Why Start an Internet Membership Site?

People are willing to pay for on-line content. In fact, the "On-line Publishers Association" said that pay-for-content is a hot revenue model. Business content, personals/match making, and entertainment are the hottest niches. But even smaller niches, like DVD authoring, sports coaching, marketing services, and dieting are producing profits.

You can sell subscriptions for on-line content with your own membership site.

Selling on-line content by way of a password protected website has become big business. Not only is it fast to set up, but the start-up and running costs are minimal. Work-from-home entrepreneurs and big businesses alike are tapping into this revenue source.

Less than 9% of on-line users currently pay for on-line content. This means the market is wide open for the clever entrepreneur. Paying for content is increasing by the day.  It is showing significant year-on-year growth! Those who capture the market first in their niche will have the obvious advantage and it’s an international market, so anyone can play.

One of the great things about starting a membership site is you can take your hobby, specialized knowledge or profession and turn it into a profitable business. Your challenge will be finding exclusive content. You can start it part time but it will likely develop into a full time business.

Planning for and setting your site up for auto-responders, automated sign-ups, credit card processing, automated cancellations, etc. is all part of a successful membership website. Starting and running a membership site can be a lot of fun and very exciting, however you need to know what’s involved in setting one up, and then managing it effectively.

This whole process may appear somewhat scary. However, as complex as this appears to be, many companies offer a low cost, easy-to-use software solution. This makes it possible for almost anyone to start and market a membership site at a very low cost. What about you?                                                                  

Creating and Starting an Online Business

Let’s look at a few different ways of creating an online business that will satisfy your needs and ambitions..

Categories

There are many different on-line businesses that you can start but most of them come down to three broad categories which are:

• selling products or services to retail customers,
• selling on on-line shop platforms/websites, and
• business-to-business selling. 

Your Speciality: What do you like

When you are looking at creating and starting an on-line business, you'll want to look at what your speciality is in creative business around one of these three broad categories. 

• If you decide that you want to sell to retail customers, you will have to find a way to sell your products or services in a different manner than many of the other retail websites out there. 
• If you decide that you want to sell on an on-line shop platform, you'll want to find a wholesale distributor of products where you can buy your products at a great discount; you need a reliable back-office support structure. 
• If you already work within the business-to-business forum, this will be an easy transition for you.

Each of these three categories offer exciting opportunities but you must decide upon which of the three you prefer to focus. Many people will decide to start an on-line business but have no idea where they should focus their efforts.  By focusing your efforts on one of these three categories, you'll know in which direction to start. 

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is an effective strategy for many start-ups because you do not have to buy any products; your focus will be on the marketing and selling products/services on-line to people who want the products or services. 

For scanning some on-line Affiliate Marketing opportunities you may want to visit my website: http://www.callofentrepreneur.co.za  

If you decide that you want to sell products or services to retail customers, search for a niche market that is currently underserved; that will provide you with a competitive advantage, This is key to starting an on-line retail business;  with little competition you have an opportunity to dominate and establish yourself in the market. To find some of these underserved niches, visit the following website: www.findhotniches.com  

Provide Benefits to the Market 

Customers want Value for their Money

Finally, if you decide that you want to do business-to-business selling, figure out how you can provide benefit to the particular market that you want to go after. 

• Example, many people work on-line as freelance writers and you are able to do this and potentially differ yourself from the competition if you market to one particular niche. 
• Business-to-business selling is similar to the retail strategy in that you want to focus upon a niche and try and dominate that niche. 

Hopefully I have planted a seed to inspire you to create and start your own on-line business; it is challenging, rewarding and most of all FUN.

How to Start an On-line Business

What must be done to succeed with an on-line business?

There are a few Key Activities that you need to pay attention to.  By explaining what to look for on-line, this will be a good way for you to learn how to start an on-line business. 

Key Activity 1: Decide on your Particular Field of Interest.

When you'll are looking at how to start an on-line business, you'll first want to look at a particular field which you are interested in.  You'll want to see whether or not there is a great deal of competition out there because this could affect your decision to get into that particular field.  When you are deciding to start an on-line business, you usually want to look for a field in which there is less competition so that you can come in with competitive and effective marketing to penetrate and dominate that niche. 
It is often easier to be a big fish in a small pond rather than a small fish in a big pond.

Key Activity 2: Decide on your Business Focus Area

There are many different ways that you can generate an income on a website.  Here are a few of those different ways.  

• You can decide to sell products on-line which you can find through wholesale distributors.  
• You are able to advertise on your website and sell advertising using programs such as Google's Adsense. 
• You can even sell your products through store-fronts at either Yahoo, eBay, Amazon or similar websites.

Key Activity 3: Test and Retest your Website

Make sure that you are continually testing and retesting your website.  Once you design your website, you cannot sit back and wait for the sales to comment.  You want to test and retest the difference ways in which you have your pages and website built to make sure that you are taking advantage of the traffic coming into your website.  If you do not do this, you are missing opportunities to generate an income.

Key Activity 4: How to Market your Website

Decide how to market your website.  There are many companies from whom you can buy potential client traffic at affordable prices. This can be an effective way to supplement your natural search engine traffic.  

Key Activity 5: Develop Back Links

The way to build natural search engine traffic is through website content and developing back links.  Back links are links from other websites to yours. When search engine search bots are indexing webpages, they will find the links to your website and index your pages.

Key Activity 6: Finding Underserved Niche Markets

If you work on finding an underserved niche, it is easier to pay for potential client traffic from Internet marketing firms. Also focus on moving your website up in the natural search engine pages. You need to make sure that you are developing both a good website in terms of content that potential clients will want to read. This will ensure that they return to your website on a regular basis.  

If you give sensible attention to these few Key Activities you are on your way to start your own on-line business.