One of the main issues that affiliate marketers have with the Amazon partner program is the low rate of commission – beginning at 4% – which many internet marketers feel is too low for their time and effort. So if you want to make sufficient (or more) money from this program, many marketers feel that it is a question of promoting high value items or promoting very popular products with the aim of selling in high volumes.

However, it is not just a case of picking any product and reviewing it and hoping Amazon will do the rest of the work for you. As with any online business ideas you need to know the right techniques in order to make money online. For example it is important to choose the right products to promote and you need to know how to promote it to the right people.

Whatever affiliate program you do use you will still need to do your market research and testing – as I have detailed in my previous post. Also note that, you can test your Amazon affiliate marketing though Squidoo either by using their prebuilt Amazon modules – if you use these this means that you share any revenue generated by these modules with Squidoo. Or use your own links, as Squidoo also allows you to use your own Amazon affiliate links on your lenses – this means you don’t have to share your Amazon commissions with them but also means you will need to know some html to be able to manually put the links in yourself.

Making Money with the Amazon Associates Program
If you would like to find out more about how to make money as an Amazon affiliate, then you might like to check out the Niche Profit Course from Chris Guthie. He has been highly successful in making money using the Amazon affiliate program in promoting niche products.

For more details, visit: Complete Amazon Affiliate Blueprint – Niche Profit Course

For details of how to find, research and test your internet startup ideas, check out my previous post: 3 Simple Steps for Your Internet Startup Business

Internet Business Startup Ideas

1. Finding Internet Startup Ideas
By using the free resources online such as those detailed in my previous post you can easily brainstorm startup ideas and uncover rising trends. But it is not enough to see whether a trend or niche is rising, it is important to check other aspects as well, before you invest your time and money into making it into an internet business.

Again I have detailed this in previous posts, you will want to use keyword tools to find the best related search terms (keyword phrases) you can use to optimize your website for the business ideas you have found. Your aim is to find keywords with a sufficient level of interest, not too much competition and already has some people spending money advertising it. These 3 things can give you an indication of the potential of making your startup idea into a business.

Recommended Keyword and Niche Finder Tools
* Market Samuria Free Keyword Tool – is an invaluable internet marketing tool as it can quickly and easily help you to drill down generic startup ideas into a list of keywords that have potential, saving you a lot of time and manual labour. Don’t forget: keyword tool module is free, even when your trial has expired!

2. Testing the Money Making Potential
Once you have found a startup business idea that passes the above criteria, you still need to test it to see whether people will be willing to spend money in it. If the people who are interested in the topic are only looking for free information or a free product, then it doesn’t matter how popular a niche or trend is, if they’re not willing to spend their cash, it’s not going to make a profitable internet business idea for you!

A good way to test this for free is on free content sites like Squidoo and Hub pages. Where you can write articles for your niche, optimise for your keyword and use the in-built money making modules/capsules to monetize your article by placing adverts or related Amazon products. Plus using these sorts of free sites also means you don’t need to know HTML and you don’t need to have a product to sell to make money from a rising trend.

For beginners, I would recommend Squidoo, it is a very easy to use platform, a well-written article (or lens) can be very quickly and strongly indexed by search engines and you benefit from the authority of the site. Don’t forget to read their terms of service before you start.

Recommended Resources
* Free Squidoo Guide – free step by step guide to building a Squidoo lens.
* One Week Marketing – this guide shows you in detail how to tap into the huge power of Squidoo and how you can use it to make money online.

3. Building on Your Internet Business Ideas
Once you have researched your ideas, found and tested specific phrases for their potential to make money and have actually started making money from them. Then you can build on your niches with your own websites – my preference is for blogs are they are easy to build, maintain and are well indexed by search engines.

Recommended How to Make Money with Blogs eBooks
* Blogging to the Bank – a complete guide for newbies on how to make money blogging – newly updated for 2011.
* The $365K Blog Traffic Formula– for those who know how to setup their own blog and are looking for tips to ramp up their visitors, subscribers and sales.

This post is just an overview of the 3 steps that I have found to be the best strategy for starting an online business. In my next post I will be going over each stage in more detail and using actual examples of internet startup business ideas for this year.

Internet Business Startup Ideas

Plus it is possible to learn these skills online for free and shouldn’t take you long to learn. But if you don’t learn them now, not to worry you can still learn them as and when you need these skills.

Contents: 1. Basic HTML | 2. Search Engine Optimisation | 3. Web Design | 4. How to Build a Webpage | 5. How to Write Sales Copy | My 3 Step Process for Internet Startup Ideas in 2011

1. Basic HTML
If you are planning to startup an Internet business, then a basic knowledge of HTML is very useful, as you will be able to arrange the elements of a webpage to your liking. Such basic HTML knowledge can help you to do a number of useful things including how to create unique web pages, for example by:
* Showing you how to insert and align images into the text of your page.
* How to format the font, color and size of the text and headings on your page.
* How to include links into your content.
* How to create tables etc
For a great set of free HTML tutorials checkout: w3schools.com – This online tutorial teaches you basic HTML step by step.

