Start Your Own Online Business - Using The Web

The Year is flying in already, so how was the recession in your neck of the woods? Are you still struggling with a dead end job that pays you a bunch of bananas and a future that is going nowhere? Are you flapping your arms in frustration? Do you feel a sense of disappointment in your work choices or your work? Was it not what you wanted?

Or do you have ambitions to strike out and start your own business? Have you been looking around these Hub Pages or in other places, and have seen some interesting possibilities, and are thinking of trying to make some money out of the internet? Does being an internet entrepreneur sound like an idea for an income you might like? Could you be the next online business owner?

Well, there are ways you can do just that. And most of these ideas are good business ideas that won’t cost you any more than what it costs you to create your own Hub Page! And the chances are that you may have one or two of those done already. These ideas are all e-commerce ideas, businesses that can be run on the Internet. And you can work from home. This is not a full list of possibilities, but shows what you can achieve with very little. It's time to start your own online business.

Start a Blog.

Why start a blog? Simple. It's a no-brainer as a business idea. Chances are you have looked into this whole internet money-making lark and are thinking – wow, can I really make money from all this stuff? There are some bloggers on the Internet who are making over $3 Million a year. Check out Perez Hilton who earns over a million a year easily. Check out what is involved. There are Hubbers who have set up their own businesses, sidelines, supplementary income-creating web sites and blogs. How can you tell if you have what it takes?

Hub Pages is a great way to start a career in Blogging. Pick the Topic that you know something about and then start writing and creating that content. It will be assembled and created with words, pictures, and perhaps videos, YouTube content, charts, clip art, Art art, Photos, drawings, CAD art, spreadsheets, animations, or whatever you like. Then go and research Google Adsense (Hub Pages allows members who join this writing community to set up an account for free with Google Adsense here).

Having a blog can also include having a small but respectable amount of advertising on your blog. Ad revenues can add up over time as the readers and viewers of your blog read and enjoy more of what is there. If the ads are connected to, or related to what is in your blog, they will earn you money over time. Check out Amazon, eBay, Clickbank, Linkshare, Shareasale, Viglinks, and other internet businesses that can earn you money from your blog. Adsense helps sell ads on your Hub or Blog (or website) and the more that people click on ads, the more moolah you can make. And Moolah is what gets me so interested here. Some people write just for the smell of it. Others have bills to pay, and are more honest financially in their objectives, since they have things to buy, debts to settle, credit cards to shred, you know the drill. We are driven by different things. Figure out your motivation for being a blogger. Avoid turning it into one expensive vanity exercise. The secret to a great Blog is the same for having a great Hub. Great subjects! Advertising! Promotion! Links! Audience! Tell the world about what you have made. Sell yourself! Start your own web business.

Vincent Moore is a nice man from Canada that everyone knows from being on HubPages. One day, he decided to gather all the poetry he had written on Hub pages, and added more poetry to that collection and he published it in a book of poetry. It sold very well. He wrote another poetry collection, learning all he could about publishing and writing through his contacts in HubPages. Then he set up a very impressive blog-cum-website where he now resides on the web and sells his books in both digital and print form from that blog and website - and the blog is also an e-commerce store. It has shopping cart and payment facilities. Vincent earns from his writing via the internet.

There are many ways of using the internet to make cash. You could, like Vincent and lots of other great writers - write an eBook (very popular on the net right now, skip the traditional publishing route if you wish, and those money grasping middle-men – check out my hub on LULU.COM), or sell art via a gallery web page or online store. You could sell your own music. How many Music bands and artists do you see on Facebook or Myspace these days? If you are a musician or singer, you are crazy not to have a web site or presence that promotes your wares.

Earning from the internet is not a hassle. Traveling two hours by bus or train to an office every day... that's a hassle. What you sell can be anything: media, news, articles for on-line publications, accessories, designs, greeting cards, or go all the way and start selling with your own eCommerce on-line Shop. They don’t have to be your products, they can be made by other people – you just help sell them, and earn commissions.

A work Buddy I know bought software called ShopFactory Pro. He doesn’t know diddly squat about web design, but he is using the software to create a rival to eBay, which he claims will be simpler and less complicated. The software does all the clever stuff. Well, he has cohonas, I’ll give him that! His own auction website.

