In Search of The Best Home Based Businesses: Internet Marketing

Once you make the decision that you want to stop letting other people control your life and begin a new life working from home, you will find that your first big challenge will be figuring out exactly what you will be doing to allow you to work from home. There are hundreds if not thousands of work from home possibilities all over the Internet, TV, Radio and in magazines. The advertisements for these programs may have even influenced you to take the risk and start your own home based business.  But I must caution you to not believe everything you see in these ads.

Although typically I would be asking you not to be skeptical and try one of my work from home products, the purpose for this and many other Hubs I have written is to help you find the best Home Based business for you. This will require you to be very skeptical and extremely selective on which type of business best suits your personality and lifestyle.

The most important thing you can do before you start any work from home venture is do your homework.  Research every aspect of it and put together a game plan of how everything is going to work.  Break it all down step by step so you know exactly what to do.  When the right time comes, all you need to do is execute your game plan step by step.

To help you decide which business will be right for you, I have written many Hubs with an outline of what to expect from each different business.  Please, take the time to do further research and do not rely on just one article to persuade you into quitting your job to begin working from home.  

Internet Marketing is the business of promoting products or services on the Internet and convincing people to buy from you. Many people right here on Hub Pages are Internet Marketers who write about products or services they recommend other people should use. This may seem easier than it actually is so please read this entire article before you jump to any conclusions.

When you begin an Internet Marketing business, the first thing you will learn is that, unlike other businesses, it takes very little capital to get started. The basic tools you need to operate is a computer with Internet connection. This is one of the things that makes Internet Marketing so appealing. But the free ride doesn't last long so don't get your hopes too high of running a business with no expenses. There are many things you will need down the road to take your growing business to higher levels.  Never the less, it is much easier to begin in Internet Marketing because of the minimal capital that is necessary to start.

Another great aspect of beginning an online business is that you have many choices of what you can do. There are several very different types of Internet Marketing to choose from that might make it difficult for you to pick just one. Heed this warning though my friends. And remember these words you are about to read.

The worst thing you can possibly do is to try to start a business in more than one area. Pick one and get really good at that one, then if you are still interested you can begin again in another area. I speak these words from experience and I pass this knowledge to you hoping to save you lots of headaches and heartaches.

So what are the different types of Internet Marketing and what makes them so different? Well there are many more than I will be covering here but I feel there are three main types of marketing and a bunch of off-shoots or derivatives from those. So without further ado, here is a brief explanation of each of the three major types of Internet marketing and what you can expect when you start.

Affiliate Marketing

Of the three main types of Internet marketing I am covering in this Hub, this one is considered the easiest to learn and make money in. The simple description of Affiliate Marketing is to promote someone else's products or services to earn a commission. In other words, you promote another person or company's products and when you make a sale they pay you a pre-determined fee for your efforts.

What makes this so appealing is that you don't have to create or have your own product or actually provide a service. You determine which products or services you want to promote and you determine which methods you will use to advertise to potential customers. And with the thousands upon thousands of products on the Internet that have affiliate programs, you will have no problem finding ones that fit your niche.

I do have one word of warning if you are inexperienced and that is to take your time and don't think you will make money right away. There is a bit of a learning curve as there is with any business and Affiliate marketing is no exception. If it is in your budget, it would be a wise decision to find and purchase an online course. Many of these will take you from the beginning and walk you through step-by-step to grow your business from the ground floor.

My personal favorite is The Affiliate Marketing Institute but there are many others online if you want to search for them.

Product Creation

Much like Affiliate marketing, this is the business of selling a product or service. The difference is that you would be selling a product or service you created. This is much more challenging than merely selling for someone else because all of the burden lies on you. You are solely responsible for the quality of the product or service, the customer service and all other related burdens.

On the other side of the responsibility is the great rewards that come when you develop something really good that people want to purchase because you get to enjoy the full benefit of the purchase price.

Unlike Affiliate Marketing where most anyone who can read and write can become an affiliate and sell on the Internet, creating and selling your own product takes much more experience and expertise than the average person has and it could take many years online before you have the knowledge needed. I do not recommend anyone with fewer than two years of experience to try to create and sell their own products or services online. From my own experience, I know that my knowledge of how marketing online truly works did not fully kick in until then and I have talked with many people who have said the same.

Multi-Level Marketing or MLM

Multi-level marketing is unlike the other business because it is actually a two part business. By that I mean that you actively have to pursue to parts of the business to be successful. The first part of the business is actually selling the product or service to customers like any other business but the second part of the business is what makes it so appealing because it takes you income level higher and higher. The way this is done is by recruiting other people to do what you do. These people create what is called your downline. By getting others to join your business, you get a small percentage of whatever they sell. On top of that, because it is a "multi-level" business, you will also earn a percentage of whatever their downline sells and so on for as many levels as your particular company pays. Many of the good MLM companies pay up to 7 levels.

Let me give you an example of how this could work. Let's say you start you business and you recruit 5 people to join. That would be a total of 5 people working for you, your downline.

Now let's say that each one of them recruits 5 people. So you now have a total of 30 people you are earning a commission from. 5 x 5=25 + (your 5)=30 total people

If this trend were to continue and each person of every downline were to recruit only 5 people, at the end of the 5th level you would have over 3100 people you would be earning commission on. Here's the breakdown of how it could work:

1st level 5

2nd level 5 x 5=25 + 5=30

3rd level 25 x 5=125 + 5=130

4th level 125 x 5=625 + 5=630

5th level 625 x 5=3125 + 5=3130

Of course these numbers are strictly for example and are no way a guarantee that everyone could recruit that exact number of people but it does show how quickly your downline could grow if you were a motivated seller.

An excellent example of an MLM business that is very popular online and has been for many years now is Global Domains International, better known as GDI. They pay you 5 levels down and have many great bonuses which can pay you even more.

If you are interested in a fantastic MLM business such as GDI, please click the link below to see it more in depth.

Global Domains International

Please keep in mind that the sole purpose of any kind of marketing, whether on or off the Internet, is to convince people to buy, try and use products or services or to show enough interest in a brand that they give up their personal information to be used by the company to contact them at a later date. In each of these instances the main focus is for you, the marketer, to make money.