2. Search Engine Optimisation or SEO
For most websites their main source of online traffic is going to be from search engines. And so it is important to know how to set up your web pages to be optimised to get the best ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs) and so ensure you attract the maximum of visitors to your site.
But, you will also want to ensure you get the right visitors to your site. And so optimizing your content for the search terms (keywords) that you want to target will ensure you get the right visitors to your web pages i.e. you want to make sure the visitors you get to your site are going to find your content relevant. If you can make sure you make your web pages useful to the visitors then they are more likely to buy your products, sign up to your service or do whatever you want them to do.
For basic SEO tutorials and tips you can find a number of great books from Amazon, for example: Search Engine Optimization For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

3. Web Design
There is something about the visual aspect of a web page that can enhance the experience of your visitors. And so knowing how and where to place elements on your web page can make all the difference in getting them to click your links or subscribe to your offers.

4. How to Build a Web page
There are certain things that a visitor expects from an Internet business web page or website in 2011. For example social links like Twitter and Facebook have become common place and in fact customers will expect them in 2011. And also for blogs, people expect to be able to leave comments or subscribe to the blog RSS feed.

For ideas for web design and web page layouts you might want to have a look at the top sites listed in Alexa.com. Alexa.com is a very handy website as you can view the top 100 websites in different countries or by different industry categories.
Use this as a source of ideas to see what kind of web layout and web design have worked for these top sites, (Alexa is also a great source for new business ideas and a useful insight into rising trends in 2011 – for more places to find startup ideas check out my previous post). Also you can check out the kinds of features that they have in common and think about including them on your website.

5. Writing Sales Copy
Although writing content that is compelling and interesting will come with practise. It is important to make sure that you at least make an effort with spelling, grammar and ensuring that your sales copy or content makes sense and gets your point across to your reader.

Next: My 3 Step Process for Internet Startup Ideas in 2011
In my next posts I will be writing about the 3 step method I have been using to create and develop my Internet business ideas and how this can work for you to find online startup ideas for 2011.

Internet Business Startup Ideas

Content: Online Sources of Startup Ideas for 2011 | Real-World Offline Sources of Internet Business Ideas for 2011 | Analyzing the Potential of your Internet Biz Ideas

Online Sources of Startup Ideas for 2011

1. Amazon Bestsellers: One of the best sources of insights into where people are willing to spend money is on shopping sites. And Amazon in particular, being one of the top online e-commerce sites has a very useful feature where you can view products per category and sort them in order of bestselling products. So search the category or drill down to the sub-category of products that you are interested in and look at the best sellers.

2. eBay Pulse: Another useful shopping trend indicator is from eBay. With the eBay feature Pulse which you can find via the ‘buy’ page. It is possible to see top trends from products and search terms; such data is very useful when brainstorming for possible Internet business ideas for 2011.

3. Twitter Trends: on topic trending data. You can subscribe to the RSS feed from Twitter to keep in with the topics that are being talked about on Twitter and lookout for potential long-term startup business ideas.

4. Google Insights: Is another trending tool, which gives an indication of the rise and fall of search terms people are using in Google. In particular look out for phrases that are ‘breakout’ which means that the phrase is not only rising in trend but it rising rapidly. Of course, keep in mind that you are looking for long-term ideas.

5. Google search: enter the generic topic or phrase for the market that you are interested in pursuing, look at what the top search engine results listed are selling, is there potential to monetise the topic you are researching. Also very important is to look at whether there are a good number Google Adverts in the results page. If there are companies willing to pay for advertising, this maybe an indication that they are making revenue from this market.

6. Answer sites: one of my favourite sources for inspiration when brainstorming for new Internet business ideas are the question and answer sites, like wiki.answers and yahoo answers. You can enter your generic topic of interest in the search box and find out the types of questions that people are asking about that topic, is there something there that you could provide a solution to and also monetise it? Plus you can create RSS feeds for your search term to make it more convenient for you to keep on top of the questions by aggregating them into a feed and then go through them in a feed reader.

7. Forums: similar to the answer sites, forums and other such online community sites are a great way to get a feel for the types of things people want answers to. Think about ways you could help solve their questions or issues.

Real-World Offline Sources of Internet Business Ideas for 2011
8. Bookstores: You can also some interesting insights into what people are interested in via bookstores especially by looking at their magazines on sale and also look a their non-fiction best selling books.

9. Television: the TV is still the main media used by everyone and so is still a great source of startup ideas to explore. What are the most popular programs? Is there anything in them that you could provide information for online or related and similar products that you could sell or review or promote.

10. Advertising: as well as looking at online adverts as mentioned above, you should look at other places that companies are willing to pay for ads. Just look at what products they promote and where they advertise them. Look at printed media ads like in newspapers and magazines, as well as TV adverts for inspiration for you to use online.

Analyzing the Potential of your Internet Biz Ideas
These 10 places to find internet startup ideas for 2011 are ideal places to use to get into the mindset of looking for trends, brainstorming these ideas and thinking about the different ways you could make an Internet business from them. Also you might want to think about related products and related information that you can also provide in relation to the rising new 2011 trend that you have found.

