How to make money on the Internet Infographic

How to make Money on the Internet

We love this infographic from http://www.fastcompany.com. It outlines things businesses should do to increase their chances of making money on the Internet.  One of the best things about this infographic is that it is not preaching a get-rich quick scheme. Instead, this small business digital marketing infographic is really detailed, gives practical advice and contains some really useful insights you won’t find on other similar infographics on small business marketing strategies.

We talk you through the digital marketing infographic as well, so that you don’t miss anything.

Enjoy!

Background

When I got my first proper job after university in 1998, nothing was free. In fact, I was a Content Development Manager for an Online Management Consultancy (http://www.the-shelf.com). Our main products were Advice guides and training resources that clients could purchase for small amounts of money.

We were among the first three thousand e-commerce businesses in the UK and made steady progress growing the company and our reputation.

The Internet has changed a lot since those electronic commerce early days. There are now millions more websites competing for customers in an increasingly fierce global marketplace. Everything is now more difficult, especially getting people to engage with your online assets and building a strong reputation in any niche.

Digital businesses have responded to these challenges by delivering many things free of charge to potential and existing customers. Free stuff today includes content, advice, music and porn, to name a few things.

Enterprises provide these things free for two main reasons:

1. People are simply not willing to pay for these things – technology means people can find and what they want, even if illegally sometimes.
2. Businesses settle for getting more visitors to their websites. High numbers of website visitors have a positive impact on reputation and authority as well as offer the potential to sell advertising to generate revenue instead of a main product or service.

It is true that many people are making money online. However, I would not go as far as suggesting that it is easy to earn money on the Internet, nor do I believe that it is free to make money in the digital marketplace.

In my experience, the analogy of the tortoise and the hare story best explains how to earn money online: Here’s the story ‘the nifty hare challenges the tortoise to a race (confident it would easily win easily). The tortoise accepts the challenge, and the race begins. The hare races off. However, it gets tired halfway down the road and decides to have a rest that turns into sleep. The slow and steady tortoise plods past and wins the race’.

How do businesses apply this analogy to e-commerce? Too many small businesses want to take the ‘hare’s way’ –over-reliance on a quick shot with minimal effort and cost (typically social media) to make money. This approach rarely works and is the reason many fail to make money online. In contrast, successful digital age businesses use the tortoise technique of building a real online business that takes a relatively long time , effort and cost to achieve favourable results. They start with a great product or service, have an excellent website with powerful e-commerce functionality and user experience, and invest in a mix of appropriate digital marketing methods (for example, social media, email marketing, search optimisation and online advertising).

The infographic’s respect equation has an impact on how people perceive an online business. Put simply, if you respect others, then you get more respect. Having a relationship with influencers in your niche can do wonders to grow your level of trust and authority to potential and existing customers.

Here is the How to Make Money on the Internet infographic, followed by my interpretation of the key messages:

Four parts to making money in e-commerce

1. Sell stuff

It’s a no-brainer that online businesses should sell something to get customers to pay for them and generate revenue. There are several options to sell revenue-generating goods and services on the Internet as follows:

Goods

• That you made
  • Jewellery
  • Greeting cards
  • Action figures
  • T-shirts
• Sold via a second party website (like Etsy)

 

• That you didn’t make
• That you trick others into making
• Sold via a third party (like eBay, Etsy or Amazon)

Software

• Apps
• Cloud computing
  • Pay-per-use platforms (like Paypal)
  • Subscription-based
    • Multi-player online game (e.g. World of Warcraft)
    • Sell virtual goods for real money (e.g. Second Life)

Services

• Dating
• Companionship
• Online tutoring
• An online extension of an existing store (e.g. House of Fraser, Argos, etc.)

Information

• Email lists
• Consumer browsing habits (e.g. AdSense)

 

Content

• Words (e.g. Postplanner)
• News (e.g. Wall Street Journal)
• Movies (e.g. NetFlix)
• Music (e.g. iTunes)
• Podcasts (e.g. Never Not Funny)

 

2. Support

It is not enough to sell products and services. Customers expect to have support (after-care) services should something go wrong. For many online businesses, support services are their products. Here are some support services options:

• Online community (for example Facebook or Reddit)
• Affiliate marketing (product advertising or recommendation in return for commission)
• Hosting and tech support
• Distribution platform (like Blogger, Tumblr, etc.)
• Copywriting including ghostwriting
• Design
• Digital Marketing (Like search optimisation, social media marketing, etc.)
• Targeting customers
• Advertising services

 

3. Giveaway

• Social media posts (for example tweets, pins, etc.)
• Social media content (for example sell tweets, TV use, niche content, etc.)
• Blogs
  • Webcomic (like MarkaVagrant)
  • Link aggregation
  • Sell your blog to a publisher or faceless corporation.
• Videos (like Youtube, Vimeo, etc.)
• Vlog

4. Other

It should come as no surprise that this infographic is not an exhaustive list of all of the ways you can make money online. Here are some additional ways to make money on the Web not mentioned above.

• Speculation (e.g. domain name flipping)
• Convenience fees (e.g. Ticketmaster, StubHub, etc.)
• Survey tools and services
• Multi-Level Marketing (for example Amway, Forever Living Products, etc.)
• Cyber crime protection tools and services (e.g. identity theft, credit card fraud prevention and detection)
• Malware protection (e.g. against spambots, spyware, keyloggers, etc.)

 

We also really like www.fastcompany.com’s new business suggestion: Make a search Engine like Google, but better. We strongly believe that any one who can do this will be mega rich!

 

Conclusion

There are many ways to make money online these days, including some of the ideas suggested in this infographic. If you find the solution to a problem that many people have, something that the can do better (faster, cheaper or more complete) than existing providers in a niche are not solving very well, then you will have found a gap in the market that you can exploit to your advantage.

Planning your business effectively and then delivering your plan using the Internet and e-commerce would transform your life as well as your customers’ lives.

Take it from me, even with a great idea, effective execution and delivery of your business plan does not guarantee a successful business. You don’t want to be one of the 44% of UK start-ups that goes under in their first three years!

You will have to adapt constantly to keep ahead of new competitors to the market because the Web has made it easier for them to make money online. That’s the Internet for you!

We’d love to have your feedback and suggestions about this post. Which business ideas have you found to work online? Do you think these strategies will lead to successful online busineses? Please leave your comments in the Comments Section below.

**************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

smallbiz-emarketing provides expert market research, marketing on all digital platforms and offline advertising consultancy specifically for small businesses and start-ups for whom money is tight. Checkout our Services page to see how our digital marketing services can help your business to get more customers and sell more, faster. Also checkout our Prices page to see our genuinely affordable digital marketing packages for small businesses and startups. Why not sign up for our newsletter using the simple form on the right? You can also follow us on social networks. Finally, we’d love for you to share this post with your network using the share buttons below.

**************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

 

Other posts you may like

Psychological Pricing Strategies Guide – 9 secrets to sell more

Top Tips to fil Business Events

Making sure the price is right