Did you know it is possible for you to start an Internet business for very little money out of your own pocket? There really is no need for you to go into debt for several thousand dollars to get started with a small business of your own.

Here are five Internet small business is you can start for under $100!

1. Start a WordPress blog and host it yourself. You can find website hosting on the Internet for as low as $5-$10 a month.

If you are not technically inclined you can hire someone to set your WordPress blog up for you. Many people will do this for under $50 and you will be set up and ready to start making money on the Internet.

2. Start an affiliate marketing business of any kind. It truly is possible to start an affiliate marketing business for free because as an affiliate you get paid to sell other people’s products.

The best way to do this again is to host your own website and create pre sell web pages around the products you want to sell. By doing this you are differentiating yourself from the competition and are also giving yourself several marketing advantages.

3. Create and sell information products online. You actually could do this with a free blog from Blogger. Certainly for less than $100 you can buy information that will teach you everything about creating and selling information products on the Internet for a very good profit.

4. Join a network marketing company if you like working with other people. There are many network marketing companies now that base their business online.

You can join these for less than $100 and be set up offering quality products with an excellent compensation plan. The advantage of a network marketing business is you get paid on the efforts of other people as well.

If you enjoy working with people you can build a downline of distributors to help you make money. This can be a lot of fun and does not cost a lot of money out of your pocket either.

5. Private label rights offer an excellent opportunity for people to make money on the Internet today. These products are already created for you and with just a little bit of alteration you can repackage them to look like your own.

You can pay somebody to put these products online and split the profits with them and would have no out of pocket costs at all.

This is five Internet small businesses you can start for under $100 today.



Wallpapers 5

Starting a new business or running a business from home can be more time consuming than you could ever expect and sometimes the greatest help could simply be some peace and quiet to get on with work. Whilst having your phones ringing with new or existing business is great, having them ringing off the hook could mean missed orders, poor first impressions and possibly even handing some easy business to a competitor.

The hiring of a secretary in a lot of start-ups could be too expensive at first and for a home-based business it’s usually out of the question, but there is an alternative. With the explosion of mobile technology and growth of the internet, many look to outsource their incoming calls and use a call handling service.

Many small businesses and especially sole-traders like the flexibility that employing a call handling service gives them, for many in trades it means that they can actually be out servicing their clients whilst at the same time be safe in the knowledge that their calls are being answered professionally, quickly and politely. A good plumber may not always be the most communicative person to speak to, especially if he has just taken his head out from under a sink to answer a call but by using a call handling service the plumber can get on with what he knows best and service his clients.

Operators at call handling services usually work in small teams of 4 or 5 so that they become familiar with each client. Upon answering a call they follow on screen instructions on what details to collect ranging from name, contact numbers, business names, reference numbers- whatever the client requires to manage his or her business effectively. The operators can then either send the message to the client or act as a front desk receptionist and transfer the call through. In the case of the plumber with his head under a sink, he may have requested that new clients be sent as a txt message to him and told that a call back will be as soon as he is available.

What a call handling service offers clients is the ability to communicate with their customers without being bound by the telephone. A businesses that misses a phonecall because they were to busy to answer it is effectively falling at the last hurdle- they’ve done all the hard work marketing, they’ve convinced someone that their business is worth the phonecall to find out more, they’ve done everything except answer the phone when is mattered most.

Whilst some can get by quite happily answering their own calls many businesses that want to expand need not only the time to think but the security of knowing that their clients are being well looked after, even if their head is under a sink when they call!



Giga Flux

The traffic statistics page for Robert’s new small business web site starts to load. He scrolls down the page, dismayed. Just one or two visitors daily. Robert sits back and sighs. Most were probably curious friends and family.

When his internet-savvy nephew suggested promoting his small business on the Internet, Robert designed a simple but attractive five-page small business web site. He added meta-tags and keywords, and waited for the search engines.

Robert wonders, “What now?”

