The New Age Work at Home RevolutionBy Craig Richards
For more than a decade, the Internet has revolutionized the work at home business opportunity industry. Never before has it been possible for so many people to make a part-time or full-time living from the Internet, and it’s no surprise why.
More and more companies are realizing that the best way to sell their products and services online is to get other people to advertise and promote them, in return for a set commission or an agreed percentage of the sale value. This method of online marketing has made it possible for the affiliate marketer to earn an income well in excess of six figures a year.
Although affiliate marketing has become a win-win situation for both the company and the people working to promote their products, the financially successful affiliate needs to have many such income streams. But this can prove to be quite expensive for the affiliate in terms of advertising and other marketing and promotional costs. Hence, its appeal is not as wide-reaching as it may first appear.
The alternatives to affiliate marketing, as a means of earning a good living online, are the ever popular surveys and data entry opportunities. Getting paid for your opinions is probably the easiest way to make money on the Internet, but it’s highly unlikely to ever match the figures being earned as an affiliate marketer. Plus the work is very tedious and repetitive.
Assuming you have signed up to participate in enough online surveys to keep you busy for 6 to 8 hours every day, you can realistically expect to earn on average $350 a week. Despite many claims to the contrary, earnings above $500 a week are extremely rare, unless you include the value of redeemable points and prizes, which is the only reward some survey companies actually offer.
Data entry opportunities can be equally tedious and quite expensive to operate. The idea is to promote other company’s products and services, much in the same way as an affiliate, by placing ads on the Google Adword’s pay per click network. The data entry part of this operation is to type the ads, but of course you’ll have to pay for the cost of the clicks.
For the work at home opportunist who doesn’t mind investing a little in their business, this could pay off very handsomely. The secret to making this work is to pay the absolute minimum per click for the maximum click-throughs, and to write ads that will grab the attention of prospective buyers.
The most profitable work at home businesses invariably involves selling products to others. The online auctions and eBay in particular, have made this a very real proposition, with very real financial recompense. It’s true that almost anyone can sell just about anything on eBay.
With around 115 million users worldwide, eBay has made it possible for around 430,000 people to earn a full-time, online income. At any given time there are more than 25 million items for sale on eBay, making it the largest single market place anywhere in the world. The most successful of all ebayers are those that have drop-ship accounts with wholesale companies.
But, with around 950 million active Internet users worldwide and growing steadily, there's also many other markets for many other products. And the markets just keep getting bigger and bigger every day.
It’s often been said that the best products to sell online are information products. That is, the ‘how to’ manuals and guides, the tutorials and courses, reports, software and books. And nothing has changed. These are still the hottest products and always will be, as people strive for knowledge and enlightenment.
The best part about selling information products, plus software, music and films is that they can all be delivered to the customer electronically. Instant download is at the very heart of this ‘New Age Work at Home Revolution’. When customers purchase an information product, they don’t want to have to wait for it to be delivered next week, they want it now. And if you can deliver your product instantly, you’ll also get paid instantly.
Another major advantage to this type of work at home business is, most of, or all of your products won’t cost you a penny to produce. You can write them yourself or you can get them for free. There are literally thousands of products in the Public Domain that can be legally downloaded, repackaged and resold all over the Internet. You only have to know where they are and how to sell them.
I’ve been successfully running a business like this for years. And although I’m probably biased, it’s the only online work at home business I could honestly ever recommend.
