The 3 Most Popular Online Business Models
By Gobala Krishnan, Sat Dec 10th
Copyright © 2005 Gobala Krishnan
Amid all the noise and hype on the Internet today, not manypeople realize that all the ideas and techniques you can findare petty much useless if you don't first understand yourbusiness model. In other words, even the most amazing Internetmarketing technique will not work if you don't understand how toapply it to YOUR business.
The 3 most popular business models are:
1) Affiliate Marketing
This is perhaps the most popular one out there, since there areabsolutely no barriers to entry. Almost anyone can sign-up foran affiliate program for free and start promoting the product orservice on the Internet with hopes that someone will buy, givingthem instant commissions. Affiliate marketers don't carry anyrisk, since they do not pay for the creation of the product,they do not handle customer service and they do not need anyup-front investments.
When you consider that those are the top three things peoplewant to avoid, it's no surprise that almost everyone and theirneighbor promotes an affiliate program or another. In fact, ifthere is a single reason why the Internet today is soproliferated with ads and banners, it's because of affiliateprograms.
Even though there are so many affiliate marketers out there,only 5% ever make any money and only 1% makes big money. The"Super Affiliates" do it very differently from all the othermillions; therefore they earn the big checks. You can get a goodidea of how to be a good affiliate marketer here: http://affiliatemarketing.sitesell.com/globalmillionaire.html
2) E-book and Information Publishing
Sitting at the other end of the spectrum, e-book authors needto be more disciplined in their approach to Internet marketing.Of course, they also need to invest more than affiliates do.While affiliates can get away trying to "get something fornothing" the same is not true for the e-book type of business.
If you're thinking about publishing and selling your own e-bookonline, and you think it's going to be easy, think again. You'llneed to learn a lot more than affiliates are required to. You'llneed to spend some amount of money getting your business up andrunning. However, when you do it right, the payoff in thisonline business model is much more rewarding.
The reason why e-book marketers and "Infopreneurs" make moremoney is simple; they have very, very low production andmaintenance costs. Anything digital doesn't cost a single centto be produced in millions if necessary. Whatever initialstart-up costs spent can be covered by selling just a few copiesof high-margin e-books, and you can even recruit an army ofaffiliates who are more than willing to do all the selling foryou.
Of course, it's not as easy as it sounds, but the point is, whendone properly, the "E-book Publishing" model is a trulyprofitable business. You can learn more about e-book
