Internet marketing is full of a lot of choices, and your first choice is deciding on which business model you are going to follow. If you don’t make this choice carefully, you’ll find yourself hopping from business model to business model, spending money on programs and “secrets,” and not making any profits at all.

Trust me when I say that finding a business model that appeals to you and working with that model will go a long way toward helping you succeed online.

There are a few basic business models to choose from. Each of them have their advantages and disadvantages. By looking over this list and considering your strengths, you should know where you want to focus your business.

Creating your own information products

When you create your own product, you are in complete control of your stream of income. By writing a product, or hiring a ghostwriter to write one, you can set up a website and sell your product over and over again. You can set up an affiliate program so other people are selling the product for you.  With a winning product launch income potential is massive.  The only major downside is that you can spend a lot of time and money working on a niche product that may not pan out.

If you’re creative and prepared to take on a little more risk creating and selling information products could be for you.

Affiliate marketing

Unlike being a product creator, with affiliate marketing you don’t have to spend time and money creating a product. You just need to be good at promoting the product. You’ll earn commissions for sending buyers to the product creator’s website. With the right promotional techniques, you can establish yourself in the niche and make affiliate commissions from several different programs all at once. On the other hand, you are at the whim of the product creator when you use this business model. You never know when a product creator will stop offering the product.

Affiliate marketing is relatively risk free but still needs time and effort to achieve significant results – Works great as an additional income stream to information product marketing.

Membership sites

With affiliate programs and information products, you’ll earn money from a one time sale. When you own a membership site, you’ll have an ongoing stream of income coming from one website. You can provide monthly reports on a niche topic, host a forum or offer coaching for a flat fee each month. You can even use an affiliate program with your membership site so that other people will send new members your way. The downside is that you need to keep providing fresh content each month to keep your members sticking around.

Don’t want to create fresh content every month?  Consider fixed term memberships, create your content in advance and drip feed it to members over a period of several months.  This frees up your time and allows you to focus on marketing and bringing new members into your site (and creating more sites).

eBay seller

eBay is one of the most frequently visited sites on the entire Internet. When you become an eBay seller, you’ll never have to worry about finding traffic for your offering. You can sell a variety of different things on eBay, including information products. Although there have been some recent changes to the way information products are sold on eBay, the amount of traffic and ease of setting up your offering make eBay a strong business model. The downside is that your business relies on a third party site who’s changing rules may negatively effect your business in the future.

As you can see, there are ups and downs to every business model available online. By looking at your own strengths and what you want to get out of your business, you should be able to find the right model for you.  The real secret is to take action and get started!

Published by digitalwebrocket