internet startup ideas

Are you looking for some internet startup ideas? A good internet based business can offer you time freedom, flexibility and the ability to scale your business. You can work from a laptop from anywhere, choose your own working hours and build your business up around existing commitments. But what’s the catch? The catch is you are working for yourself with a model like this. It’s not a job, it’s a business.

Internet Startup Ideas

Starting an internet based business is no different to starting a normal ‘bricks and mortar’ business in essence. It has, however got a lot more going for it in many ways. For starters an internet startup can be a lot cheaper. With a normal physical business you have a lot more in terms of overheads. The internet offers a cheap way to start without needing any employees, premises or stock to buy. How does this work? By selling other people’s products.

Internet Startup Ideas – Affiliate Marketing and Drop Shipping

Both these models have the benefit of using other people’s products. With both affiliate marketing and drop shipping you send customers to products and services which another companiy delivers. Your main job in both of these businesses is marketing. See my guide The Ultimate Guide To Online Marketing.

Your job is to send qualified leads to your website (or the companies website). The process of selling and delivering goods and services is taken care of by another company. Even customer service is organized for you. You earn commissions based on sales you make. The main benefit of internet startup ideas like these is the automation and the scalability.

Internet Startup Ideas – Automation and Scalability

internet startup ideas

There are other business models online of course. In my article how to start a profitable ebay business, I share another internet startup idea. However, the model I share in this article is not scalable because you are in the system. It requires a constant effort on your part.

Scalable models are far better for a number of reasons. Obviously you can make more money with a scalable model. But they also mean you don’t have to trade time for money, as in the traditional working model. Any model which requires you to trade your time for money, and isn’t scalable, will limit your ability to earn. A scalable model may take time initially to set up, but once they systems are in place you can increase your earning power without having to increase your work load.Â

Models like the two main ones I have shared (affiliate marketing and drop shipping), both allow you to scale up once you have your marketing in place and working. This takes time to do of course but it’s well worth your time. Considering many jobs take years to learn and never give you the kind of freedom which can be obtained from a scalable internet business, it’s well worth learning.

Internet Startup Ideas – Types Of Marketing

Both affiliate marketing and drop shipping allow you to automate most of the process. Simply send customers to a website where everything else is taken care of for you. The only part of the process (once everything is set up) to do is then marketing. There are several ways to market a website. The two main ways people get traffic to their websites (or landing pages) are paid advertising and content creation.

Content Creation

Content (like this article) takes time to create and then more time before people find it. You can create videos, podcasts, webinars etc. The list goes on. The more people you can connect with the products you promote, the more you stand to earn. By creating content regularly, over time you should build a steady stream of targeted buyers to your automated website (providing you do it right). This can have a compounding effect and your sales can increase exponentially. Creating content takes time but is far cheaper than paying for advertising.

Paid Advertising

internet startup ideas

Paid advertising is fast. You can set up a pre-built website which already has products and services built in, send paid traffic to it, and start making sales very quickly. By using an opt-in landing page you can also collect subscribers. This gives you more chance of selling later on, by building your customer’s interest. (More on this later). Paid advertising is a super fast way to earn from your automated website.

However, there’s more to lose in the way of cash. You shouldn’t just set up an advertising campaign, leave it running and expect to be in profit. You need to carefully test every element of your campaign. Cross test adverts against each other. Test out different demographics for the best results. Don’t expect instant profit just by setting up an advertising campaign.

Start with a small daily budget and slowley build it up over time. Test and measure it with little amounts until you get a positive result. The online marketers who claim to spend millions on advertising didn’t start out that way. They started with a tiny daily budget and found a profitable campaign before scaling it.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the best online marketing ‘apps’ available. By using email marketing to sell products over the internet you can reach more people and automate much of the process. Used in conjunction with paid advertising and an automated online business model which does the selling and delivering for you; email marketing allows you to reach a larger target audience and build a relationship with your list of subscribers.

internet startup ideas

You can also automate much of the process of communicating with your list and send out thousands of emails at once. Top marketers use email lists and affiliate products. They send out single emails with links to online products. Once they have built a list of thousands of subscribers, and built a relationship with the list, they can sell products through their emails. Imagine a list of 10,000 active subscribers who are all interested in your products. A single email could mean a very nice payday! Of course a list like this isn’t built overnight.

To learn more and access a range of digital products to sell over the internet through your own list, access this online course. You can access:

A range of high ticket products to sell (and earn 40% commissions from)
A built in sales team
Your own website with pre-populated affiliate links
Training and education to build your online business

Access a month of free training here.

