Make Money Online Your Way

When starting an online business, work from home business or any business for that matter, there are some decsions you have to make at the beginning that will decide a lot about your business. It basically starts with 2 choices.

#1 Sell your own product or service

#2 Sell someone else’s product or service

From there, the choices branch out greatly.

If you choose #1 and you want to sell a product you make - you should ask yourself these questions among others about your business:

How long does my product take to manufacture? How many would I need to get started selling them? If I had to order in bulk, where will I store them? Would I be able to start selling them by just showing the prototype and taking enough orders to get going? How much would that initial prototype or production batch cost? How can I raise the money to do that? How much will it cost to ship each one locally? Can I market it nationally? Can it be marketed internationally? Is the shipping cost still feasible to market overseas? If I look in the marketplace, what kind of pricing is there now? How much markup - or profit margin does that leave me?
If you choose #1 and you want to sell a service you provide - you should ask yourself these questions among others about your business:

What is the maximum number of people I could provide my service to a week myself? What is the minimum number of people I could provide my service to a week and profit? Is there a lot of competition in this service? How will I stand out? How long have I been providing this service? Do I have references? Have I decided my pricing structure and profit margins?
As I hope you can see so far - you will see why I tend to prefer building a business that provides #2 Sell someone else’s product or service as it cuts down a lot of extra work and money expenses - that usually do not lead to a lot of extra profit. Don’t get me wrong, I think people make money in manufacturing and providing services - I just don’t think a small business is the best situation to be a manufacturer or service center. To do it well and efficiently, usually takes a larger number of people.

If you choose #2 and decide to sell someone elses product or service it really simplifies the process as you only need to focus on sales. There are basically 4 ways to sell these goods or services for someone else:

#1 As a regional representative (set commissions - must stock inventory - or buy franchise for service)
#2 As an affiliate or referrer (set commissions - many times free to join)
#3 As a distributor/retailer (set commissions = buy at wholesale, sell at retail price, may need to order in bulk, larger minimum order to qualify to buy at wholesale, offering a service -scalability issues, if you want to grow your business beyond you - how long does it take to train new emloyees, employee turnover, etc.)

#4 As a MLM/Network Marketing distributor (set commissions & potential residual commissions - qualifications too varied in industry to summarize)

Maybe you have never looked at it this way, but now that you are, can you see why I find option #4 the most attractive? I have tried almost ALL the choices outlined above = I have sold my own product (for example - my info-book), I have sold my own service (ie: tile installation), I have sold products and services as an affilliate (ie: e-books, referred people to my link to buy something and received commissions, a type of direct marketing), I have bought products at wholesale and resold them at retail for a profit (too many to list - this is also considered a kind of direct marketing)

The residual aspect of MLM / Network Marketing, is exactly one of the things that kept me coming back to try it again over the years. Boy, am I glad I did! In any other business, if I stopped working or selling - my business stopped and I stopped getting paid. With a successful MLM / Network Marketing business, I have stopped working as hard for periods, even taken a few weeks off and hardly worked, and I kept getting a check, my business even gave me a raise during that period! I know this has been the dream and attraction for many people - but the reality for most people is that if you tried to start a work from home business, or online business - most people failed.

Next I will cover some of the problems that prevent people from succeeding in a work from home online MLM / Network Marketing business and what you can do to avoid them. I will see you then!

Matthew Yonan

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 5th, 2006 at 12:21 pm and is filed under make money online, online business, online success, work from home, home online business, making money online, Matthew Yonan, MLM, Network Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.