Online business ideas are often played out
in many blog posts about the subject. You probably have read countless posts from “experts” on the subject, and finally you came to the conclusion that they probably drew them out of nowhere (or from the last guy’s post that THEY read) and that you had to come up with your own online business ideas.
Most online business ideas don’t start out of somebody’s genius idea to reinvent the wheel. It started out of getting an idea from an already successful business plan that somebody figured out how to make better. So don’t rely too much on drawing inspiration from something, because that feeling of inspiration will wear off when you roll up your sleeves and get working. But nonetheless, you do have to start somewhere, so you might as well consider yourself inspired. Here are some online business ideas you can tuck in your memory bank for later.
Everyone thinks they have to have a product to sell in order to succeed online. While some business ideas are birthed around churning out an ingenious product, some are just built around an improvement. Take, for instance, the popularity of so many weight loss products and acne improvement books online. One person, or maybe a few people, started those online business ideas, then the rest of the internet marketing world saw how productive they were for money-making and followed suit. Fast forward several years later, and you have an internet inundated with articles, blogs, videos and ebooks that do nothing but siphon off people’s credit cards on account of false hope.
What you need to do is find a niche you like, find someone who is already successful in that niche, and pinpoint how you can improve upon it or do it differently. Find your unique business strategy. Can you do something better or differently than the person you’ve found who does it well? If so, then you’ve found one of the best online business ideas.
Sometimes people have this inert desire to sell their advice or wisdom. In many cases, this is a great start IF you’re already an expert in a field. The whole problem with these sorts of business ideas is, some marketers get the idea that they’re truly an expert when they’re not. They start giving out bad information, turning it into a product, then wonder why they’re receiving refunds when their advice doesn’t work.
When you start internet business ideas, think them through before selling them to others. Your reputation online is of the utmost importance to your business. Getting your good name back is tough, if not impossible. Work on making a product that truly benefits the customer, not just your bank account, and your internet business ideas are always more sure to succeed. Going after the quick buck never worked for anyone. But making truly helpful online business ideas has a much higher tendency to yield the return you’re looking for.
Make my site mobile friendly – these words
come out of the mouths of a lot of people I know. But the thing is, they want it done for free. They don’t want to invest one extra cent to take advantage of more than 60% of the marketplace (for certain niches). Well for all you cheapskates out there, here’s some good news. There ARE ways to make your website mobile friendly without spending a fortune.
Thanks to Google, you can now visit one web page to choose from a list of mobile developers who are offering free or low-cost deals on mobile templates. With these mobile templates, you can customize logos, backgrounds, buttons and image slideshows to create the perfect mobile site to complement your real website.
Google’s “GoMo” tool, which not only links to a variety of mobile developers, also links to a number of mobile resources you can page through to optimize your website before it goes live on mobile networks. And using online sources that let you view how your site looks from a mobile standpoint (without actually owning any of the mobile devices that will be trafficking your site) helps you get an idea of how well your color choices and image placements will work when your visitors try to use them.
You can choose from these templates to get your site mobile friendly way more simply and quickly than by trying to create your own mobile site app or by hiring someone to do it for you. Why reinvent the wheel when you can get something for free – at least for a while – that has the potential to make you so much money? That’s what you have to ask yourself when asking how to make my site mobile friendly.
Okay, so you’ve already heard all the hype about mobile friendly websites, but where’s the answer to “why?” in all of this? Well if you read Google’s new Mobile Playbook, you’ll understand just how much the world is now relying on mobile sites to function.
Life is so hectic anymore that hardly anyone sits down in front of their computer to browse for stuff they want to buy. If they’re driving, they’re looking for places to eat on their mobile device. If they’re at home, they’re searching on their iPads in between watching a movie and playing “Angry Birds,” or whatever it is people do on their iPads these days. Browsing rarely happens on the computer anymore, so why invest in making your site so computer-friendly if everyone is moving to mobile?
The whole point is, not only do you not want to risk missing out on sales, you also don’t want to get stuck behind the curve. Because once you let the competition slip ahead, it’s tough to regain your spot. So that pretty much wraps up the answer to why make my site mobile friendly on many fronts.
Local contacts are way more important
than most internet marketers will lead you to believe. I know, I know, you think that because you’re promoting a website, you can do everything on the web and you no longer need those real-life schmucks. But let me tell you something from years of experience – you DO need those local contacts, and in more ways than you might think.
