Why should you start an Internet business?  The next and better question may be why not start an Internet business?

There are hundreds of reasons why an Internet business can be a great opportunity. 

Think about this one.  How much time do you spend online anyway?  What if you could be making money in that time?

What if you could spend just a few hours a week and make an additional $300 a week? Or $3000 a week? Or $300,000 a year or more? 
Would that spark your interest? 

The fact is people all over the world are doing it.  The Internet has leveled the playing field for ordinary people to become entrepreneurs.  You no longer need a brick and mortar building to house your store or your office. The Internet has slashed start-up and marketing costs.  The Internet also allows you to serve the entire world as your marketplace.
 
Think about what is sold online.  Everything is sold online.  You can incorporate online techniques to improve your existing brick and mortar business or you can start something new. 

Think about this.  Could an online business that takes a couple of hours a week and brings in an additional $1000 per month help your family?  What is you invested a little bit more time and started making more money at home than you do at your full-time job?  Could you give up that commute? Could you give up that shirt and tie or nylons and high heels?  Do you think you could enjoy working your own hours, when you want to work?  Do you think you could enjoy working in your pajamas?  What about spending more quality time with your family?  Do you think you could enjoy that? 

Are you willing to learn something new, something that can potentially change your life for the better?  If you are, an online business may be just the thing you’ve been looking for. 

The possibilities are endless.

This articles is included in the Carnival of Wahms and Wahps for May 4, 2007, located at Possibly…Maybe….baby!

 How to Solve Money Worries carnival has included this post in its May 4, 2007 edition.  You can see the carnival at Widowsquest.

The Working at Home Blog Carnival thirty-first edition from May 4, 2007 has included this post.   You can check out the carnival at Working at Home on the Internet.

This is Part #5 of a 10 part mini-course:

Now is the time to market to your target market.

Each Internet Business Model is different. Therefore, you don’t market each and every one of them the same way. The truth is, not all Internet Business Models depend on a good search engine listing. In fact, some of them are not designed to be listed by search engines at all!

That is simply because each Internet Business Models have different objectives and set up. That also means they require different marketing strategies and tactics to make it work.

Not knowing the different Internet Marketing approaches that are available for different Internet Business Models can be expensive. It will result in spending more time, money and effort than is necessary for promoting your Internet Business.

Here, I share with you seven main ways to generate traffic and get to your target market:

Tracking sales and visitors to your website

The purpose of the last step is to determine your conversion rate of visitors into customers. This can be easily done if your web host provides a site statistic.

A good conversion rate from a Killer Sales Letter is 1 – 3% (depending on the price of the product). In other words, for every 100 targeted prospects who visit your site, at least one of them will buy your product or pay access to your service. If the conversion rate is higher than 2%, then you are doing very, very well with your Internet Business!

On the other hand, if your sales letter’s conversion rate is less than 1%, then you will need to take quick action to make your site sell more effectively. You may have to do more compelling copy writing, change the layout of your web pages or simply get a better and more attention-grabbing headline (which is so vital that it can make or break a sale!).

Whatever you need to do, you have to increase your conversion rate from poor to excellent!

To track visitors, you can subscribe to counter services if your web-hosting doesn’t have a site statistic feature built in. To track sales, check your Credit Card Payment Processor.

You Can Still Make Money…

“What if I don’t have what it takes to create my own product? What if I can’t source for other people’s product to sell?”

“Can I still make my money from the Internet?”

I heard you and the answer is a resounding YES. You can still have a business online even if you have NO products to sell. No one should question this possibility since people are doing this everyday.

“But how do they do that?” you wonder. In the last chapter, you have found that the 10 steps have a lot to do with setting up a product-selling-orientated business. In this chapter, you will find out how people can still make their money even without selling a product.

The concept

Imagine you own your daily newspaper. How do you earn a lot of money from it? Selling them to your readers for a dollar or less each isn’t going to profit you. So how are you going to profit from selling your daily newspaper?

Selling advertisement spaces in your content? Precisely!

Congratulate yourself if you’ve guessed the answer correctly. Give yourself a knock on the head if you have not! Okay, I was joking about that one but you can’t be serious ALL the time, can you? Anyway, we’ll move on with the subject.

Quite simply, the more people read your newspaper, the more money you can charge for your advertisements.

The concept works the same for Internet Business. However, when you operate an Internet Business, you have the following advantages that you won’t have if you run a conventional business:

· You don’t have to invest a lot of money and effort into your Internet Business as opposed to conventional business.

· You don’t need to deal with the delivery of your newspapers to reach to your readers on time every day.

