Each and every day, there are millions of dollars being spent and received via the medium of the internet. Because the net is a truly global phenomenon, there is absolutely nothing to stop the average householder in Los Angeles buying products or services from a business or an individual in Sydney or Auckland whilst of course, it works exactly the same the other way round as well.

Nevertheless, in practical terms, there are limitations to the effectiveness of the net as a medium for the transaction of business. It would not be particularly practical or logical for our friend in L.A. to buy a four-poster bed from the other side of the world as an example.

Hence, the first concept to grasp about setting up a website to make money from the net is that you must promote or sell something that is easily transportable or deliverable. Furthermore, it has to be something for which there is already an established demand, because satisfying established demand is far easier than creating demand from nothing through your own efforts.

As long as you are in a position to satisfy these initial requirements, you have the basis of a truly global business, one that ignores international boundaries and datelines. This is where internet marketing starts.

In essence, setting up a website that is designed to sell products or services is a little like setting up a shop in your local high street or shopping mall. Your website is your shop window, but in the case of a net-based business, it is a shop window that is available to any internet surfer at any time of the day and any place in the world.

From all of this it follows that the first thing you have to decide upon when setting up your new online business is, what are you going to sell from your shop? It is all very well having a vague idea about setting up a website as the bases of the business but the initial business idea or concept has to come first.

Fortunately, there is plenty of online help available in this respect, because millions of would-be entrepreneurs all over the world have already set up successful online businesses from which you can take a lead.

For instance, most new online business beginners tend to start off with a business that is designed to make money in one of two ways.

Both of these ideas or concepts are relatively straightforward and simple to implement, hence their popularity with people who are just starting out.

Option one is to feature advertising on a webpage which generate an income for you, while the option to is to promote other people’s products or services in return for a sales commission. We will consider both of these options in more detail a little later, but before doing so, there is one other concept to take on board.

This is the idea that which ever did was model you decide to follow, you have to have an idea of the market sector or niche that you want to operate your business in.

This choice is a critical one because whilst there are billions of people coming online every day to search for information, products or services, they do not do so in a totally haphazard, willy-nilly way. When these individuals use the net to search for whatever it is they need, they already know what they are looking for in advance. Hence by definition, their search activities are predicated upon what it is they want.

For example, they could be looking for a hotel in Singapore or the best place to buy a Gucci handbag in New York. In both cases, it is most likely that unless they already have a particular idea in mind, they will start their search for the most appropriate information by using a major search engine like Google, Yahoo or MSN.
When they do so, they start by typing the most appropriate phrase or term that you can think of – ‘hotels in Singapore’ or ‘Singapore hotels’ for example – into the search box to begin the process of drilling down to the information which they are seeking.

If in this scenario you happened to be a Singapore-based hotelier, the person who is searching for this information obviously represents a prime prospect for your business, someone with whom you want to make contact or a connection as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

You would do so because you understand that there are people using the internet to search for information about your kind of business and therefore your primary task is to find these people to show them what you have to offer.

Exactly the same principle applies to any website based business you decide to launch. You have to have an appropriate subject matter around which your business is built because in this way, you have a clear idea of the kind of people who are most likely to buy from or do business with you.

Thus, deciding upon the topic or subject matter of your business is the all-important first decision you have to make.

Once you have done so, then and only then can you begin to build your site. When you do so, there are as mentioned a couple of ways that you can generate cash from that site almost immediately.

The first option is to feature third-party advertising on your site that is placed there by an online advertising company, amongst whom the biggest and best-known is Google.

If this were to be your moneymaking option of choice, the ‘set-up’ pattern that you would follow looks something like this.

Firstly, you create a site on which you can feature advertising before applying for an account with Google AdSense. Although it may seem slightly contrary, you create your site first rather than applying fur account because Google want to review your site to check on its acceptability to the program.

This is however something that only ever happens once, and as long as your site is in some way business focused and already contains a degree of content – half a dozen articles that are focused on your topic should do it – the chances of your account application being accepted extreme good. If however it is not accepted, and more content to the site and then reapply.

Once your AdSense account is open, you create appropriate advertising materials within the AdSense member area before finally placing those advertising materials on your site by pasting the JavaScript code created within the member area onto your site.

The primary attraction of placing these advertising materials on your site is that the AdSense program ensures that the actual adverts that appear on your site are targeted.

For instance, if in our earlier example, you had a site that features articles about hotels in Singapore, the advertising that would appear on your site would be from companies or agencies who offer hotel accommodation in this particular part of Southeast Asia.

What you therefore need to do is ensure that people who come to that particular website are interested in obtaining information about hotels in Singapore. You do this by using the targeted promotional and marketing strategies that you will read of later in this manual.

Hence, the advertising that appears on your site is 100% matched to the kind of people who will visit your site. As a consequence of this ability to target the advertising at your visitors, Google ensure that some of those visitors will click on the adverts shown on your site. When they do so, you will be paid for every click, hence the moneymaking opportunity.

The advantage of this particular business model is that your site visitor does not need to spend any money for you to earn an income from your site. As it is the advertiser who is paying you (via Google) to send visitors to their site, all that is necessary for you to get paid is for your visitor to click on the targeted adverts that Google have placed on your site.

On the flipside of the coin, the downside of this particular model is that in the majority of cases, the amount of money you are paid for every individual click is likely to be measured in cents rather than dollars. It is therefore a fact that if this is the business model you choose to work with, you need to create many websites if you want to generate the level of income that you would probably like to achieve.

The alternative to operating a site that features advertising is to build a site that promotes a product or service that someone else has created as an affiliated sales person for the original product creator.

There are plenty of distinct advantages to working with this business model.

Firstly, there are products and services available which are appropriate or relevant to almost every market you can think of, so no matter what kind of business you are correct, there will be something that you can profitably promote from your niche targeted website.

Secondly, the amount of money that you are likely to earn per transaction from this kind of business is likely to be far higher than you could ever expect to generate from advertising revenues if you adopted the AdSense model.

The disadvantage is of course the fact that the individual who visits your website has to spend money on the product or service that you are promoting for you to earn anything. Nevertheless, as long as the product or service is sufficiently well targeted, you will undoubtedly generate some sales and therefore earn reasonable levels of sales commission.

Because this second business model tends to be more profitable for the majority of online to beginners, I am going to assume that this is the particular business model that you follow.

However, as far as the process of creating your own website is concerned, there is not a great deal of difference between adopting business model ‘A’ and model ‘B’, so if you want to start by advertising rather than as an affiliate, most of what you read here will still apply.

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