Ten Hot Ways to be an Entrepreneur

Not so long ago, starting an online business primarily meant creating a website and organizing it in a businesslike manner. You’d create a catalogue, add a shopping trolley and payment system, and hope customers would find you. These days, you don’t have to create a full-fledged website to sell online. The individuals get their content online and market themselves or their products and services before the public. You may have to pay a small monthly hosting fee or sales commission. but the benefits are huge: You don’t have to do all the work of creating a catalogue or payment system because the host does all the work for you.

This article presents ten effective and innovative approaches to making money on the internet. Read on for more information on how these approaches could be earning you more money by this time next week.

Start a Blog

In many cases, adding the personal touch separates the successful businesses from the soulless warehouses. Nowadays, however, you’re likely to be greeted with a cheery hello even when you wander into a pound shop. The precedent has definitely been set for mixing the family into business. With a blog, you can combine the personal and business areas of your life into a single web page.

The advantage of a blog is that you can give customers a window into your mind. A blog can build trust, which in turn can build business. You may not want to define yourself with your strong religious preferences or passionate view on the results of the latest election, but it can be a definite asset to post a few photos of your children or pets. On a slightly more businesslike side, consider a link to the text of a paper you presented at the latest professional conference you attended. Of even more relevance may be a series of photos showing the happy day that the new press was delivered to your printing plant, accompanied by examples of new brochures that feature the results of its bells and whistles. Whatever the subject, the goal is to keep the tone of the text upbeat and breezy, friend to friend.

Turn Your Hobby into a Business

The author of this article, Andy is a perfect example of somebody who was able to start a new career thanks to the internet. He started when the internet was new, and lots of people who were previously not all that comfortable with the computer were trying to go online. Nowadays, there’s not such a need for beginners’ books or articles, especially now that modern babies seem to be born with computer mice in their hands. The point here is that you should take anything you love and are good at and turn it into a website.

Andy once wrote about a woman named Kim who loves to skip. She started a website called iSkip.com. She now goes around the country, giving seminars on skipping and inspiring others to improve their mood and get some exercise by doing the same. The gothic rock star, Marilyn Manson sells his artwork on his website. One of Andy’s favourite online people, a Wisconsin woman who calls herself The Butter Cow Lady and who has gained local fame through her butter sculptures, sells her life story on her website. On the web, you’re limited only by your imagination as to what you can sell. Take what you know and love and run with it.

Get Other People to Contribute

Many websites work by soliciting contributions from interested visitors. If you build a website, others will come. The most obvious example is eBay. The site’s success is due almost entirely to the content submitted by sellers around the world.

You can emulate eBay’s success on a smaller scale. Say that you’d like to sell greeting cards. You might post the images of folks who take photographs of scenery, make block prints of jungle animals, or collect drawings and paintings. Or quilting may be your passion. Why not set up a website that offers antique quilts, or do repairs? The web is the perfect place to bring like-minded individuals together, contributions from others can keep your site current and successful while giving you time to focus on design and marketing issues.

Inspire Others with Your Thoughts

Sometimes, you end up making a huge change in your life without really trying. You put something online that’s sincere, heartfelt, and that you think may help some other people. You find out that tons of people out there feel the same way.

Salam Pax, an Iraqi citizen writing under a pseudonym, also known as the ‘Baghdad Blogger’, didn’t use his writing to make money online initially, yet his words were read the world over. He wrote a personal account of the goings on in Iraq during the war with Britain & America in 2003. The blog was popular because it cut through media and political spin and told readers exactly what was happening on the ground, as well as how the war was affecting ordinary families.

Despite not setting out to enrich himself, Pax later converted his blogs into a column on the Guardian Unlimited website and has landed a film and book deal. It just goes to show what you can achieve if you capture people’s imagination.

Offer Your Services on a Directory

If you say the phrase ‘making money online’, what comes to the minds of most people is selling small, easily transportable objects. But merchandise is only one type of product you can make available in the marketplace; you can also market your services and your knowledge. Place an ad on your local version of Craigslist or Gumtree. Then register with a directory like the one on RealBusiness.co.uk.