Web based startup ideas include things like drop shipping and affiliate marketing. With both these ideas you can wok remotely from a laptop from anywhere. You don’t need to deal with customers directly or even touch any products. Another web based startup might be working from ebay. See my article how to start a profitable ebay business.

Web Based Startup Ideas – Drop Shipping

Shopify let you build a website and send customers directly to a drop shipping company. All you need to do from here is advertise your website. You can start a free trial with shopify here. Advertising is your main job from here since the website will automatically send customers to products which are handled and delivered by another company. When you make a sale you are paid a commission. It’s a simple system. The hard part is advertising. You can learn more about advertising online in my ebook The Ultimate Guide To Online Marketing.

Web Based Startup Ideas – Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing works in a similar way to drop shipping. Both these models allow a huge amount of flexibility and freedom. You can work from anywhere from a laptop and simply send people to your website. With affiliate marketing you can send people directly to products available online.

These can be either physical or digital products. Digital products offer a larger percentage of the sale (up to 50% in some cases) so many affiliate marketers concentrate entirely on selling digital products online.

Web Based Startup Ideas – Ebay

There’s a number of ways to make money from ebay. I have already mentioned one method which I used to use here: how to start a profitable ebay business. You can also use ebay to direct people to drop shipping companies too. Be wary of companies charging you for this service.

Do some research to find real drop shipping companies. The other way to earn from ebay is by buying wholesale from wholesalers likeÂ www.alibaba.com. You can then create a single listing for buy it now and sell multiple items through that one listing. Of course this requires an initial outlay for a bulk buy. You should also do some research into which product/s to choose. There is huge competition for this on ebay and you also compete with international sellers from China and Hong Kong.

Web Based Startup Ideas – Information Products

Many affiliate products are information products. You don’t need to create your own information products. You can sell almost anything online providing there is an affiliate program attached to a product. What was the last thing you bought online? Go to the website and see if there is an affiliate program. If there is you can join it and promote the very item you recently bought. There are several ways to do this, which we will come to shortly.

Information products might include something like an ebook. I promote a couple of my own ebooks on my website. You can sell your own information products in the form of an ebook on a website or upload it to Amazon to sell for you. If you upload a short guide to Amazon they can help you sell it and you earn from royalties on every sale.

InternetÂ Startup Ideas – Your Own Website Business

You can build your own website and promote several products from it. Drop shipping and affiliate marketing are two simple models which you can use to monetize your website with. But how can you get people to visit your website? There are two main methods: content creation and paid advertising.

If you have a good business model, paid advertising is the fastest way to generate income from your website. Building content and sharing via social media, and/or getting traffic from the organic search engines takes much longer to achieve.

Web Based Startup Ideas – Niche Websites

You can make money with niche sitesÂ by using the methods described above or with Google Adsense. Adsense allows bloggers and website owners to place some code within their website content. Google then uses this code to create adverts specific to your content. When someone clicks on your advert, you earn a small commission.

Niche websites take time to build up and if you monetise with Adsense, you will need to build a huge amount of traffic in order to earn even a modest income. Often bloggers use adsense in conjunction with other methods of earning such as affiliate marketing. You can buyÂ ready made niche website sÂ or access websites which are pre-populated with affiliate banners. This makes the building of sites much easier and less time consuming.

Startup Ideas – Summary

A web based business should give you complete freedom and flexibility. I worked on ebay for several years looking for the ideal business model. Ultimately, I wanted something which could be operated from anywhere, I could start with low overheads, and would be able to be scaled up.

Any business which puts your time in the ‘loop’ is flawed! You ideally want every aspect of your online business to be automated. Dealing with products and customers yourself ties you to a physical location. I wanted a lifestyle business which could be worked from anywhere, which allowed me to choose my own hours and working patterns and which only needed a laptop and internet connection to run.

I tried various ebay models including ebay missspellings, buying and selling on ebay, finding items in car boot sales and charity shops etc. Ultimately I realised I was cought up in a model which required a huge amount of work for very little pay. I couldn’t scale this model easily because I was still effectively selling my time.

Selling products over the internet on autopilot was what inspired me to learn the affiliate marketing model. I tried and failed with several models until I found a sustainable and long term model which worked. This included membership products which enabled me to earn monthly commissions from each sale.

This was something which I was missing from my previous efforts. Although I had sold products before I was selling individual products with no monthly commissions attached. I later realised a better business model which worked and produced a sustainable income which could be built upone overÂ the long term.