ONLINE FORTUNES

50 hot ways to turn your PC or Mac into a cash machine.

Thanks to the wonderful world of the Internet, your brand new venture can have all the allure and respectability of a mega-firm and can be as easily accessible as IBM, Sprint or Amazon.com, thanks to a few clicks with a mouse.

Here are 50 hot, e-commerce enterprises for you to consider starting now:

1. PUBLISH NEWSLETTERS FOR YOURSELF OR OTHER BIZ: Newsletters are wonderful vehicles to keep people informed of what you are doing. You can develop e-mailing lists to promote your newsletter and distribute it to the greatest number of people that you possibly can. Offer top stories, photos, include a Q&A about your particular business and ask recipients to send you special requests. You might just develop an entire new market and client base that will be generated from your e-mail newsletter. You can start newsletters for the small-to-medium-sized businesses in your community, but don’t ever limit yourself geographically with the Internet. You can create a newsletter for a small company in Alaska even if you live in New Hampshire, providing you understand the business, the topic of interest and know how to communicate to their target market.

2. SPONSOR A SPORTS SITE FOR COMMUNITY TEAMS: Local sports teams in your area—everything from corporate baseball teams and Little League to the high school girls’ tennis team—would love to be immortalized on the web. They might not have a website, but you can create a roving sports reporter website that will include regional activities of all the teams. You’ll include scores, tournaments, events and photographs, thanks to your
scanner. You can charge teams a fee to be included on your sports website, or you can generate revenue exclusively from the advertising you will sell to local sports stores, batting ranges, golf courses and local tennis clubs.

3. PROMOTE LOCAL EVENTS & CELEBRITIES: If you want to help groups in your community, but again, don’t limit yourself geographically, start a fun, tabloid-styled promotional website for celebrities, politicians and events in your region. You can offer interviews with politicians, publish photographs of upcoming theatrical events, and much more.

4. BECOME A CYBER-ASSISTANT: You can launch a personal or corporate concierge business right from your kitchen table. Work for others conducting research, putting together mailing lists, ordering tickets, and more. D.A. Hemphill wrote a book called CyberAssistant (AMACOM, $19.95) that will help give you plenty of fuel to launch this business.

5. OPEN AN AUCTION HOUSE: You can use e-Bay and some of the other online auction houses to sell goods and attic treasures for others. Specialize in one type of item—sports collectibles, for example—or generalize and sell just about anything, anywhere, anytime. You take a profit of the sales.

6. START AN ONLINE ART GALLERY: Contact local artists in your community and scan photos of their art work, sculpture, photography into your computer. Post it on various auction websites or start your own website selling their artistic efforts. You can sell advertisements from local art supply stores, local framers, etc., on your website to make even more cash from your new online business.

7. LAUNCH A TRAVEL SERVICE: Are you an expert in one part of the world? Do you love Paris and know lots of its very special spots, cafes, walks, parks? Do you know the best way to tour the Grand Canyon? Then start a travel website on your obsession and develop advertisements, bulletin boards, chat rooms and have a really good time in the process making money for something about which you are passionate.

8. ARRANGE EVENTS FOR SENIOR CLUBS & GROUPS: There are plenty of senior citizen groups and clubs all over the United States and because of our aging demographics, these groups are growing. But, the activities that seniors in the next few years will crave will probably be a lot more adventurous than what the current crop of 80-year-olds want to do. You can start a website that will attract the activity directors of senior citizen clubs from all over the country. They’ll email you with requests for activities, ideas for trips and party plans for special events and holidays.

9. PUBLISH A LOCAL ONLINE MAGAZINE: How many residents in your community are online? If you determine that you have thousands of folks with online status, consider starting your own online magazine. You’ll write about local events, affairs, politics, publish articles on upcoming shows, plays and community happenings along with letters to the editor, essays and more. You’ll also carry advertisements from local businesses that want to reach a very targeted market. If you are web savvy, this is an easy business to establish and run. You can change your magazine on a weekly, biweekly or monthly basis.

10. TEACH A CLASS: Contact local learning seminars and adult education course directors and propose a crash course on the Internet. You can even sell a guide to accompany your lecture series. Teach netiquette, e-mail marketing, and the nuts-and-bolts of getting online.

11. START AN ONLINE CATALOG: You can sell products created by others on your website. You don’t need to develop any products or invent the next pet rock. Sell what others have such as their products, kitchen gadgets, creative artwork, practical offerings and much more. You can even sell CDs from local bands and groups and help local schools sell their items with your very own online store.