Another friend of mine had her Credit card stolen and lost hundred of pounds in the process. She set up a blog and gave advice on how to avoid the perils of losing plastic money and it grew and became quite authoritative on chip and pin and other security topics. She has advertised other services and has made back all the money she lost and more. She turned a misfortune into a rewarding endeavor. She earns from the internet.

Start a Promotional Business Online.

The hubber Marifel Dungo has delighted many of us with great hubs about many subjects and some wonderful poetry, known as blaise25 and also as twentyfive here. She also progressed on to and created several successful blogs. Her most recent creation has turned into a big success. Starting Philpad.com on a Wordpress blog platform, in about a year she racked up hundreds of thousands of views on her blog about all things to do with Philippine people. She is a proud Filipino herself and is a tech savvy chick and great business woman. I count her as a very excellent friend as well. She used what she learned from Hub Pages and from writers, bloggers and friends and successfully built on this, time and time again. This is not that difficult. All you need is a laptop or computer and away you go. And it could be extended to cover any other topic such maths, science or art.

Online seminars have become hugely popular nowadays. How many of us receive invites to attend (log in to) an "event" where a seminar is held live on a video stream? Online courses are mushrooming in popularity, because everyone has access to the web and are wired to it via mobile and home based net devices.

Using a website or blog to earn or to sell is relatively simple. You could sell advertisements for other net users, (sell space to sponsors and people who are looking to advertise) sell magazines or free versions of magazines with paid-for ads in them, sell their wares or products (and get commissions when an item is sold), and promote contests or lotteries. There are just so many ways to earn online. Successful people who are successful online all offer some kind of service, product or system - something that helps to solve a kind of problem or help people overcome or resolve something.

A man in Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Korea or Japan can log into a website and be joined by other students where they will sit and watch from their iPad, Android device, laptop or smartphone as they are taught a language by a woman sitting at home thousands of miles away - on her laptop or PC. The woman teaches people how to speak a language, and she is an online teacher and coach, and she earns dollars from it by the hour. She could be from the UK, she could be from some English speaking country like the Philippines, and she could make a living doing it. All she needs is the internet and the qualities necessary to teach others.

Find out what helps sales and what works, and promote accordingly. Write special articles and sneak a small survey or questionnaire in at the end for someone. Write guest blog posts for other bloggers and work your way up to being freelance writer yourself. Learn how to sell things and earn money from Facebook here.

The web is a way to promote products like software, even music or films or videos or classes. A person can promote courses, eBooks, and educational skills. Promote other businesses and earn commissions or work as a Virtual Assistant by managing a company's or person's social media accounts like Twitter or Facebook.

You could provide online Public relations for businesses or people in the entertainment business. You could tie this in to Direct Selling or even multi-level marketing. This is a potentially huge area. Promote people, celebrities or organisations, charities, events, or politicians. Anything is possible. Find a service you could offer to people who are too lazy to try doing the thing themselves.

Start a Travel or Holiday or Airline Flights Business.

Not as hard as you think. Some people have focussed on some businesses and have found ways of reselling the services they offered and then repackaged them and made them more appealing. If you are a programmer, you could make a cheaper, leaner version of ebookers.com and concentrate on fares that don’t go above a certain level. Air Fares less than a thousand bucks. Who wouldn’t go for that? Or restrict it to one area or country. Help develop the tourism to a destination. Have reviews of holiday destinations, or links to your sites of choice. Use search engines like Google to help you. Or try creating a web business that finds reviews of holiday destinations in the same way that web sites finds cheapest flights for people.

Set up a Specialist Online Business (like A Legal or Rights Advisory Service).

A Lawyer or Solicitor usually prefers to deal with people face to face. But what if there was a way of dealing with people who want legal services online? Create a way of automating some legal processes. Maybe someone wants to make a Will. Provide a Web service that links people to the information they require, and charge a price for it. Or offer the service that solicitors and lawyers usually offer to prospective house buyers or business people. It could save a lot of travel. Or have a service that mediates between 2 disagreeing parties, except have it online. Or set up a business that offers a sales service to people who want to buy shares, bonds, currency, commodities or even gold. Find a new way to sell something that hasn’t been thought of yet, and pioneer this new development. You could end up being the first to create a new business that others haven’t done yet. Or it could be a medical service. Or educational. Maybe it could be technical or scientific. It can be whatever your area of specialty is – it’s up to you. You could even set up a charity on-line.

