7 Advantages Making Money Online Has That You Do Not Get In The Real World

I will like to start this post by saying this fact:

I love the concept of Making Money Online - it is darn too easy (if I press the right buttons) and I can also be called an Entrepreneur.

Starting a real world business can prove to be a tough nut to crack if you do not have the right connections. You will have to get your business registered, you will need a lawyer to help you write a couple of legal documents, you will need to set up a real-time office with rents meant to be paid, you will also need to bring people to your office or go out to meet them in order to make a sale... Without some form of help whatsoever, these and more are what you are expected to face. I wonder if there is a better place to make money than the internet.

If you are reading this post and you have not yet started an online business, I will say you are missing out on some great opportunities. And starting an online business is very easy, all you need upfront are these four basic things:

This is more like any real world address when their functions are compared. While an offline address tells you where you can find a particular house, a domain name or web address points you to a website. Domain names are really cheap to get as they can be purchased in the region of $10. Domain name registrars like GoDaddy and NameCheap are popular and this is for a reason...

Next you will need a web hosting service on which your site will be hosted. I like to look at web hosting as a piece of land on which you build your house(your website in this case).

Your web hosting makes it possible for others to find you on the internet. And though many people offer free web hosting service, you only get as much from them. You should not complain when your site experiences a lot of downtime and when you get some lousy customer service. Reliable webhosts go for less than $10 a month, a standard web host like Hostgator or Bluehost goes for a price in the region of $5. I can't say it all but check them out and see what I mean. You can only get out what you put in.

Getting a good theme has a huge bearing on how much your site makes. Try writing a good post and then throw it up a site with terrible looking design, layout and navigation and see what happens.

A good web layout improves the user experience on your site; a very good design at times makes good content better. But notice I said good content, if you write old trash and post them on a site with the best theme in the world you will see NO results. People want good content first others follow. And the final thing you need...

You need to set up an order processing system where you can accept credit card payment online. If you don not give people an option to pay and if you don't make it easy for them to make the payment, they will end up buying elsewhere - Your competition. If your readers do not buy from you, your site will not make money and it will eventually run aground. Even if your site is for non profit purposes, you still need to give people an option of making donations, even Wikipedia does this.

So going into the main part of this post, here are the 7 benefits you can derive from doing business on the internet over doing it offline, in the real world...

Anybody can be your customer on the internet. As a Nigerian, I can have someone from Vietnam making a purchase from me while my next door neighbour also buys from me. The list of potential buyers is endless. Facebook has more than 250 million daily visits and a site like Google also records daily visits in the regions of 620 million. Now imagine that your site has say a percent of Google's daily page views. That is 6 million people visiting your site everyday. Or let's say 0.01 percent - that is still 62,000 daily visits to your site. You can offer these people a free product and make them opt-in to your autoresponder or subscribe to your newsletter. By so doing you make money. Some others might even be one-time visitors who will be impressed enough by what you do (if indeed you are doing something impressive) and buy the products you recommend.

By doing business on the internet, you are not limited by your location. What I mean is your business can go with you wherever you go. And since you are not mandated to produce a real world address in order to register a blog, you can do without it. The point I am trying to make here is that with just a laptop and internet connection, you can run your online business successfully. You can fly out on official duty, your business flies with you; when you go on a Safari with the family you can still run your business. You can operate your internet business from anywhere - the dinner table, bedroom, and from Hong Kong to Chile. This is what I call the Internet Lifestyle and it is something and love.

You will not be able to get the kind of flexibility the internet gives you in any real world business (unless you run a really big business). With an internet business you can decide when to do your marketing for a product you are promoting, you decide when to write the next post for your blog, you decide when to request interviews with other people, and you decide when to do nothing. I can decide to write an article over the night so that the better part of my morning is spent sleeping, or I might even want to take the whole week off and go on a vacation. This is because I CAN do it.

To start an internet business you do not need thousands of dollars. Believe me you can start an internet business with as little as a couple $100s. For instance, as I stated at the start of this post, to create a blog like Income Scene all you will need at first are: a $10 domain name, a $60 web hosting service with Hostgator, a $70 premium WordPress theme with WooThermes and a $19 autoresponder service with Aweber (where you get the first month for $1) And with some serious work on your part, your blog should be able to run itself without any further investment from you after the first two months. As far as I know no real world business can give you this.

The amount of technology available to bloggers and internet entrepreneurs in the days we live in is enormous, the best part of it all is that a bulk of these software and plug-ins are free to get. When I started Income Scene, all the plug-ins I used were gotten free and one of them (All In One SEO Pack) helped me rank number 1 for a keyword with more than 12 million results on Google- all in just a few days with no special work. There are so many softwares available now that will help you automate just about any task, many more will still be created. The catch is that you open your mind and broaden your search so that you will know where to look.

Cost The recurring cost of running an online business is harmlessly low. The costs you will have to recurrently pay for will include autoresponder fees and order processing fees. The others will most likely be bulk payments (annual, biennial, etc.) and payment for internet connection. From whatever angle you look at it, an internet business requires less from you in the way of overhead costs compared to offline businesses where you will have to pay for rents and wages.

The final and probably the most important benefit I derive from running an online business which I can not get with an offline business, probably because of my age is the opportunity to be called an entrepreneur. Being an internet entrepreneur is so easy when you compare it with the legalities and protocols you have to follow before you can start an offline business.

And as a side note, I must not forget to say that the internet has (over)simplified and quickened the process of getting feedbacks. If I run a promotion for a product and sales happen not to pick up, I can quickly find out what went wrong and correct my mistakes. By getting feedback quickly, I can move ahead much quicker with my blog. Whereas having the same promotion in the real world - using newspapers, bills or posters, snail mail, or any other method will take weeks or months; for the same feedback to be received.

Living as an internet entrepreneur gives everyone a level plane on which to compete. You can be an 80 year old grandfather, a 13 year old home -schooled kid or you could be working for The Boss (in a 9 to 5 job). It doesn't matter who you are or where you come from, all you need to do is to decide if starting an internet business is best for you. As for me, I am a blogger and an entrepreneur, and nobody can take that from me.