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Why
Digital Publishing Is the Ultimate Internet Business
By Linda Overstreet Opportunities abound on the
Internet, but one opportunity stands head-and-shoulders above all of the
rest for home based entrepreneurs. That opportunity is in digital
publishing. I have done or consulted with many
different types of businesses, including: CD sales, web hosting, web
services, search engine promotion, pet products, content sites, network
marketing companies, etc. Throughout the various companies I have dealt
with, the one business I love the most is digital publishing.
Think about it. When you are
publishing information products, you have:
You may say that those things are
true of all Internet businesses, but they are not. If you run a web
hosting company, the entry costs are high and you have a high overhead.
You need to have your own dedicated server at minimum which can run in
the thousands. Your margins are usually very tight
as web hosting is a very competitive arena. Then, you come to if the
business is automatic or not. It definitely is not automatic. You have
to provide continuous support to your customers and they really expect
you to be working 24 hours or day...or to have staff that does! Many other Internet businesses will
show the exact same pattern. If you provide any type of service for
example, you can only make money when you are actually working. When you
take time off, your income does as well. You may then respond, "Well
I'll just join an affiliate program and promote them!" What you
don't realize and most affiliate program owners won't tell you is that
the incomes from affiliate programs are very tiny for those members who
don't at least have the first form of digital publishing in
place...their own opt-in ezine. That's right. It is next to
impossible to earn a really good check from affiliate programs unless
you run your own opt-in ezine, which is a form of digital publishing.
People have no reason to trust your recommendations of affiliate
programs until you have earned their trust through publishing a quality
ezine. Starting an ezine (online magazine)
is extremely low cost and will get you started in your own publishing
business. Unlike publishing an offline newsletter which involves you
dealing with printers, postal rates, and other types of expenses, your
ezine will only cost you one low yearly fee ($100 to $400 depending on
how you publish). So, it has a very low entry cost,
very little overhead, and is mostly automatic (as the software does the
subscribing and removes for you). The margins are terrific. If you are
selling ad space for $10 per ad and have 10 ads per issue, you make $100
from ads. If you promote one affiliate program
in each issue, you could earn $200 (this is from a small list of 1,000
or so subscribers). That would total $300 for each issue with no
expenses in sending it out and no ad costs on your part. Once you get
into the tens of thousands of subscribers like many ezines have, those
numbers become much larger and much more profitable.
This is the reason you see so many
ezines being published out there now. With a low cost of entry and high
potential profits, everyone wants to get in on the act. This just means
that your ezine needs to be of a higher quality than the
"norm" being published. Write your own articles or select
articles to be published which haven't been published everywhere else.
Add in a little of your own personal flavor to the issues. Sure, some
people might not like your personality showing through, but the average
reader will feel much closer to you...and more likely to buy from you. Ezines which don't have a
personality to them quickly perish in the heat of competition. Customers
like to see real people. So instead of being big Mr. Publisher, be a
real person with real opinions. Don't worry about being seen as too
biased as you are supposed to be biased. You're human! Then, once you feel comfortable
publishing an ezine, it is time to move onto the next step in your
digital publishing career. Create your own electronic book. Digital publishing of your products
has additional advantages to information publishing in general. First of
all, you have no publishing cost except for the software to create your
manual in the first place. Adobe Acrobat costs $200 and can make a
digital product which can be used on both IBM and Macintosh platforms.
Compare that to print publishing which will cost you a minimum of $2,000
for your book. Digital products have no fulfillment
costs and no shipping costs. Don't overlook the cost of shipping in your
business, as we have paid as much as $150 shipping a training course to
an International customer. Just think what you would lose on that
including shipping and product costs if the order came back as credit
card fraud. Digital products have a final
benefit that in my opinion outweighs all others. They can be set to 100%
auto-pilot. You can have the product sales done by secure order form,
processed in real-time online, and the product instantly delivered to
your customers with ZERO involvement on your part. You could have several products all
selling from different sites all being automatically processed without
you having to spend any time with them whatsoever. The money would keep
coming in while you work on new projects, go on vacation, or spend time
with your family. This is the real dream business. Yes, you do have to spend a lot of
time creating that hot product to sell and setting up the automatic
systems, but the money will just keep coming in once they are up. Take this as the voice of
experience. Automating your entire business is one of the most important
things you can do. Otherwise, you will eventually find that the
"Success" of your business is to the detriment of everything
else...taking up all of your time (even if you hire employees to do the
work you will spend your time managing the employees). When you are first starting out,
selling services seems like a good idea...until you start having a lot
of business and bringing in a lot of money. Then, that good idea quickly
turns into an overload of work. So...In the End...My Recommended
Opinion for Creating The Perfect Internet Business You Can Run From Home
With the Minimum of Hassles Is: Step One: Pick a Market and Subject
You Enjoy and Love.  Webmasters
and Ezine Publishers:Free professional content - pre-licensed to you... You are invited to use this article in your publication or website. The only requirement is the inclusion of the following, after each article used... *Article by Linda Overstreet. Helping 1000's of regular folks profit online. Visit http://www.wealthhere.com for FREE "how-to" assistance, software, manuals, web services and more. * Please
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