Online business

 by: Nowshade Kabir

If you are planning to start a new business in 2005, you should seriously consider one of the many Internet based businesses available today. The online businesses have numerous inherent advantages in comparison to their brick and mortar counterparts.

Investment is relatively small

The basic elements to start an online business are the followings: a good product or service, an online presence, and a good marketing plan. All these things can be done on a shoe-string budget. You won’t require more than US$ 2000 to start any of the business described below. In most of the cases, the investment can be even lower. Quick to launch

Once you know, what products or services you are going to sell, you can, basically, start your business within three to four weeks. Some of the online businesses don’t even take more than two to three days to start.

Large audience

Internet is big and it’s getting bigger! Whatever business you prefer to start, Internet allows you to tap instantly into a huge number of potential customers, which is, virtually, impossible to do with a brick and mortar enterprise.

Huge growth potential

With the Internet, sky is the limit! If you have a good product, service or idea, you can create a dot com behemoth over night! Smart guys are doing this! Internet success examples are abound.

Work from home

The best thing about online business is you can take care of it even while you are on vacation. No office is necessary; you work from home, if that is what you prefer.

Less paper work

Since starting for your quotation and purchase orders to the invoices and shipment tracking, everything is done online; you hardly have to do any paper work. Check out an example of how easy it is to manage your business processes online at http://www.rusbiz.com/deal_manage.html

Flexible time schedule

No longer have you had to work nine to five! You set your own schedules. Although, with any new business, initially, you have to work very hard, however, the time flexibility allows you to do other important things whenever it’s necessary.

There is no limit to Internet business ideas. Savvy entrepreneurs are constantly coming up with mind-boggling online projects and striking rich in no time.

Here I have chosen several of the online businesses with great upward potential with proven success history.

Selling information

If you are asked, what do you do on the Internet most of the time? The answer, most probably, will be searching or retrieving information. You are not alone! A survey conducted by Neilsen Media Research shows that Books and Information Category tops the highest selling product and service on the Internet with a significant margin in comparison to other categories. This makes information a natural product for sale on the Internet. Information sells online in the formats of e-books, articles, reports, data, whitepapers etc. If you have expertise in any specific field, you may consider selling your ideas in one of the mentioned format. Check out Clickbank’s marketplace to get a good idea what people are selling. You will be truly amazed by the scope of ideas!

Resources

• http://www.clickbank.com

• http://ezine.rusbiz.com/article/13.htm

Travel agency

According to Jupitar Research the U.S. online travel market has grown at a fast pace over the last year, totaling $54 billion in 2004, or 23% of travel purchased. The online market is projected to grow to $91 billion in 2009, or 33% of travel purchased.

Apart from being a soaring market, travel agency is also highly rewarding and satisfactory business. The interesting thing about this business is your own network of acquaintances is also your potential customers.

The success of this business will depend on your target market and product that you are going to sell. Choose a very niche product and focus on a specific market segment. For example: Red Sea Rivera of Egypt is increasingly becoming a primer destination for many sun worshippers. Try working with several of the hotels from this area. Create package deals and offer to European customers.

Resources

• ASTA http://www.astanet.com/index.asp

• NACTA http://www.nacta.com/

• OSSN http://www.ossn.com/

• ICTA http://www.icta.com/

eBay store

eBay has grown into the largest online marketplace in the world. Entrepreneurs are taking advantage of this. Opening a store on the eBay is fairly easy. However, the competition is stiff! There are nearly half a million stores are selling almost anything you can think off. In order to be successful you have to choose your products very carefully. The best selling items on the auction marketplace are collectibles, books, computer software and hardware, clothing, home and garden supplies, business supplies, wholesale lots, DVDs, special events tickets and even cars and real estates. If you don’t have your own products or you don’t want to physically handle a product, you can consider selling drop-ship items.

The main reason why you should mull over selling your products through eBay is the sheer number of visitors eBay gets. By no means, an average website can bring you so many customers.

If you find difficulties doing the auction sales yourself, you can also concentrate on seeking out products and selling them through eBay drop off stores. You can also come up with your own drop off store.

Resources

• http://www.entrepreneur.com/ebaycenter/0,6316,,00.html

• http://www.i-soldit.com/

• http://www.quikdrop.com/

Web service firm

Services required by the Internet users and online businesses are increasing enormously. The Internet service industry is evolving so fast that for their various requirements, many companies, today, prefer outsourcing as oppose to doing things by hiring employees.

Large and small companies started to realize that it’s more cost-effective and time-saving to outsource sophisticated business related services, which are not their core business. This has created a flourishing industry, part of which did not even exist several years ago.

To be successful in this market you have to know what’s the odds are. A rush to provide complex solutions of vast range that fail to provide benefits at reasonable costs for businesses will sure take you out of business very fast.

The services that you can provide may include:

• Website design

• Website promotion

• Online security consulting

Resources

• http://ezine.rusbiz.com/topic/4.html

• http://www.hwg.org/

• http://www.webreference.com/

• http://www.guru.com/

Export Import Business

Thanks to the Internet, getting into import export business has never been easier. As the nations are accumulating wealth, their demand for foreign made products is also swelling. You can be a part of this action too! Whether you are planning to import or export, Internet resources can be of great help too you. The trade leads site, B2B exchanges and various marketplaces have made sourcing and selling products and services globally simple, effective and inexpensive. You can also create your web store with many of the B2B exchanges and run your business processes solely online.

Resources

• http://www.itintl.com/

• http://ezine.rusbiz.com/article/24.html

• http://www.alibaba.com

• http://trade-leads.rusbiz.com

• http://marketplace.rusbiz.com

• http://www.export.gov/