Local contacts are your ticket to instant trust. Whereas in the online world, you have to earn trust by working your way through customer skepticism by posting real-looking testimonials and videos, offering plenty of free products, coaching and a whole host of other nonsense that you can practically circumvent entirely, simply by promoting your sites to local contacts first, then letting them take it from there.
You might wonder where you start out finding these local contacts. After all, if you’re like a majority of internet marketers, you live a lot of your life in the online world, you stare at nothing but a computer half the day, and your spouse has to physically yank you away from the keyboard at unearthly hours of the night. In other words, you have no social life, and no social contacts.
We’re about to fix that. As much as you think your blog improvement might come through the latest social media tactics, it doesn’t if you have no idea how to connect with real people. So from one computer addict to another, here’s how it works.
Local contacts come to you through – guess what? – LOCAL venues. I started at a recreation center that is fairly popular in my town. Granted, I live in a fairly populated area, where it’s not uncommon to find plenty of people at a cardio class after a day at work, but even if you live in the boonies, there’s usually something around that will provide the hungry audience you’re looking for.
Once you find a place that attracts a fairly healthy supply of victims, or rather, customers, you need to get up the courage to just chat them up. That’s right. Turn on your sales skills and open yourself up to people. Hey, no one said it was easy, but if you want to make money, you must start with people. And these people happen to be the local contacts you need to get your project off the ground.
Promoting your blog in an inundated world
of cyber knowledge is a daunting task to say the least. Knowing where to start is hard enough, but sticking with it is even more difficult. The temptation of quitting is always just a click away as you trudge through a seemingly endless world of bookmarking sites, RSS feeders and the next new Facebook wannabe.
But promoting your blog doesn’t have to be difficult, boring or mindless if you don’t want it to be. The whole point of promoting it is to get people to read it. So if you’re going about it in a way the bores you, the author, how much more boring will it be to someone else who is stumbling upon it in a search engine result somewhere? Putting things into perspective this way will help you realize where you need to go the extra mile for promoting your blog and making readers stay once they get a taste of your posts.
Think of a prominent blogger whose posts you follow daily or weekly. What is it about their posts that inspire or intrigue you? Do the posts always tell you what you want or need to hear? Do they help you with a specific aspect of your life or business? Is that the blog you visit for a much-needed laugh or piece of advice?
Chances are, nothing about each blog post is identical every time you read it. Undoubtedly, the blogger posts something entirely different each time they hit the publish button. Maybe it’s a picture of their cat brushing up against their monitor, preventing them from getting their latest post written. Perhaps it’s a video of them on the balcony of a fancy restaurant overlooking Lake Travis near Austin, Texas. Or maybe their advice simply hits home with you, and you can’t help but enjoy yourself while reading it.
Whatever the ingredients, the bloggers you enjoy following have a recipe. Your job in promoting your blog is to dissect that recipe and mimic one like it. Don’t be a copycat and plagiarize or rubber stamp your blog to be just like theirs, but you can use the same pattern pieces to cut your work out for you.
Earn extra money from home by working online
, either for yourself or by contracting your skills out to clients. I’ve made money both ways and can attest to the fact that both work. You can do a combination of the two, but your efforts will redouble if you concentrate them in one facet or the other.
If you searched for how you can earn extra money from home, then chances are you don’t need to make your full income from an online source. Maybe you’re a stay at home mom with other duties, or perhaps you’re a single guy who wants a little extra moolah for cable television. Either way, you have the added benefit of not having to design an entire business plan around an online model, which leaves you open to experiment with lots of different money-making venues.
Your success with trying to earn extra money from home will likely be dictated by how willing you are to actually put forth the effort. Going at it half-cocked rarely produces the kind of results that make a person proud of their success. You’ll have to learn to be your own boss, or you might as well kiss online moneymaking avenues good-bye.
With that in mind, let’s explore some of the ways you can earn extra money from home. If you’re generally the lazy type, start out by applying for online surveys. There are websites set up solely for the purpose of paying you for your opinion. And while many surveys pay just over pittance, it’s a good way to get used to working in the online world. Hey, it’s how I got my start, and I’m much further ahead today because of it.
If you feel your skills are a bit more developed, however, you can explore the world of affiliate marketing, pay per click advertising, cost per action campaigns and more. These all take a bit more expertise in how online advertising and marketing are carried out, but if you didn’t shy away from the terminology alone, then maybe one of these is right up your alley.