Utilizing The Information Age To Gain A Competitive Advantage

Humanity has really begun to take bounds and leaps in the way we communicate and interact with eachother. Slowly but surely this is transforming us from a planet of individual countries to a global nation. For example, a business owner in New York City can contact his office in Shanghai in an instant through various methods of communication, if he needs to he can be on the next flight out and be there in person within 18 hours. 100 years ago this would take several weeks even a month or more, that is how rapidly our world is changing.

But how can you as an individual alive in this golden age, capitalize on the vast amount of free resources openly available to you? Using the internet. There are thousands of people who work for themselves throghout the world; whether the successful entrepreneur be a work-at-home business, brick and mortar, or corporation; they are nearly all utilzing the internet in some way.

The web is particularly important for work at home businesses who rely on the web entirely to make money online. This $1 Trillion dollar industry has only existed in the last 10-15 years, since the internet went global. That is a practically untapped market in terms of a business life cycle, which is why so many individuals and businesses are rushing to the web in search of home business opportunities.

There are literally thousands of ways to make money online: With your own website selling your own products, selling other peoples products, or earning commissions as an affiliate, the list goes on and on. The key to finding your niche is really rather simple:

1. Do research

2. Set realistic goals

3. Prepare a game plan

4. Get the training

5. Keep it up

The internet has provided a huge wealth of information literally at your fingertips. You can learn nearly anything about any topic you can think of; learning and improving your own business is no different. There are millions of potential clients surfing the web every single day, looking for all ranges of products from information to physical products to web services and more. There is an internet market out there for everybody, the trick to finding yours is to search!

Whether you are making money online through affiliate programs or promoting your own small business, its important to understand how the internet market works before investing too much of your time or money. If you are new to the web, there are some things you need to learn about before you can get your business really rolling. Things like web design, Search Engine Optimzation (SEO), internet marketing, affiliate marketing, etc.

All of this can be learned through diligent research on the web. Go to any major search portal like Google.com or Yahoo.com and do some raw searches. How are other people making money online? You will see a vast majority of work at home business owners working as affiliates promoting other companies products or services for commissions. The key is that affiliates can work for literally thousands of companies and earn commissions from all of them. Top affiliate marketers earn over $100,000 every single month, every month.

Many of these affiliate marketing professionals may not even be "internet whiz's". The path to success from a beginner stand point is to find reliable training materials. If you search for opportunities to "make money online" or "work-at-home" you will find thousands of websites telling you how you can own your own home business. The truth is that most of these "opportunities" are recylced rubbish that provide outdated information to you at an unreasonable price. There are however certain dedicated web authors who design their programs to help their users, and despite being few and far between, they do exist.

There are several ways to decide if a work at home business opportunity is legitimate or a waste of your time. Go to http://www.alexa.com, check the traffic statistics for the website. How long have they been in business? Are they getting a high volume of traffic? What are the website reviews saying? All of these questions can be answered and more. By simply doing a quick Alexa search you can learn a great deal about any website, from potential opportunities to your competition.

When you have found a reliable source its almost always worth getting the training if the price is reasonable. Do not think that a high price will provide you with everything you need, many of these opportunities will charge high monthly fees and still leave you in the dark. You can register with a reliable e-commerce business solution with as little as $50 if you know where to look.

No work-at-home business, or any business for that matter, is going to run itself. There will always be time and effort required on your end to make your own business endevour succeed. But by utilizing the information age to your advantage, you can tap into the growing $1 Trillion dollar industry using all of the free resources laid before you. This is for anyone and everyone who is willing to give it a shot, the only thing that can hold you back is you.