Robert’s experience is common among small businesses getting started on the Internet. He has just faced the first big lesson for a small business web site: the web site is not enough. Unlike the weekly advertisement Robert places in the local paper, he needs to promote the web site itself. In a sense, he needs to advertise the advertisement.

What Robert doesn’t realize is that he already has the most valuable asset a small business can leverage online — knowledge and experience. Anyone who runs a small business off-line is an expert on something that other people would like to know about. Writing articles can turn that knowledge into targeted traffic. Article writing is the ideal free method for a small business to promote itself on the Internet.

Every small business has expertise it can share in 500-1,000 word bites. A landscaper could write about the uses for different kinds of turf grass. A window installer can describe new types of energy-efficient windows. A home cleaning service can provide cleaning tips.

Customers ask Robert five questions repeatedly. He can easily write five simple articles to answer them. Then, he just needs to add a “resource box” which advertises and links to his web site.

Robert can also include a few of his web site’s keywords in each article, and, if possible, in his resource box. Robert’s business depends on local customers. Including his city’s name in anecdotes within the articles, or in the resource box, can help his articles to appear in local searches for that city.

Robert would start by uploading his article to a new web page. This gives visitors more to read — and starts to establish Robert as an expert. More importantly, the article becomes “spider bait” for the content-loving search engines to find and index.

He could stop there, but his new article gives him a more valuable opportunity to promote his site.

Next, Robert can offer his article to other web sites. Most article directories accept submissions of articles. They offer those articles for others to use in newsletters or on web sites. A quick search for “article directory” will yield a sizable list of sites that accept article submissions.

Prepared, with a simple text file ready to copy and paste, it takes just minutes to submit an article to an article directory site. Once posted, the article provides a link to Robert’s site. Other webmasters may reprint his article, also linking to his site.

Article marketing is viral, multiplying the links — and visitors — to the author’s site each time an article is republished. Just one popular article can attract a growing number of information-hungry visitors as the article spreads across the Internet.

Many article directories also include new articles in RSS feeds and e-mail announcements to their lists. Robert doesn’t even need his own e-mail list or feed to advertise his web site to readers of his article.

Finally, if Robert has more time, he can search for “ezine directories” to find newsletters that accept articles and offer his article directly to them. If he is willing to spend some money, he could use article submission services.

Over time, the growing number of links to a web site can improve its “link popularity” and Page Rank. As the site rises in the search engine rankings, it attracts even more visitors.

Articles spread those all-important links across the Internet without the tedious process of sending out link exchange requests (often declined or ignored). Better still, webmasters who reprint articles rarely ask for reciprocal links back to their own sites.

The benefit of writing an article builds over time, yet articles require no ongoing maintenance once they are written and submitted. Other options like newsletters, blogs, and forums can demand more upkeep than a small business can afford.

Best of all, articles can remain up on web sites indefinitely, driving free traffic immediately — and long-term. Most other kinds of advertising stay posted only as long as they are paid for. An article’s “views,” “reprints,” and “click-throughs” can increase — without increasing advertising costs.

Writing articles is a powerful way to leverage a small business’ expertise, transforming it into traffic. The currency of the Internet, information, makes advertising a small business web site affordable. Promoting with articles can jump-start the online presence of a small business and continue to market it for a long time to come.

(c) 2006 Wendy Maki

May be reprinted in email newsletters and on web sites. Must be unedited and include the resource box. All other rights reserved.



E Law Blog

Here are three common disabling beliefs which prevent people from starting small businesses because of the fear of failure.

Many think they are not well enough educated, come from a poor background which holds them back, or think they need loads of money to get started in a new small business venture.

Let me show you why I think these are not true.

Lack Of Education

Many believe you need a good education to make a lot of money or to start up successful small businesses.

Far from being held back by poor education, it may actually be an advantage. Just as blind people often have much better hearing, people who have less education often compensate in other ways.

