Internet Retailer

$ Earnings unlimited

.You can operate a retail business on the Internet for a fraction of the price it would cost to open a 'bricks and mortar' real-world store. Th Internet also allows you take advantage of multiple income streams.

Product/Service Sales
This is the way that most people think they're going to make money with their retail internet site. In fact, it IS a very powerful medium for making direct sales to both consumers and businesses.

Let's say I invent a new bicycle seat that makes cycling for long periods easier. How am I going to market my new product?

If I buy advertising in the general newspaper, I might as well flush money down the drain. Beside being very expensive, most readers of the daily paper have no interest in tour cycling.

I could buy an ad in a cycling magazine, but advertising is extremely expensive. A full page ad can run tens of thousands of dollars, even a tiny ad can run hundreds.

I could go through the expense and long term effort of approaching retailers and getting them to carry the product - and probably should anyway - ,but I need money soon, not two years from now.

I could try to build word of mouth advertising by giving away samples to bicycle clubs, and that is a good idea, but again can take an awful long time.

On the other hand, I could set up a website that talks about my product. I can give myself as many full page web 'ads' as I want. People who are interested in bicycle touring can find my site if I do my site promotion, and the website can sell them.

The average commercial webspace costs between $25 and $50. For that price, you have as many pages as you wish, available 24 hours a day, and available world wide. You can make it in full color, and can create all kinds of feedback/involvement. All for $25-$50 per month.
Drop shipping
If you are selling custom bicycle seats on your website, people are going to find you because they did a search for bicycle seats, or ran across one of your messages in a bicycling newsgroup, or heard about you from another bicyclist. Since they are looking at your expensive bicycle seats, this tells you that they are likely avid bicyclists, who are devoted to their two wheeled steeds. You also know that they are going to be needing all sorts of other bicycle products and services, and they have the means and inclination to buy them.

This could include bicycle accessories, lightweight travel food, cycling attire, insurance for their bike, and any number of other items. Now, when you are in the making bicycle seats, you probably shouldn't become an insurance agency to insure the bikes, nor should you turn into a dehydrated food manufacturer. What you should do is approach such providers, and see if you can't work out a deal. The best situation is when you can place a page on your website selling their product or service, and people place the order with you. You can then keep 40% as your commission, and forward the remaining 60% to the manufacturer along with the customer's name and address. The manufacturer can then ship to the customer. The same thing applies to services.

Now you can make a tidy profit without the hassle and expense of shipping and storage. In the mail order business, this is quite common and is known as drop shipping.

The 40%-60% ratio is a typical example of the split, but is not set in stone anywhere. It is negotiable.
Consignment sales
If the provider of the product isn't willing to do drop shipping, then try for a consignment setup. In this case, you'll actually take possession of the merchandise, but will pay for it as it sells. The discount is normally 40% or so, but again that is negotiable. This is not as desirable, since you have to store and protect the merchandise and do the shipping, but it still allows you to have the products available without the large cost of buying them in advance.
Advertising
If you can't work out a deal to sell the products or services directly from your website, you can sell advertising space on the site to those who want it. The advertising could be a banner graphic, buttons, or text links, and the rate you charge is entirely a matter of negotiation.
Membership
The old model of the Internet held that all information was free, but that has certainly changed. If you have great information that is not generally available
elsewhere, create a private members-only section of your website and charge a membership fee.

A good example of this is http://www.searchenginewatch.com which is probably the single best way on the Net to learn about search engines. They have a wealth of information freely available, but if you want the latest rules from each of the search engines, as well as the best tips on how to optimize your site for higher placement, you must subscibe. At the time of this writing is $69 a year - a pittance for the valuable information you gain access to.
The nice thing about subscription fees is that they are up-front! You get paid whether or not the subscriber actually takes advantage of the privilege later. This income is also pure profit - you don't need to ship any merchandise at all. Subscriptions also help build site loyalty - if I am a dues-paying member of a site I'm pretty likely to keep going back to it. Besides "inside information", you can make your subscription area a kind of buyers club, where members get the best possible deals that are not available to the general public. This enhances the perceived value of the deals they get.
Ebooks
One of the greatest specialty product niches on the Net is the downloadable sales niche. You can offer information e-books or software - people buy from your website and instead of you having to ship the merchandise to them, the customer can simply download the information from your site. They get near-instant gratification, you save on the trouble of packaging and shipping.
Affiliate Programs
How about "money for nothing and your clicks for free?" There are hundreds of associate (also known as affiliate) programs out there that will pay you a
commission on any sales made on their site for which you are responsible. This is similar in concept to the commissioned product sales idea mentioned
before, but in this case all you do is send the customer to the associate program's website. If the customer buys, you get a commission. The rate is far less than what we mentioned for commissioned products - typically 15% or less, but you have to do no real work.
You sign up with the company who has the associate program, and they give you the code for a link or graphic to put on your page. Once somebody clicks on this, all that is left for you to do is wait for the report on whether or not the customer bought, and cash the commission check. Not bad!
Two great competing sites to find out about associate programs are http://associateprograms.com (of course!) and http://refer-it.com

just to name a few.

It is almost unlimited what you can sell online.

Follow-up:

What makes one website profitable while another loses money? This CD gives you what you need to make sure yours is a winner. Purchase our business manual on CD http://bizshop.com/description.php/pubs//155

Your level of success in attaining the results in our materials depends on the time you devote to the program, ideas and techniques mentioned, your finances, knowledge, market conditions and various skills. Since these factors differ according to individuals, we cannot guarantee your success or income level. nor are we responsible for any of your actions. Any and all forward looking statements here or on any of our material are intended to express our opinion of earnings potential. Many factors will be important in determining your actual results and no guarantees are made that you will achieve results similar to ours or anybody elses, in fact no guarantees are made that you will achieve any results from our ideas and techniques in our material.

The author and publisher disclaim any warranties (express or implied), merchantability, or fitness for any particular purpose. The author and publisher shall in no event be held liable to any party for any direct, indirect, punitive, special, incidental or other consequential damages arising directly or indirectly from any use of this material, which is provided "as is", and without warranties.

As always, the advice of a competent legal, tax, accounting or other professional should be sought.

All links are for information purposes only and are not warranted for content, accuracy or any other implied or explicit purpose.

Low startup

Computer based
High Power Computer