· Publishing a newspaper is something that is beyond the reach of any individual together with the rewards that come with successful publication.

· The risk in conventional business is simply too high compared to Internet Business.

Publish your own news letter

With the Internet as your medium to deliver to your subscribers, you can publish your own newsletter daily.

If you follow the right strategy, you don’t even have to write the content or even a SINGLE word if you wish, and your subscribers wouldn’t mind! (I’m serious!)

STEP 1 Choose a topic

Since you will be writing your own newsletter, it is best that you choose a topic that is non-time sensitive. This will give you a lot of freedom in selecting your content since you’re not going to send out the latest news such as the latest results on the American Idol (as I write this, it’s the final showdown between Bo Bice vs Carrie Underwood and by the time you read this, I guess you already know who the winner is), terrorist attacks, and the like. Examples of non-time sensitive topics are jokes, insults, recipes, short stories, horoscopes, tips, and ideas.

Another great advantage of choosing a non-time sensitive topic is that you can work ahead at a time. For example, you can start compiling the content for the first 30 days in one day.

STEP 2 Format the newsletter

Assuming you’re going to send out short stories to your subscribers, how many stories are you going to send daily? Perhaps two or three short stories a day.

More short stories (or other content) give you more spaces for advertisements but this also means that you’ll have to work harder in creating or sourcing for more content.

STEP 3 Look for your content

You need to source for content which are copyright and reprint free. Search engines and article websites are good places to start. You can also source for content from article base web sites like ezinearticles.com as long as you include the author bylines.

If you are an expert on the topic, you can choose to write. However, bear in mind that it can also consume your time and effort in a long run.

You can also receive contributions from your loyal subscribers and publish them with a mention of their help. They’ll be happy to help you out.

STEP 4 Set up an auto responder

You need to set up a proper system to deliver your newsletters to your subscribers. Your auto responder must have the features that will make your daily routine of sending out, maintaining your subscriber list and adding new subscribers as automated as possible.

You can get a good auto responder system from the following:

· Aweber

· Getresponse

STEP 5 Create your website

While this is optional, the most important component of the “Freebie” Internet Business Model is your newsletter. However, creating web pages can also open to other possibilities of making money to you in the process as you can sell advertising spaces in those pages.

When setting up your business following this Internet Business Model, you will want to think and plan through this step carefully as to whether you would want to create web pages or not.

STEP 6 Get subscribers

Here are some ways to get subscribers:

· Forwards or Word of Mouth – if your subscribers like your publication a lot, they’ll likely tell their friends about it. This can be the most powerful viral tool to spread the good name of yourself and your newsletter.

· Buy subscribers – you can buy subscribers from 3rd parties selling subscriber names and e-mail address. Some of them are:

· Writing Articles – when you submit your free articles related to your topic to article directories such as ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com or articlecity.com, this gives you permission to tell your readers about your newsletter. You can tell briefly about yourself and explain how your readers can subscribe to your newsletter.

· Placing a subscription form on your web site – this enables you to convert visitors and passer-bys to become your subscribers. From the view of conversion rate, this method is better compared to requesting your visitors to send a blank e-mail to your auto responder address.You need to be able to make everything as convenient as possible for your prospects because they can very well be your customers.

· Submit your newsletter to newsletter directories – Ezine directories are great places to promote your ezine and get targeted subscribers. Be sure to write a short compelling description of your ezine before submitting them to the ezine directories. The following is a list of directories where you can submit your ezine. You can search for more ezine directories in search engines.

While this is only the tip of the iceberg, there are still many more ways to gain subscribers.

STEP 7 Start making money!

This is how you make your money (probably the most interesting step of all steps!).

You source for advertisers who are interested in advertising in your daily newsletter. Like any daily newspaper, the more subscribers to your newsletter, the higher the advertisement rate you can charge simply because a lot of people are going to see the advertisements.

You can begin sourcing for advertisers the moment you have 20,000 subscribers or more. Assuming you have 20,000 subscribers, you can charge your advertisement rate $20.00 a day. And since you have different areas of advertising space in your newsletter, your advertising rate can also be variable.

Your advertisers make their own advertisements. Therefore, there is no need for you to do that work for them. You simply copy and paste the ads into the allocated spaces in your newsletter and send them out.

IMPORTANT!

When you have no one buying advertising space in your newsletter or have yet to reach 20,000 subscribers before sourcing for advertisers, you can:

· Secure the spots with advertisements of products you’re selling (if any) until you get an advertiser, or

· Create an advertisement stating that it’s vacant for other advertisers. This way, you can attract the attention of potential advertisers and hopefully they will contact you to place their advertisement in your newsletter for a fee