They may communicate more effectively to a wider population, they often exhibit greater dexterity and ability working with a wide range of materials and have great ability to judge risk and reward.

A good education can even be shown to be a disadvantage to entrepreneurship.

It is normal for well-educated people to find it easy to get a job. This means they are making money for someone else, in exchange for a smaller proportion of money back. (If employers didn’t make more money from their workers than they paid them, then they couldn’t continue to employ them.)

Having had a good job for a while, to give it up on a small business enterprise usually means risking losing that job, and the money that comes in with it, which may be needed to start the new venture. This brings us to another myth-

Lack Of Capital

Many believe you can’t start a new moneymaking venture without a lot of money to get started. I don’t believe this!

The old saying “If you ain’t got nothing you ain’t got nothing to lose” really is true.

If you have a lot to lose by risking a new small business venture, you may be so cautious of failure that you fail to succeed.

So many seriously rich people started from flat broke or in many cases from serious debt, you have to conclude that a lot of capital is not necessary.

J. K Rowling is one of the richest individuals in the UK. While she was writing her first novel she had barely the price of a good meal to sustain her. She even had to type the book out twice (with a second hand typewriter!) to send a copy to the publishers because she couldn’t afford to have a photocopy done.

Living In A Poor Environment

Many believe you need to come from a rich background to become rich. Baloney!

People have worked their way up from living in tin shacks to owning hotel chains. It is just as easy to sell goods to people in the ghetto as it is in the richest street in town.

Indeed it is often much more profitable to sell cheaper goods than more expensive goods.

Here’s a few examples-

· Burger vans have far higher profit margins than many top restaurants. · Skateboards often have far higher profit margins than cars. · A bicycle sales and repair shop would find far more customers in a poor environment than in a rich one. · Trades and services (plumbers, electricians, decorators) will be more likely to succeed with the low costs of the poor environment and traveling to a better environment to provide those services.

Poor Education, No Capitol AND a Poor Environment!

A few examples of people who succeeded with their small businesses may help to prove my point.

With all three – poor education, no capitol and a poor environment, one guy in Africa has found great success. He lived on what most people reading this would consider to be a rubbish tip, but with very little education and no capitol at all, makes a great living for himself. With no more than a stout pair of ordinary scissors, he turns discarded empty drink cans into really stylish flowers. Selling them to locals and tourists, he makes a fine living.

Now I am not suggesting for a moment that this is a workable small business idea for you, but it does prove my point. If he can be so successful, by his terms, in Africa, then really it can’t be so hard for you can it?

Another example, which you are equally unlikely to repeat, is that of many ‘pop stars’. I won’t go into detail here because I prefer not to get sued, but if you look carefully at the early lives of, for example, Madonna, Eminem, Bob Dylan etc. you would find they have bettered themselves considerably with very few external resources. Lastly, how about Nancy Engel. Starting from flat broke with very little education, she bought $30 worth of assorted spices. Mixing them together, she labeled them Italian Spice Mix and took them to a local flea market the next day. By the end of the day, she’d sold all her stock and pocketed $200. By repeating this simple formula, her small business is a great success. What if you are fortunate enough to live in an outstanding environment, have received an excellent education and have access to seemingly limitless funds – would that ensure success? History is littered with examples of people in just this situation, who started business ventures which failed completely leaving them financially broke.

I believe you are just as likely to succeed, or fail, regardless of your environment, education or funds.

Small Businesses Idea, Plus Action

So enough of what you don’t need to succeed – what about what you do need? Almost every example shows that after an idea which the entrepreneur considered worth pursuing, action is required. It sounds obvious, but without action, all you have is an idea, and by themselves, ideas rarely make you successful!

By action I don’t mean simply telling everyone you know about your idea, I mean actually doing something to make your idea happen.

So now you see why I believe that it is quite normal for people to succeed without access to good education, good environment or good funding.

I believe you can change your life massively with no more than a few good small business ideas and a little action.



E Law Blog