Want to Start a Work at Home Business and Fire Your Boss?

Do you dread Sunday night because you can't face another long week at a job you hate? Maybe it's time to start your own work at home business. Working at home via your own computer and the internet puts you in charge; it's not just a job, it's your future. There are basically 3 ways to succeed online and fire your boss. You can either:

• Sell or advertise other peoples' products and services.
• Allow other people to advertise their products/services on your website or blog.
• Sell or advertise your own products/services.

Let's look at each of these in further detail . . .

Selling or advertising other peoples' products can be done in several different ways:

1) Probably the most common and easily understood is e-commerce. You start a work at home business by establishing a web 'store' with products from one or more manufacturers or producers and you sell them to consumers from your website for a profit. This type of site follows the more traditional business format and is very much like your local department store at the mall but without the physical presence. And though this type business is more easily understood and follows a more traditional business plan, it usually take a more significant up front investment to get started than the other businesses listed.

One way you can help reduce the initial expense is through drop shipping. Some manufacturers will ship product directly to the customer. In this way you can avoid the hassles of maintaining inventory, and a warehouse along with all the confusion of shipping and receiving. With drop shipping you get to sell name brand products on your site, and let the manufacturer take care of filling the orders and customer service.

2) The second way of selling other people's products is through Network Marketing. And though start up costs are usually quite a bit less than traditional e-commerce, and many companies still allow advertising and recruiting over the internet, this business takes considerable one-on-one time with customers and recruits. But if you have strong people skills and enjoy interacting with potential customers, this could the business for you.

You would want to take great care in choosing the marketing company you want to work with and make sure the product you would be selling would be a product you would buy, whether or not there was an income opportunity attached.

3) The very lucrative and last form of selling is called affiliate marketing. This is where you sell or advertise another person's product for a percentage of the profit. Estimates have it that affiliate marketers will earn over $6.5 billion in commissions in 2006. Yes that's a 'b' – Billion. And I don't know about you, but I want a piece of that pie. Selling through an affiliate program is a great way to sell on the Internet without getting knee-deep in product.

Allowing other people to advertise their products/service on your website/blog is the second basic way to start a work at home business and takes two forms:

1) You can sell advertising space on your website/blog. Most people who sell advertising on their own site use services like e-Bay to advertise the availability of advertising space and you will need proof of the number of unique visitors per month to your site. While this method would probably net more profits for you the website owner, it would also require more time and energy than using the next form of advertising.

2) With this form you can allow an advertising service provider or network to place ads on your site, relevant to your site's content. For each visitor to your site that clicks on the advertisement or completes the predefined action, you earn a fee. There are a number of advertising service providers the three of the largest and most successful are AzoogleAds, Google and Yahoo. This is a no hassle way of advertising.

Selling your own products/services on your website/blog or through advertising is by far the most lucrative method of earning on your computer but also is one of the most difficult. Not only must you come up with products and services to provide you must first find a market for these products and services before you begin. There are several ways to earn with your own products:

1) You can write and sell an information product such as an e-book or report. Compared to traditional products or books these reports and e-books are extremely inexpensive to produce and are almost all profit. There are products available online (e-books) which will walk you through getting your first e-book or report to market. This is a great way to start a work at home business and begin part-time and on a shoe-string budget.

2) You can also sell your own services. Whether you're in real estate, a tutor, gardener or virtual assistant you can sell online. Unfortunately you are limited in what you can earn in this type business by the amount of time you have available to provide your service; there's just so much of you to go around. You will also need to network on the web in order to sell your services effectively. There are social networking groups online to help you with this endeavor.

3) You could produce software or physical product to be sold to consumers. Though these two options can be very lucrative there is a far higher risk due to the amount of funds you would need to invest in testing and production. There are a lot of up front costs to these options; but the opportunity to earn is quite good.

Now that you have a basic knowledge of the income opportunities on the web, you may want to learn more about one or two of these options. There is a great deal of information on the internet to guide you as you start a work at home business. Succeeding online can be one of the most rewarding career moves of your life and could soon allow you to fire your boss.