But remember you’re looking for upcoming trends that are not just momentary ones but trends that have the potential in the long-term, so you must analyze these ideas to determine if there is long-term potential. For more details on how to do this: 4 Rules on How to Analyze an Internet Business Idea for Potential.

Internet Business Startup Ideas

A simple Internet business idea is a also good way for you to use as a basis from which you can then expand to build a bigger and more solid profitable business for yourself.

Types of Internet Business Ideas for 2011
* Content or Article Writing – earn money from writing articles, blogging or creating content for other sites.
* Consultant Services – providing specialist knowledge on a topic that you are expert in or have knowledge of.
* E-commerce – selling products online including running and maintaining a website and product inventory.
* Auction Sites – sell ready-made products or items you have created yourself on auction sites like eBay.
* Web Design – if you have a flair for design and have some knowledge in web design.
* Search Engine Optimisation Consultant – advising other website owners on how to improve their website targeted traffic from search engines.
* Affiliate and Internet Marketing Services – promoting other companies products and services online and referring customers to their site.
* Home-Based Tutor Services – do you have a skill that you can tutor online via video lessons, written instructions or via podcasts. For example a technical skill such as a computer tutor or a professional skill like writing resumes or C.V.s or a creative skill such as scrapbooking, wedding planning, painting, cake decorating etc.
* Home-Based Desktop Publishing Business – if you have skills in graphic design and publishing, could you design newsletters, magazines, company logos and other stationery, and as a startup offer your services at a competitive rate.

As you can see many of the types of Internet business ideas I have listed above involved using skills and knowledge that you have already whether it is expertise that you have from your professional life or skills you have picked up through your hobbies and interests. But there are other ideas that do not require any prior knowledge and you can start from scratch. I will be writing about each of these Internet business ideas in more detail in my next posts.

But whichever Internet business idea you follow, you will need to do your market research before you startup your business to at least check that is has the potential to be a viable one. So for whatever home-based business idea you have, I recommend that you watch this 4 Rules on How to Find ‘Golden Nugget’ Internet Business Ideas.

Internet Business Startup Ideas

Contents – Ideas covered in this post:
Startup Business Ideas | Marketing Research Process | Internet Marketing Strategies | Free Market Research Tutorials | Internet Business Ideas for 2011

Startup Business Ideas – the Good and the Bad
There are many people who search for Internet startup business ideas, because there is so much potential online to make money. Similarly there is a lot of potential to spend money and time on startup business ideas with no successful outcome. For myself I have found that the most successful Internet business ideas that I have pursued have been those that required minimal outlay for maximum results. In comparison, I have found that where I have bought software or e-books or followed expensive e-courses on setting up an Internet business have resulted in mostly failure!
Ultimately, you do not have to spend alot to find good Internet business ideas as there are plenty of free courses and tutorials out there and many Internet business software tools with free trials that you can use to help you find potential and new Internet business ideas for 2011.

Initial Marketing Research Process
Firstly, what I have found in my Internet business ideas endeavours is that marketing research is the key. Whenever I have got swept away by some new business idea or sales pitch for a new online money making course or e-book, without doing my research first it has basically been money wasted (as well as time and effort wasted)! Whatever your Internet business idea is, you should always do your market research. And the beauty of making money online is that you have a lot of data available to you to research the potential profitability of your target market. Once you have your internet business idea, before you doing anything else with it, you should ask yourself 3 basic questions:
1. Does your intended business idea have a sufficient level of interest? Is there a demand for your product or idea?
2. What is the level of competition for your Internet business ideas? Who else is currently fulfilling the market demand?
3. Does your business idea have commercial value? How can you make money from your idea?

Internet Marketing Strategies
There are simple, free and easy to implement Internet marking strategies that you can use straight from the get-go, that is not only useful but essential for you to save you money and time and effort. You can start you business the right way by ensuring you have the right answers to the 3 questions above. If you do, you can at least start you internet business idea knowing that you have a clear view of what to expect and that there is potential for your idea. If you go into a startup business without at least checking these 3 criteria, then you are going into your business blindly without a plan or definite target.

Free Market Research Tutorials
The ultimate lesson I have learnt in my many many ventures into running internet businesses has been to stop thinking that I know what people want but to let the people tell me what their needs are. These days there are very few instances where someone has managed to create a need. It is much easier and yes it is much safer, especially for a startup business to find a need and then try to look at possible internet business ideas that can fulfil this need.
One particular tutorial that has made all the difference to me is from the guys are Market Samuri, in this free tutorial they explain how it is easy and logical to start your internet business by asking yourself the 3 questions I have listed above.
I recommend that you watch this Free Marketing Research Video Tutorial – How to Find New Internet Business Ideas which not only includes excellent internet marketing strategies but also shows you how to find existing and new internet business ideas for 2011.

Internet Business Ideas for 2011
So this blog will be all about how to find internet business ideas for 2011 that have the potential to become successful, profitable and self-sustaining. Also in this blog I want to show you how to use marketing research to test the potential of these internet business ideas and also what best practise to use to setup and start your online business. In order to make sure you maximise your time and effort and minimise your startup setup costs. Plus I will be recommending the best online marketing research tools and tutorials that I have found most useful.

Internet Business Startup Ideas