The Best Online Business For Beginners

[thealchemist]

I wanted to make a post for anyone who's looking to start an online business, but doesn't know where to start; and looking at a lot of the posts in this forum, it's clear that a lot of people are in that arena.

So, I'll just get straight to the point, while there are A LOT of online business that a beginner can take part in, in my opinion, Affiliate Marketing is by far one of the best for beginner to get into, and here's why:

1. Low Start Up Cost

2. Recurring Income

I'm completely aware that there are online businesses that offer both of these incentives that do not fall into the category of Affiliate Marketing, however, there are very few that can provide someone with the FREEDOM that comes with being a successful Affiliate Marketer, and this freedom comes by making a conscious decision to market a product/service that offers RECURRING INCOME.

Recurring income, simply put, will pay you many times for making one sale. So if you are marketing a product/service that charges a monthly fee, you will receive a commission every time the customer is charged for the service. So you would only need to make one sale, in order to receive payment for that sale every month as long as the customer stays subscribed to the product/service.

Imagine if you marketed a product/service that charged $50 a month to be a part of, and you received a 40% commission on each sale you made. That means for every sale you made, you received $20 in commission every month as long as the customer stayed subscribed to the product/service. If you only made 100 sales and quit marketing, you would make an additional $2000 a month, every month!

Clearly there is a lot of potential to getting involved in Affiliate Marketing and there are many websites that teach how to successful become an Affiliate. I'd recommend visiting Clickbank's website (I am NOT an affiliate for clickbank) to better understand what products/services you can market that will bring you a recurring income. Also, I'd like to stress that this is just MY OPINION of Affiliate Marketing, but it's something that I truly believe in. Of course, there is work that is involved to make your business successful, but if you stick with it, you will find that the work was well worth it. :D

[cwillmoth]

I would like to add my two cents...If you don't know exactly what affiliate marketing is or what products to try to sell think of it this way. Start a blog on a topic that you know a lot about and write content every other day. In between content posts write a review of a product related to said content and add a link at the bottom to buy (your affiliate link). Don't make it sound pushy but more about educating the reader on the topic. The biggest problem you will have is getting traffic to your site and that is gonna take time but can be achieved by writing content targeted to keywords that are searched for on google. The more key words and content over time, the higher you will climb in search engine rankings and then boom eventually you will have sales and be sitting nicely on a passive income website that makes sales while you sleep.

This task is not easy but can be done if you put forth the effort!

[billbenson]

The blog comment above is viable.

The Best Online Business For Beginners

I don't really agree with this advice. Yes, by making affiliate sites you will learn some stuff about web sales. But you will mostly learn about affiliate marketing. While there are people making a lot of money through affiliate marketing, most affiliates don't make much money. It fell out of favor with the pro's years ago.

I'd start out with a hobby site selling some product. That could be the blog as recommended above or a ecommerce site. I'd go the ecommerce route. I'd base it on WordPress as there are many resources to help you get your site live and it's quick and easy to learn.

[Harold Mansfield]

If I had a nickle for every time someone has posted how great affiliate marketing is over the years, and how "easy" it is to make recurring, residual income... I'd be a super affiliate myself.

I agree with Bill. Affiliate marketing has fallen out of favor with most people who have been around a while. It was never easy, but now payouts have gotten so low that there are much better ways to make money.

I'll be honest, these posts sound like old forum posts from 5 years ago.

[Business Attorney]

I would also add that most of what I have seen offered through Clickbank are information products (primarily ebooks) that are over-priced and either recycled information or pure common sense. I am sure some people still make money selling the products but you have to be willing to use obnoxious "BUY NOW!" sales copy and techniques and realize that you are selling pure junk for ONLY $39.99 IF YOU ACT NOW!

There are certainly more honorable ways to make a dollar.

[Harold Mansfield]

There is still money to be made from affiliate marketing, but not the way you are promoting it. You have to do much more than just throw up a sales page and plop some click bank links on it. The days of selling Acai Berry diet secrets, and "Run your car on water" aren't completely over, but consumers are far more educated today than they were 5 years ago when every e-book sounded like a good idea.

There are plenty of affiliates making money, but they are building entire infrastructures to generate it. Not just a website with some snazzy sales copy and big promises of easy money. When I think of affiliate marketing today I think of Amazon and You Tube. Not ebooks.

[JJT99]

Yeah exactly, making money through affiliate marketing isn't easy, it's time consuming and even then you're not guaranteed to make money.

[harvy]

Your ideas are good. But affiliate marketing is best and if a person sells his own product by making some effort than affiliate marketing he would be the successful business man.

[harvy]

If a man want to become a successful man he should do more in his works. If a young entrepreneur tries his best to sell his own product, and giving affiliation to some body, it would be success of his business.

[Damon the Marketer]

Figure out what the market needs first. Don't worry about the money. You can find ways around that (e.g., investors).

Also, by focusing "online," you're already off to the wrong start. Don't limit the media you use to advertise.

[Paul]

If the only idea you can up with for a business is "affiliate marketing" then you probably should get back to the drawing board or give up on trying to start a business. Unless you already have a network of clients or customers that are interested in your offerings you are just one of millions of unknowns trying to pick scraps off the same bare bone.

[websitebuildersteacher]

I agree with the autor. Affiliate marketing is a great way to start a small business for one more reason: you will learh how to use the Web to find customers with no risk of failure. You can test different solutions and find out which works best for you and which doesn't. It will be really helpful when you decide to do something different than affiliate marketing.

[billbenson]

For beginners in online business its better to start with clickbank affiliates. Here you can choose any specific niche to promote the clickbank products & make money. Although its not an easy task to get money, you will have to do hard work to get traffic & conversion .

With all due respect, I'm going to have to disagree with you here. Almost all affiliate marketing will have limited profits. There are exceptions of course.

Rather than start an online business that isn't likely to make much money, why not start one that has the potential to make a fair amount of money.

When you are starting out, it's all about educating yourself. Very few people actually make a living on their first business. Why educate yourself on something that is likely to have limited profits.

[Harold Mansfield]

For beginners in online business its better to start with clickbank affiliates. Here you can choose any specific niche to promote the clickbank products & make money. Although its not an easy task to get money, you will have to do hard work to get traffic & conversion .

I also disagree. Clickbank is a nice training ground just to get a feel for things, but they aren't the money makers that they used to be. I may have done a few click bank products 5 years ago, but I agree with Bill..if you are going to do it, may as well do something with potential. Making money with Clickbank is just as hard as any other affiliate program. You still need to know how to market.

So with that said, there is no program that is easier to make money with than others. Some pay better, and some have better tools and services, but you still need to know how to market and sell them, whatever they are.

[webdesignphx]

I think cleaning companies are a great way to learn about business. Anyone can be trained to be great at some sort of cleaning business. I think they are a great starter business that teach you the basics of all businesses.