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E-commerce: Is It Right For You?
The birth of the Internet and the mass availability of personal
Computers in the late 80’s changed peoples life forever,
Everyone now has had the potential to be their own boss whether you are
mother at home looking after your children or a manual laborer there
are opportunities in abundance .
Just a search on Google for business
opportunities will bring up more offers than your parents would have
had in their whole life. So it must be easy to make a living from the
internet right? No it’s not, you need a firm business plan
and you need to work hard at it.
Setting up and running an online business does have several advantages
over setting up a “normal” business. You can
usually run it in conjunction with your current job, your potential
market is bigger your initial overheads are usually smaller and you can
operate it from the comfort of your own home. Once you decided that you
want to enter into the world of E-commerce you then need to take a
lesson from main stream business and create a business plan.
The very first thing you need to decide is what type of business is
right for you and then research the market. Possible businesses open to
you are.
An Affiliate Program
With an Affiliate Program you are paid a commission for selling a
companies products. You have no contact with the customer, all you do
is provide sales leads to the company of whom you are an affiliate. An
program is where you take an existing
website of yours about a particular subject and add contextual Adverts
from Google’s
program. When a person clicks on an
advert you then receive a few cents.
There are 2 approaches to
programs, build a well respected
Niche site with
lots of traffic the more traffic you get the
higher the Click Through Rate (CTR) and thus the higher the income. The
second method is sometimes referred to as the shotgun method, build
lots of sites with less traffic but earning a smaller amount from each
site. A $1 a day income from each of 50 sites is better than $40 from 1
site. It is worth pointing out here that it against Google’s
TOS to build site specifically to target
revenue.
The final E-commerce method we will look at is the most similar to
mainstream business, selling a product. You build a web site with a
shopping cart and give as many details about the products as possible.
The products can be something you make yourself, or a product you buy
in bulk or a product from a drop shipper. With drop shipping you sell
products which are then dispatched from a location elsewhere by a 3rd
party.
If all this sounds too easy it’s not. Setting up the business
is just the start of it, the hard work needs to start now. You need to
get traffic, the more traffic you get the higher your sales will be. In
addition you need to look at the performance of your site and tweak the
layout so you make more sales. You need to get your site onto the first
page of Google and other search engines.
You may need to write adverts
and operate an pay Per Click program. In short you need to become an
expert in many new subjects. If you have the drive and dedication then
it is possible to make a good income from E-commerce but
don’t expect to spend an hour a day at the computer and the
rest of your time on your Yacht.
About the Author
Mark thompson Live in Spain and runs a
number of websites including WWW.Worldoftheweird.com and
www.theincomesite.com
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