Today I want to talk a little bit about 2 most common online business models and how we can utilize both of them to earn money. As you probably have heard, it is possible to make money online even without ones own website, for example using only direct email marketing to a list of subscribers built through a co-registration service. But I personally think that having at least one website that represents your business is better approach for a number of reasons. One of those reasons is that most people (prospects) don't like to be bombarded by email messages as passive targets. They prefer to surf the Internet, compare, evaluate, choose and buy products they found good enough for their needs. If you establish a website that offers interesting content, multiple choices and interactivity one part of your visitors will naturally become your customers. Thus business models I'll talk about suppose you have a website.

The first model, apparently the easier one, is the affiliate model. You sign for affiliate programs, you promote others products and services and you earn commissions. Beginners are very likely to believe that earning money as an affiliate is easy, but that is very far from truth. Your job as an affiliate is to generate huge amounts of targeted traffic to websites that you promote. In order to do it successfully you must already be very skilled webmaster and marketer, otherwise you earn a couple of bucks now and then. If you want to earn real money as an affiliate you have to spend a lot of time learning and practising effective traffic generation and pre-selling techniques. I feel big respect for successful affiliates simply because they are traffic masters.

Second common business model is reseller model. Very simplified, you buy resell rights to a product or service and you sell it as your own. You have total responsibility for customer relationships, product support, refunds, etc. Products are most often digital products such as software, scripts, ebooks, videos, audios and other informational products that can be delivered by immediate download. You keep all the profits but this business model is more complex than affiliate model because you have to take care of products acquisition and storage on your server, payment processing, secure digital delivery, customer support, marketing, etc. The good thing with reseller business is that you don't have to create products and that you can employ affiliates to market your website against commissions, either through an affiliate network or your own affiliate program.

Mastering reseller and affiliate skills takes time and effort. There is no free lunch and there is no overnight success. Being your own boss and making decent income with an online business is royal position that many people desire but not as many achieve.