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by Michael Ellis (12/05/2005)

Knowing exactly where to start an online business is extremely confusing to a new entrepreneur.

What type of business should I go into?
What am I going to sell?
Where do I start?

These are all common questions that all new entrepreneurs ask themselves when looking to start a home business. Unfortunately most of those entrepreneurs will never actually make it to the starting line. This lack of a starting point is just about always due to the overwhelming number of answers that a new entrepreneur is faced with when asking these questions.

The fact is, if you're looking to make money online, there are many correct answers to the above questions, and there are many wrong answers to the questions, and there are a whole lot of answers that start you in the right direction only to end up veering you off into Neverland.

A good way to determine what you can do to make money online is to look at what other people are doing to make money online...so let's do just that. Let's take a look at a couple of examples of Internet businesses that are operating with great success today. At the end of this article hopefully you will have a good feel of what the successful online entrepreneurs' are doing to make money. And hopefully with this knowledge, you will be able to start your own successful online business on the right track.

You can sell anything on the Internet!

Don't you just hate when people say that? Of course you can sell just about anything on the Internet, but how in the heck do YOU get a lot of *anything* to start selling? That's the question. I can tell you to sell cars, computers, books, blah, blah, blah on the Internet until I'm blue in the face, but just how do you get those products cheap enough to actually make money? That's the real question - and that's the question we will try and answer in this article.

Let's take a look at two very popular methods that entrepreneurs' use to get products to sell on the Internet:

  1. They create informational products to sell
  2. They purchase products at wholesale to resell

Neither of the two methods seem very difficult to understand. In fact, they seem rather self explanatory. But just what's involved in each of these methods? And how does a newbie go about getting into the business - the right way? Well let's take a closer look at each method and try to answer those very questions.

However, before we dive into each method, it's a good time to point out that a new entrepreneur should probably pick just one method and dedicate themselves to becoming an expert in that area. It just isn't productive to try and cover too many things at one time - at least in the beginning. But before you pick what you want to go into, let's go over some details of each method to help give you an idea of what is involved.

Create Informational Products to Sell

Selling informational products are a great way to earn an extra income on the Internet. And creating your own information product to sell on the Internet can be extremely profitable. Believe me, there are Internet entrepreneurs out there that create simple 30 page documents and package it into an E-Book and sell that product and updates to the product for years!

Just what is an E-Book? Well, an E-Book is simply an electronic book that is stored in a file and you read it directly from your computer screen. They are very popular among Internet entrepreneurs because of the low cost to create and virtually no cost to duplicate and transfer. For example, E-Books can be created with very basic programs - and they are just as easy to create as writing a long letter. There aren't any costs for materials like in a normal book production. And since these E-Books are just files on your computer, the duplication process is as simple as copying a file. The transportation cost of sending an E-Book to a customer is also virtually free, that is, you can simply send the file via email or make it downloadable from your website.

But here's the kicker...

It may be hard to believe, but E-Books sell for as much as regular books, and many times, they sell for much more! For example, it's very common to see an 80-100 page E-Book selling on the Internet for $27 - $97. For 100 pages of content that can be duplicated and sent to the customer at zero costs! With that kind of profit margins, it's very easy to see how an author of just 1 E-Book can find herself (or himself) raking in enough income to quit their job and dedicate themselves fulltime to writing and selling more E-Books - which is what I see successful Internet entrepreneurs' doing all the time. And think about it, once the E-Book is created, there isn't anymore work to do other than advertise! This is a great automated income strategy.

So how does a newbie write an E-Book?

Well, what do you know about? Do you have a hobby that you like talking about? Maybe your regular job makes you an expert in your particular field? I would bet that you are already an expert in at least one particular area. You can write about that area!

You can write about gambling, fishing, fixing cars, fixing homes, making money in real estate, or making money in anything else... the list goes on and on. Take for example, the successful Internet guru Corey Rudl. Corey started out in the Internet marketing business by selling an E-Book that he created called "Car Secrets" which contained numerous tips for the everyday car owner. Within a few short years Corey's business grew into a multi-million dollar enterprise. And he's not the only one. I can think of example after example of other regular people that have also found their fortune in selling their writings via E-Books.

How do you know there is a market for your topic?

There is a market for just about anything. You can even test that market before you write a single word. For example, go to your favorite search engine and type in the name of your topic that you would like to write about. Odds are you're going to get bombarded with 1000s of forums and websites interested in the topic. You can study these sites. Take a month and research the forums and get a feel of what your potential customers would like to know. Then write an E-Book on the topic. Keep in mind, you can advertise in these websites and forums once your product becomes available.

What if you don't know enough about anything to write about it?

