods
Do you have a hobby that you feel could become a business?
Are you an artist who creates your own art?
These are products that you can actually touch (non-digital products).
You can open your own store or sell these items on eBay or other Internet
auction sites. What about selling cars? eBay has a site
dedicated strictly to buying and selling cars. (A work of caution --
turning a hobby into a business can ruin a great hobby so think about that
before you leap.) you can sell these on eBay or create your own website.
Affiliates
The affiliate program is probably the best return for your effort with the least
demand on your time. The way you make
money is to refer visitors to on-line merchants in return for a commission. It's
risk-free, the recommendations provide an additional service for your visitors,
and there's no downside. You can
make money without having a product of your own -- you do not have to inventory,
warehouse or ship any product. You will need to
generate a lot of traffic to affiliate sites since the revenue per sale is
usually low. However, if you do your marketing correctly, the Internet has
millions of customers out there waiting for you.
Sell
Advertising
This can
be done in a number of ways, but a couple of the most obvious are:
-
Create
your own website such as Boomer-Entrepreneur.com and place ads in the
pages. At the bottom of this page are some ads that are placed there
automatically by the Google AdSense Program. You can also sell
advertising directly to other businesses on the Internet and place the ads
on you website.
-
Place
ads in the Ezine that was mentioned above. This is done in the www.Boomer-eZine.com
if you want to go there and take a look.
-
Write
an blog and include advertising in it. You can use AdSense for this.
There are
others, but these are the quickest and easiest.
We will
add to this list as we identify additional opportunities and there will be many. Stay tuned!
