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Your Online Business-Multiple Streams of Income and Where To Get Them

Guest post by: Teresa Bohannon

Article Overview: One of the most daunting questions facing most would-be Internet marketers is..."What Do I Sell?" It is a question that can take minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years or even all of infinity to answer, depending on the depth of your desire to get started and the inherent amount of procrastination in your personality. The answer is out there, but once again, finding it will take either doing your homework, or knowing which guru "not" to ask.

Your Online Business-Multiple Streams of Income and Where To Get Them

The first question everyone asks when they initially think about starting an online business is a the most natural one, "What do I sell?" Sometimes that is followed by, "Where do I find it?" The third question is usually, "OK. I know what and where, now how do I go about doing it?"

#1 What do I sell online?

Tangible and Intangible Goods, just like you would offline.

#2 Where do I find it?

Look around you, the options are endless.

The answer to all three questions is actually as simple or as complicated as you want to make it. The following list contains a few practical suggestions to jump-start your thoughts on the matter.

Physical Goods:

~ Artwork and Handcrafted Items

The internet is the perfect venue for unique items because the range of your audience is worldwide, and they can generally be inexpensively reached. Think of it this way. If you have just one customer per square mile locally, then a single permanent advertisement in the form of a web page posted online, exponentially expands the square mileage you can reach with your single advertisement and therefore the number of potential customers you have.

This same principle applies to almost every item that you can think of to sell online.

~ Yardsale, Flea Market and Auction finds

The same analogy applies to scavenged items. Antique, vintage and unique items will, of course, always do better, since invariably there will be a collector out there somewhere who needs what you are selling because of the rarity of those items within their local marketplace.

Everyday items also do well in this category, if they have a everyday desirable value such a fine condition second hand designer or children's clothing, car parts, Legos, comic books and books, for example.

~The same items sold in your brick and mortar store or business
~Discounted and remaindered items from your local warehouse shop
~Items from a wholesaler that supplies brick and mortar shops

Unless it is an everyday, ordinary item that can be purchased locally most anywhere in the world, you can generally find a market for it online. And, even the ordinary can find the right market if you can heavily discount it or sell it in the right bulk quantity.

~Items from the proverbial magical Dropshippers list
~Items purchased in bulk from importers and wholesalers

If you want to get into this, think twice...and then think twice again. There are hundreds of people out there willing to sell you Ebooks containing secret Dropshipper's lists. The majority of them are probably not worth the paper they are electronically written on.

~Practical items that everyone needs, sold in bulk or discounted

Unless you have a product that you are the importer, originator, or creator of chances are good that you will not be able to compete in this market. The large manufacturers have long since discovered the secondary market available to them via an online catalog.

~Eclectic items that collectors and others may want or need

If you have access to, or live near the source of anything unique, you can almost always find a market for it online. Local rocks, minerals and gems, dirt with known, new or historically "touted" specific mineral properties, plants, seeds, pine cones, herbs, naturally occurring aberrations such as driftwood, vines, and interestingly shaped fungus, dried gourds, natural fabrics, even something as simple as homemade preserves or rags for rugs. Look around you and what makes the area where you live and work unique. Chances are excellent that you can find something that will sell online. Just be sure to check the Import and Export laws to make sure your product can be legally sold and shipped across State, National or International borders as required.

Intangible Goods:

~ Intangibles online products and as services

Advertising services, virtual assistant, writing, art, word and film editing, copywriting, the possibilities are almost endless because if you have a creative or other skill whose final product lends itself to being able to be transferred back and forth electronically, you have cut your overhead to almost nothing. My original custom web design business was built almost entirely on this premise, and its current incarnation expands on that theme. Over the years I have had more customers that I have never met live and in person, than those I have actually shaken hands with.

~Software, Ebooks, domain names, custom or Biz in a Box websites

This is an entire theme unto itself, so please see my article:

How To Build A Business Out of Thin Air or Using Online Wholesalers To Build Your Online Business

# 3 Now that I know what and where, how do I get started?

That is the easiest one of all to answer.

You just do it. You start with a little research. Then you purchase your first Domain Name, then you add Hosting, and then you put up a blog, or a custom or a Biz in a Box website of your very own to advertise your product, and finally you promote, promote, promote.

So to summarize:

In today's world most everyone begins with the premise that the Internet is the perfect advertising venue for the small or upstart business because it levels the playing field in a way that no other advertising medium ever has in the past.

Truer words were never spoken.

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Article Tags: analogy, artwork, brick and mortar, brick and mortar store, car parts, comic books, exponentially, flea market, handcrafted items, local marketplace, mileage, mortar shops, rarity, square mileage, starting an online business, tangible and intangible goods, unique items, venue, warehouse shop, wholesaler



Related Forum Posts
Revenue Streams for Websites - Too funny, I was just reading a book: Multiple Streams of Internet Income: How Ordinary People make extraordinary money on line, by Robert G. Allen. 2001 That's a misnomer, though - they're not ordinary people, they're people with established careers who can take their expertise and exploit it on the web. Ways to generate income? 1) Sell your own material on the site. Ebooks, etc. 2) Join various affiliate programs that match what your website is about. 3) Google adsense - All my money comes from this... it's started out slow but as readership of my sites grown, the income has grown. Nothing to write home about yet... 4) Google adwords - the advertisers whose ads show up on Google Adsense. Unless you're selling big ticket items on your site you don't want to use it, your keywords can cost from 20 cents upwards.
Re: What are your success criteria? - [quote="DwayneGarrett":1igrdgib]Out of curiousity, what has to be present for you to know that your business is a success? The top three things for me are: 1. Maintaining a 6 figure income year in and year out. 2. Creating and promoting my own products. 3. Income not solely dependent upon my personal effort. How about yours?[/quote:1igrdgib] I would have to say mine were: 1. Monthly Residual Income that exceeds all expenses by 110% 2. Free time to create and promote my own products (relies on #1) 3. 5% of all revenues generated by my team going to feed starving kids Now that is "feel good work".
Re: What is your Business? - We are running a Online Marketing Firm and we have some good clients to which we are offering a complete Digital Marketing strategy like Search, Mobile Marketing, Branding and Design. I think in Online Marketing company online presence can be a wining factor for the success of the company.
What are your success criteria? - Out of curiousity, what has to be present for you to know that your business is a success? The top three things for me are: 1. Maintaining a 6 figure income year in and year out. 2. Creating and promoting my own products. 3. Income not solely dependent upon my personal effort. How about yours?
Re: Kevin's Case Study #11 - A New Forum Category? - [quote:31qpen1j]This is just my opinion, but I consider the prospective categories, Online Marketing, Internet Marketing and Online Promotion, as being pretty much one and the same - just different words that different people use.[/quote:31qpen1j] I completely agree! Those are all just "internet marketing" as far as I am concerned. And I normally would have voted for internet marketing, however I chose social media marketing simply because there are more than enough IM forums out there already.


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