The Google - YouTube deal is just one such deal.



Chad Hurley and Steve Chen started YouTube "in their garage" -

likely in their living room office - but a "garage start-up"

sounds so cool. Hurley and Chen started their website only 20

months before Google bought it for $1.65 billion. That is $825

million each for 20 months work, or $41.25 million dollars each

for every month they were in operation!

All of us dream the big dream, but then reality sets in. Few of

us can look forward to earning $40 million per month. While you

can probably count the people who have on two hands, there are

still thousands more people who have managed to turn their online

business into a million dollar a year business.

Most people who start an online business might dream of making

one million per year, but most would be happy just to earn enough

to leave their day job behind them. Some would even be happy to

earn just enough to pay their car payment or to save for their

kid's college tuition fees. All are worthy goals, and the good

news is that all are within the reach of most people who strive

to reach them.

Learning How To Play The Game

As with any great endeavor in life, there is a process one must

follow in order to be successful.

The first step is learning how to play the game.

The beauty of starting an online business is that the internet is

driven by information. If you have a desire to learn about

something, then you will find someone on the internet who is

willing to teach you about the topic you wish to learn. You can

literally find information available on any topic, some of it

free and some of it available for a small fee.

Online Business Structures

There are four primary business structures on the internet:

1. Product Sales

2. Service Sales

3. Membership Websites

4. Advertising Platforms

Product sales include both hard goods and digital items. Examples

of hard goods include food, clothing, car parts, books and music.

Examples of digital items include electronic books and software.

Within these four primary platforms, there are several ways to

accomplish each business process. For example, with a Product

Sales driven website, you can opt to use: a direct sales website,

an online auction system, or an affiliate sales format. With

Service sales, you can use the direct sales website or the

affiliate sales format.

Affiliate sales systems are akin to Reseller sales systems. There

really is one difference between an affiliate sales system and a

reseller program.

With an affiliate program, you will direct the buyer to the

seller's real website - through a special tracking URL that is

only available to you - to make their actual purchase, and you as

the affiliate will be paid on a monthly schedule for the sales

that you have generated.

With the reseller program, the source company will remain hidden

in the background. You will make the sale, collect the money from

the buyer, and then you will process the sale through a private

access point on the seller's website.

The concept behind the membership program is that people will

rent access to a private area of your website.

The most well known advertising platform of course is the search

engine. They make their money when someone else buys advertising.

Other such sites include news or general information websites.

While the big boys make up the immediately recognizable websites

based on the advertising platform, many small publishers are

making a good living by providing advertising driven websites.

Low-Cost Entry Point

Forget going out and renting an office for $900 per month. Forget

about having to set up utilities in your home and at your office.

This is another one of the beauties of an online business. You

really do not need to have a costly storefront in order to go

into business for yourself.

If you go the online auction route, you will not need to have a

website at all. But you may need the extra room in your house or

in your garage to handle storage of the product you will be

selling, unless you go the drop-shipping route.

The idea behind a drop-shipper is that you can register with a

wholesaler. Then you can sell single-piece items to your

customers, and process the order through the wholesaler in the

same way you would through a reseller program. When you buy the

product from the wholesaler, you will give them the direct

shipping address of your customer, and the wholesaler will put

your shipping label on the package. When your customer receives

the product, by all appearances, that product will have come from

your warehouse. To find drop-shippers who serve your choice

product lines, you should sign up for a lifetime membership at

World Wide Brands for their drop-shipper locator service.

In any other business model, you should seriously consider

registering your own domain name, even if you intend to utilize

the affiliate sales systems. The costs of pursuing this route are

minimal. You can expect to spend $20-30 buying ownership of your

own domain name for one year, and you can generally get a web

hosting account (where you actually manage and store your domain)

for anywhere from $30-50 per month.

Low Knowledge Threshold

Many web-hosting companies offer a HTML editing tool within their

domain management interface that lets you build and design your

website's pages.

The beauty of these HTML editing tools is that you do not have to

know how to build actual webpages. You simply type what you want

into the editing interface, highlight what you want to put in

bold print, and then click a little button that converts your

highlighted text to bold print. The same processes apply for

links to other webpages, and a wide variety of text formatting

options. It is so easy, even a caveman could do it.

Mix-and-Match For Best Results

The lowest-cost systems for your first website is between the

advertising platform, and product and service sales through

affiliate programs. The best benefit for each of these three

options is that you will not need to build your own online

payment systems. That is a real advantage when you are just

starting to get your feet wet.

For advertising systems, many people today utilize the Google

Adsense system to put paid advertising on their website. To get

involved using Google Adsense, you simply need to get your

website approved by the Google staff, and then you copy a piece

of code they give you and put that code into your webpages. You

can generally get Google's approval in three to five days. And

then, once you apply Google's code to your webpage, you will be

able to get paid for advertising on your website immediately.

Affiliate programs work in the same way. You get registered with

the affiliate's website, and then they will give you a small

piece of code that you can copy-and-paste and put directly into

your website. Once again, you could be earning money from your

visitors beginning the same day you put the affiliate code on

your website.

My best advice is to not rely on only one system for making

money.

Google Adsense pays you every time someone clicks an

advertisement on your website (don't do this yourself, or Google

will terminate your account with them). Because Google is paying

you for traffic that you send to their advertisers, you will only

get paid based on a percentage of what Google collects from their

client for that visitor. In some cases, we are talking about

pennies per visitor.

With affiliate programs, you could literally make $2 or $200 for

one sale.

I believe that if you are getting into an internet business on

the advertising platform, you should not rely only on Google

Adsense, nor should you rely only on your affiliate programs.

But together, both systems on your website could provide a

significant income for you. You now have some of the secrets

to become the next internet millionaire. Now, go get started!