Well, are you good at doing research? The truth is, nobody has knowledge of anything until they research and study it. And that's exactly what you can do - find a topic of interest that has a good market demand, research it, and write a short book on your findings. There are a lot of successful entrepreneurs that do this all the time!

For example, I know of a couple entrepreneurs that pay very close attention to the book titles on the Amazon.com non-fiction best-sellers list. Once they find a topic that they are interested in, they go out and aggressively research that topic and write an E-Book on their findings. The whole process of research and writing takes them about 4-6 weeks, and they are very successful at creating an informative product that is sure to be a good seller. How do they know that it will be a good seller? Well, they already confirmed that there is a market and high demand for their product - the topic is on the Amazon.com's best-sellers list. And after spending a month of hard work researching and writing, they now have a product that they can sell and provide updates for years - from just those 1.5 months of work!

What do you need to start?

How to write and publish your own outrageously profitable ebook... in as little as 7 days!

Everything you'll ever need to know about creating eBooks on the cheap (and quickly) can be found in Jim Edwards & Joe Vitale's course: How to write and publish your own outrageously profitable ebook... in as little as 7 days!

These guys are true professionals that hold nothing back, and their step-by-step instruction is some of the best out there.

Now let's switch gears a bit and look at another popular way to get products to sell on the Internet.

Purchase Products at Wholesale to Resell

Unfortunately, this topic irks a whole lot of people (including myself). If you've spent any time looking for wholesale product sources online, then you're very likely to have a bad taste in your mouth right now. There are just so many online advertisements promising to show you how to make money by buying and selling their "secret" wholesale products from their "secret" wholesale sources. Baloney, baloney, baloney.

You are probably familiar with the concept of the wholesale list. If not, the idea here is that you purchase a list of wholesale sources. From the list of wholesale sources, you can purchase products for resale. Supposedly, you can purchase these products at a low enough price (wholesale) that you can add a profit and resell them online or other venues.

The term 'Wholesale List' is very enticing. Having a list of contact information to wholesale companies willing to sell you products that are in demand for extreme discounts is obviously a business goldmine. Many times you will find these lists being peddled around home business magazines or online auctions. Usually the advertisement will say something to the order of "Become a Distributor to 1000's of Hot-Selling Products" or "Be an auction super-seller like us" while referring you to their "secret" list of wholesale sources, which is for sale of course.

If you buy into this offer, it is very likely that you will find that each of the venders listed within the secret list fall into one of the three following scenarios:

  1. The vendor no longer exists
  2. The vendor is NOT a true wholesale vendor at all (just middleman in a middleman-chain)
  3. The vendor is promoting some other products (not for wholesale I might add)
Middleman-chaining is a common process in wholesale product purchasing arrangements. It refers to the situation where the wholesale vendor turns out to be a middleman that purchases products from another wholesaler, or even another middleman. You simply cannot make any profit from these types of arrangements - your discount on the products is simply not high enough for resale.

The fact is, finding quality source information to true wholesale products (which are in high demand) takes time and effort. Many companies have entire teams dedicated solely to this task. The sad truth is, a great majority of the so-called wholesale lists being marketed are nothing more than a cut-n-paste compilation of the search results from someone typing 'wholesale products' in an online search engine! And as a result, you end up with information that falls into the three scenarios list above.

Is there hope?

Yes, absolutely! People are getting rich selling products on the Internet every day - just look at the heavy hitters on eBay. These people have to be getting their products from somewhere, right?

In order to make it in this area you must have a legitimate product source willing to sell you the products at a low enough cost to allow you to make money.

So where do you find a legitimate product source? 

I've spent a lot of time looking for a true source of wholesale products, and the truth is, I've only found one: Worldwide Brands, Inc.

This is a very honest company that provides a great service. If you're interested in reselling products on the Internet, save yourself a ton of money and years of searching for the right wholesale source and check out what Worldwide Brands has to offer. In fact, they are the only wholesale and drop-ship directory publisher that is certified by eBay.

Each of the above methods has been successfully used by thousands of online entrepreneurs to generate full-time and part-time income. There is absolutely no reason that you cannot do the same.

As said earlier, it's best to select just one way to make money online at first. Whether you choose to create E-Books or buy products for resale, just select one route first. It's important for a beginning Internet entrepreneur not to try and cover too many things at once.

The fact is there are many ways to make money online, if you have the right information. But even with the right information, you really need to go about starting your business in steps, and once that business is off and running, starting another business, again in steps.

Remember, creating multiple streams of income is the ultimate goal, but for the highest chances for success, you should only start with one stream! Remember, start somewhere, but not everywhere. Once you get good at one money-making method, branch into others.

Good luck! And be sure to come back to visit VictoryKey often for more online business tips and discussions!

Author - Michael Ellis (Email: michael@victorykey.com)

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