There have new concepts emerged, like freelance and home business. These might be very attratcetive for individuals who want to be on their own, make their own money and have total control on their lives. Sounds tempting, don't ya think? And it's possible too.
The main instrument that will help you achieving this goal is a medium-performance computer, a modem and a dial-up or better Internet connection.
Having these at your fingertips you can start basically two 100% businesses(there might be some elses, but not a business itself, like homejobs for instance-egg. researcher, typer, publisher). These are Webmaster and E-commerce virtual shop owner.
This is by far the most tempting small-home business, because you have the possibility to earn as much as you can by simply exploiting one or more sites conceived and runned by you. Of course, nothing comes easy, but when you will learn the techniques to master this field, this won't occupy to much of your time.
In order to be a succesful WEBMASTER there are few essential steps taht must be followed.
Build your site. This is how each WEBMASTER starts
Before starting making money oon the Internet, you have to got a site thet is the produce of an idea.
The Big Idea is to have a site appealing to the public in order to generate extensive traffic, though not only the traffic turns your site into money, but also the "quality" of your visitors.
After you came out with the Idea for the site, start building it!
If you are a beginner, look over these free tutorials()
The next step is to make it available to the public. In order to do that, you must host your site on a server.
You've got two options:
Free servers
The main advantage of these solutions is that they are free and usually they are imediate. But there are some draw-backs too. You won't have your own domain, instead your address will be something like http://yourname.servername.com
Usually you will have a banner on top of each page.
Professioanl servers
If you want to start an e-commerce site or a more advanced one, definetelly this is your only solution.
It is also indicated to have your own domain name , so people can more easily find you.
Join Affiliate Programs. That's the way WEBMASTERS make cash
If you are looking more for money rather than making a site just to do it, it is wisely to analyze from time the sponsors the various Affiliate Programs have to offer. So you can make your site's content suited for them and so increase the chances to earn money.
You get money when one of these actions occurs:
pay-per-click
the visitor clicks on the sponsors banner
pay-per-mille
the number of views of your site
pay-per-lead
the visitor is guided to join a program or ask more info from a site
pay-per-sale
get comissions for each sale to a visitor of yours
From these, pay-per-lead seems to be the most promissing of them.
You must carefully choose the sponsors in order to match to your site's content and not too many. Three or four would be enough.
Promote your site. It's the only way a WEBMASTERS gets traffic
Nothing comes easy!
After deciding what your virtual store will contain, you'll have to become legally a merchant.
TIP! If you're a beginner, it is indicated to start selling bytes, you get me? It's easier to sell and process something in electronic format rather than physical, unless you have the appropriate space and logistics.
Topics discussed here:
Secure hosting
Merchant account
Payment processing
Your store is a web site
Even if it sounds tricky, e-commerce is basically a regular web site, where the product or products is presented and a special page where is the ordering form. This form is a common one, but it has one particularity: it is hosted on a secure server.
There are several systems you can use to make your ordering page secure, but the most popular is Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), which is supported by all major browsers, and by most ISPs. Using a secure Web protocol such as SSL has two main goals:
- Encrypt the credit card data being transmitted, so that it would be very difficult for a third party to decipher.
- Certify that the message is in fact coming from where it claims to be coming from, so that it would be very difficult for a third party to forge a transaction.
A digital certificate may be obtained from one of several certification authorities
What is a merchant account
A merchant account is different from a regular one because it allowes you to process credit card payments.
Having this merchant account you will get your own Merchant ID and a POS(Point of sale terminal).
That POS reads the information from the credit card and sees wether there is enough money to make the transaction. You can get your own merchant account from your bank or from a non-banking institution.
Payment processing
The payment can be processed on-line or manually. Usually, the start-up e-commerce companies start by processing them manually, because in the beginning there aren't too many orders.
