Let me start by telling you a little bit about myself. My wife Kerry and I call ourselves “The Couple Next Door” because we are just like you when it comes to internet marketing. Neither one of us has a degree in computers or in business. Instead, we have built up a large base of knowledge and experience when it comes to starting an internet business. It happened almost by accident when I was in my 40s. I started going to seminary and needed an income to support my family. So I began creating information products.

Online Business Idea #1 – Start With What You Know

The truth is that if we can do it, you can, too. Like I said, I have not always had an online business. For 20 years, I did home remodeling. Then my wife started up a little company called Curriculum Connection. She wanted to help other homeschoolers find curriculum to use. As it grew, she began asking me, “Steve, do you know how to build web pages? How can we get online with our products?” So I started working on it, and even though I was clueless at first, I quickly figured it out. At the same time, I was in seminary.

There we were over 2000 miles from home and with no family, no friends, and no job. We needed the income we were used to having from my remodeling jobs, and we needed it fast.

That got me looking for the perfect business. And I know that you probably have your hands full, too. You have a lot going on, but you can take your idea for a business and begin building it today. Soon you might even see your income surpass your current job.

Online Business Idea #2 – Define Your Criteria

But like I said, I started looking for the perfect business, and these were my criteria. I wanted to do something one time and get paid over and over. I wanted to invest a few hours a week and get paid really well. I wanted to sell a product, have it get delivered, get paid, have my partners get paid if I had some, all without me doing a thing. I wanted it on autopilot. And I wanted not just to get paid one time for a product. I wanted to turn every sale into a monthly income stream. I wanted low start up costs, high reward for little risks. I wasn’t asking for too much was I?

You might say I had unrealistic expectations. But think about it. There is a business that would meet all my needs: creating and selling information products online. Once you have created it, you can sell it over and over again.

You start off by spending a little time packaging quality content, market it on the internet, and then sell it quickly and painlessly. You really could almost put the whole thing on auto pilot.

Online Business Idea #3 – Think Realistically

It was very low start-up costs. In fact, that is one of the questions I am routinely asked. “Steve, how much does it cost to start an online business?” For $15 a year for a domain name, and that is kind of high these days, and $50 a year for hosting, and $20 a month for an autoresponder, you can set up an online business. And that is really all it takes to get started.

If you have an idea, why not start today? These online business ideas are practical and easy to do and can get you going on a path to greater financial freedom.

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Copyright Stephen Beck, 2010

You have permission to reprint this article as long as you don’t make any changes and include the bio below.

Stephen Beck can teach you internet marketing basics and help you make your first $1000 on the internet. Grab a FREE link to his webinar replay, where Stephen shows you everything you should do: http://www.YourOnlineBasics.com.

What are the benefits to operating a home-based business marketing digital products?

1.) The first benefit is low overhead. If you were to own your own physical bookstore, there would be a tremendous amount of overhead you would have to worry about.

With a traditional business there are significant costs and investments required to keep that business operating. You typically have to have a lot of customers just to cover your monthly expenses, much less make a significant profit. A PDF ebooks business can put you in profit mode with a relatively small amount of customers.

A digital products business doesn’t have anywhere near that type of overhead. You can operate the business out of your own house with no inventory and no employees. The reason why you don’t need any inventory is because your products are digital, and they are located on the Internet. Therefore, they don’t have to be stored in your house.

2.) Another benefit to operating a digital ebook publishing business is the high profit margins that are associated with that type of business. When you offer a product online, the large majority of your expense associated with that product is in the initial creation process. You may invest either time in producing the product yourself or money in hiring people to produce the product for you.

Once your final product is created your main investment required to get your business up and running is in how you market your products. However, even in the marketing of your products there are many ways you can do this for free. By doing this for free you literally have zero costs associated with selling the product.

How do these lack of expenses affect potential profits in this type of real home business? Assuming you made a $500 investment in product creation, this will give you enough money to hire someone to write an ebook for you in some markets. Once you made this investment, you now have a finished product that you can take to the market.

3.) The next step is to promote your business, which you can do by using free marketing strategies like article marketing, social network marketing and so on. You set a price point of $47 for your product. With this price point it only takes 11 sales to make your money back. Any other sale after that is full profit for your business since you have no other costs ongoing.