An art gallery is a great way of using the internet to allow your art or photos’ to reach a wider audience. Use it to tell people about your art education, your biography, your influences, your referred customers, your portfolio and reviews of your work. Even have an Art-zine, and maybe offer classes. Good businesses tend to have more than one thing on offer and more than one pitch to help sell the goods. Why have just one kind of customer? The eZine might get readers referring people to your site, and generate sales.

These are just some examples of business ideas that you could set up, with just a computer and an internet connection. The web is something you don’t have to make. Others have already created much of it for you. You just have to become familiar with how some parts of it all connect together. HubPages has lots of information here at the tips of your fingers. Check out the Hubs for subjects like search engine optimization (SEO), there are so many Hubs to choose from. They will help you make money from ads on your sites or blogs or Hub pages. But try and create original business ideas or services. Apple reinvented the Music Sales business online because they saw a better and more organized way of doing it. They called it iTunes. Have you an Apple iPhone?

I saved the best for last. A massive revenue creator lies within the writing and creating of apps for smartphones, tablet PCs and iPads. You might even be reading this hub on one of them. Have you seen the software that is on offer on the App Store? Clash of Clans, Candy Crush, Game of War, Megapolis, Farm Heroes Saga... there are hundreds of thousands of these now available online.

Recently a young Vietnamese guy named Dong Nguyen created a flap with a game called Flappy Bird. He withdrew the game bizarrely after publishing it on the iPad App store. It became hugely popular and went viral and he has decided to bring back the game due to its popularity. His company Gears Studios, describes the game as "heavily influenced by retro pixelated games in its golden age. Everything is pure, extremely hard and incredibly fun to play." Nguyen told the Verge that Flappy Bird was earning him $50 thousand per day in advertisements, before he removed it due to what he claimed was "stress". He is thought to have received complaints about how hard the game is, despite it being a number one download on Apple's app store. A a person who plays it, I can safely say that is is very hard to play, though easy to learn. Damn those pipes!

In another recent case, Yahoo bought or rather "aqui-hired" a group of people who had created an app called Summly, a news aggregator, that was lead by a 17 year old UK student Nick D’Aloisio, a young would-be entrepreneur who got 30 Million dollars for the app Summly. Though it turns out he didn't actually create the app, he was showcased by Yahoo as the kind of enterprising young person or persons that the company sought to ensure it's creativity and diversity of growing products.

This is just a tiny example out there of what can be done. Fancy writing an application and selling it there? It does not have to be a game. It can be an application for business, educational, leisure, artistic or entertainment purposes. This probably has to be potentially the biggest possible earner in the world for a budding entrepreneur today.

As more of us are viewing our web content online thanks to mobile devices, we are experiencing that content through some app or another. And apps are now driving traffic more than search engine searches. Apps even have their own built in search ability. The social media platforms Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook all have their own search ability. The coders today are kings. Their skills are among the most important and sought after abilties of all. Many young people who are talented and loaded with promise are looking at the Mark Zuckerbergs of this world and they want this life and this lifestyle. Who can blame them?

Admittedly, there are far more ideas out there than the ones mentioned here. I barely touched on Social Networking. Maybe you will be the next Innovator. Perhaps you will invent a way for Hub Page writers to create Hubs from their Mobile Phones? Or let phone users view Hub content via a mobile and interact with everyone in the Hub community. Maybe now is the time to find out how far you can go with the Internet.

That’s the great thing about the Internet. It offers so many opportunities. It is so big out there. It’s a huge almost infinite beach that most of us have been barely paddling in up to now. We haven’t waded out to the deep part yet. There’s a lot more to be discovered. And with PC’s getting cheaper and the internet becoming more accessible, this may be the best time ever to try it. Don’t just sit there. Be inspired!

Article copyright (c) 2014 - 2016 Cassy Mantis. All Rights Reserved.

Note on copyright: All companies, names and titles are copyright of their respective holders. All images are copyright of their creators and respective holders, where known. As of this time, Flappy Bird title is owned by Mobile Media Partners. "Flappy Bird" the game is created and developed by Dong Nguyen.

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