Ask for Contributions

You can earn money through the web in more ways than one, and you don’t necessarily have to ‘change’ for services rendered. Relying on the kindness of strangers, as sites like Wikipedia do, is one way of earning an income without demanding cash up front. This model is less reliable than the standard ‘money for products’ approach’, and you have to be pretty special to get people to part with their money voluntarily, but in some cases it can earn you some extra cash.

eBay & Amazon would struggle if they asked for contributions, because they already have healthy takings. The sites that are most likely to get people reaching for their wallets are expert blogs, sources of accurate information, or those that display artistic works (like pictures, novels, or poetry).

Give Out Not-So-Free Advice

The internet has always been a great place to get questions answered. Over the years, the newsgroups that populate Usenet have been the primary resources for answers and support. You can also start a website on which you offer your consulting services. You can gather tips, tricks, and instructions on pertaining to your field of interest: Rod Stephens does just that on his VB Helper site (www.vb-helper.com), where he gathers information on the programming language Visual Basic. He also solicits donations.

Turn to Your Pets for Help

We’re not kidding. As an online businessperson, you’re looking for something you’re passionately interested in and that other people love just as much. Practically everybody has a pet of some sort that they love. Pets, pet care, and related products and services are abound on the web. If you breed pets, you can start up a website and take orders. You can create pet toys and sell them online. If you’re a photographer, you can take photos of pets. If you’re a website designer, you can create websites for pampered pets that describe training. Just think about the animals you love and that live close to you, and you’re bound to come up with ideas that will have them and their owners eating out of your hand.

Become a Mine of Information

What’s that you say? You don’t have a pet, you can’t draw, you don’t have any products to sell, and you aren’t a professional contractor? Never fear. On the web, information sells. Chances are you have a mine of information about one topic in particular. You know a lot about your family history, you know everything there is to know about collecting coins, you’re a genius with identifying rocks, or you’re an avid birdwatcher. Create a website in which you put every bit of information you have online. Make your site the one and only greatest resource ever devoted to this topic.

Need Income? Just Ask!

It sounds odd, but if you present yourself in the right way on the web, and you simple ask for money, you just might get it. The most famous case is that of Karyn Bosnak. When she found herself buried in £10,000 of credit-card debt, she created a website called SaveKaryn.com. She asked for donations to help her out of debt. In just 20 weeks, her site received nearly two million visits, and she wasn’t in debt any more - especially because her book Save Karyn was published in several languages, too.

When blogger Andrew Sullivan was in need of funds to keep his blog online, faithful readers donated more than £35,000. Sullivan was well established by that time; people knew he’d use the money to keep providing them with the opinions and insights they were used to. Present yourself in an open, positive manner, and readers will respond to you, too.

Expand Your Existing Business to the Web

Expanding your business to the web isn’t new, of course. But a surprising number of established businesspeople haven’t done it yet. Some that have make do with a boring static site that do more harm than good. Many of the lawyers we know have no idea what to do with the web. The same goes for other service providers, from dentists to plumbers to car mechanics. It can be as simple as listing a price list, your hours, and where to park when customers come to your facility.

The point is that these days a large percentage of the population is sitting at the computer already hooked up to the internet. When they suddenly realise that they need their suit pressed for a meeting the next day or that their kids need school supplies, they’re more likely to pull up information on service providers by using a search engine than they are to flip through the phone book to make a call and find out locations and hours of your business.

Conclusion

There are ten very effective and innovative approaches to making money online. By following one or more of these relatively simple options, you can start generating income quickly and painlessly. You may not make a fortune, but you focus attention on yourself and your business that can brighten your life even as it puts extra cash in your pocket. Look out for the next article for budding Entrepreneurs called ‘Ten Must-See Web Sites for Online Entrepreneurs’ coming soon.