As the owner of your own ebook publishing business you have a business that is truly portable. You can operate your business anywhere in the world as long as you have access to a computer as well as Internet access

In fact you don’t even need to have a telephone anymore for your business. There are programs available that allow you to turn your computer with an internet connection into a telephone using Voice Over IP technology. You truly have a business that you can run from anywhere in the world.

Selling pdf ebooks online can literally be a dream business for you. You can follow these steps to start an internet business and begin seeing profits this week!!

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Copyright Stephen Beck, 2010

You have permission to reprint this article as long as you don’t make any changes and include the bio below.

Stephen Beck can show you online business set up steps and how to make your first $1000 on the internet.  Pick up a FREE link to his webinar replay, where Stephen shows you everything you should do: http://www.YourOnlineBasics.com/go.html.

I have started a number of businesses and even had the privilege of coaching others, and for each of these, I have used article marketing. The reason why is because you can easily and quickly get high search engine rankings from your articles, and these rankings will propel your business into the spotlight on the internet. So let’s talk about why articles work.

Articles can be submitted to an authority site such as Ezine Articles. Because this site requires original content, Google ranks these submissions higher than others. Often within a few weeks after I submit an article, I see it ranked high. My articles are usually 300 to 700 words with a resource box pointing directly to my website. The authority of these sites build my reputation as an expert on webinars.

Articles can also generate direct traffic to your website. Lots of people with blogs and websites pick up articles from these directories and post them. For example, pretend you have a website about dogs. Other people with related sites like puppies.com, dogs and more dogs.com, or a dog blog will come and get your article. They post it on their site with your resource box, and then when people read their blog, you get free advertising. Their readers click on the link to your site, and voila! You just got free and easy traffic.

Speaking of links, articles provide great backward links. You can think of a backward link as a vote. Every time someone clicks on one of these links, your page gets a vote. The more votes, the higher your rank. The higher your rank, the more traffic you get and thereby the more business.

Getting on the first page of the search results for your keyword and staying there are two different things. There are lots of other people competing to be on the first two pages, and the competition is fierce. Article marketing can be the best tool to keep you on top.

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Copyright Stephen Beck, 2010

You have permission to reprint this article as long as you don’t make any changes and include the bio below.

Stephen Beck can show you internet marketing basics and how to make your first $1000 on the internet. Pick up a FREE link to his webinar replay, where Stephen shows you exactly what you should do: http://www.YourOnlineBasics.com.

I know a lot of people who have an idea for an internet business. They just need to know where to begin. When we talk, I encourage them to learn how to find and use keywords in their niche. Keywords are crucial because they are the basic building blocks when you start an internet business. You use keywords in your articles. Google finds your keywords in your titles and in the body of your article and ranks your page higher. People find your page because you are closer to the top, and you get more traffic. With more traffic comes more sales. It is that simple.

So it makes no sense to just pull keywords out of thin air. People will not find your articles that way. Once article can include up to five or six keywords, so I let the keywords dictate what I write about. All that matters is what people want to know. If you keep that in mind, you will get very rich on the internet.

You also want to use your top keyword in the title of your article near the beginning. For example, if you do a search on “webinar strategy,” you might find this article, “Webinar Strategy – Four Ways To Promote Your Business.” Someone looking for information on webinar strategy will find this article and read it because it is exactly what they are looking for.

Keep in mind that your title should help you rank higher in the search engines, but it should also peak your reader’s curiosity. If it is interesting, people are more likely to read it. Remember that you want them to see you as an expert in your niche. You also want to generate some backward links and have them sign up to be on your list.

One more use for keywords is to include them in various places throughout your article. You can even use your less competitive keywords, and Google will rank your article higher for those. Think of it as getting the most bang for your buck.

So begin by doing your research. Figure out exactly what people are typing into the search engines for your niche. Then use those keywords as much as possible. You will see a difference in the amount of traffic AND your sales!

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Copyright Stephen Beck, 2010

You have permission to reprint this article as long as you don’t make any changes and include the bio below.

Stephen Beck can help you learn what it takes to start an internet business and how to make your first $1000 online. Pick up a FREE link to his webinar replay, where he lists out everything what you should do: http://www.YourOnlineBasics.com.