12. START YOUR OWN SURVEY BIZ: You can use the Internet to create your own survey business. You’ll take surveys and polls of Internet users for businesses and others and you’ll also conduct them for fun on a wide variety of topics—sometimes wild and wacky—just to attract visitors to your site.

13. PUBLISH ARTICLES AND FEATURES OFFLINE: You can become a writer specializing in various aspects of the Internet and have your articles, features and columns published in newspapers and magazines. Many newspapers around the country don’t yet have staff writers to develop Internet-related copy, so you can carve out a nice niche for yourself doing this.

14. ONLINE SALES FOR BUSINESSES: You use your website as a cyber superstore to promote and sell goods for businesses that don’t actively use their websites to build their business and sell their goods and services. Promote local and regional businesses. You charge a monthly fee for the service and take a cut of products sold via your website.

15. NOD TO NOSTALGIA: The whole world is excited about collectibles and nostalgic items and you can set up a web business informing your visitors about trade shows, publications, books, other websites, collectors, shops, stores and centers that deal in collectible goods.

16. ENGAGE IN ONLINE TRADING: Proceed with caution, but dabble if you have some disposable income and want to start your own business trading stocks. Make sure you are working with capital that you don’t need to rely on for other uses such as a mortgage payment, tuition costs, medical insurance, or any other significant expenditure.

17. BECOME AN ONLINE ORGANIZER: There are a lot of people out there that are eager to get into the Internet but don’t know how to organize their favorite sites into “Bookmarks” or want to take the time to research some of the options that will be most helpful and valuable to them. This is where you come in and charge for your services. You can develop a questionnaire that you’ll have your clients fill out that will help you understand their needs and interests and you’ll be able to determine what they really need from the tremendous resources of the Internet.

18. START A TALK SHOW: Host discussions and Q and A sessions with guests on your website. Banner ads that scroll through the conversations could be worth a nice income. This could be a serious endeavor or a fun, kitsch enterprise that develops a worldwide cult following.

19. OFFER CREDIT CARD KNOW-HOW: Become familiar with the formats of electronic payment methods and help other entrepreneurs achieve merchant card status. Once a company or an individual decides to start a business online, they will reach the fast conclusion that they must accept credit cards in order to function and conduct business.

20. START A DATA MINING BIZ: Launch your own business in data mining. You’ll analyze sales information to increase effectiveness of your client’s website. Jason Kelly, the author of The Neatest Little Guide To Making Money Online (Plume, $12.95) writes about dozens and dozens of ways you can make money with an online enterprise.

21. EDIT A WEBSITE: Become a web editor and manage the website of a company or individual. You don’t have to have been the web designer or creator to manage a website and keep it current and up-to-date for your clients. You’ll be the webmaster.

22. FOUND A RESEARCH FIRM: Start your own research service for customers who don’t have the time or the inclination to use the Internet. Book travel for clients, order books they need, organize data and information. You can conduct research on a wide variety of topics for your clients and even help them to learn how to do it, too.

23. BECOME A WEB DEVELOPMENT MANAGER: Start your own business as an Internet business development manager and help other small business owners investigate moneymaking options online. Develop a list of your services and start marketing your new business to other small business owners and to individuals who are contemplating starting their own online businesses.

24. SELL YOUR CREATIVE WARES: Start a website to specifically sell your own CD, designer outfit, accessory or book. One doesn’t need a record contract or a big book deal or a Macy’s to make it any longer.
25 HOST AN ONLINE CHAT: You can advertise and promote chats on certain fan topics; use these events to sell ads on your website.

26. JUMPSTART A DATA TRACKING VENTURE: Start a data tracking venture for online businesses. You can help your clients conduct research, analyze surveys and develop new products and services based on your data tracking capabilities.

27. BEGIN A PROMOTIONAL BIZ: You can start a business helping others establish different types of promotions—lotteries, sweepstakes and contests—on their websites. Trivia contests and promotional gimmicks keep customers returning to a website for more fun and playful times. These visits are recorded as “hits” and the more hits one has, the more they can charge for advertising.

28. OPEN AN IMPORT SHOP: You can start your own import shop online. Find a product from another part of the world that you want to import and sell via your website. You can specialize in one product or develop an online catalog. This is an exciting business for you to consider, as the possibilities are endless.

29. TURN TRASH TO CASH: Visit eBay and other auction sites and start your own business turning your junk into treasure. There are so many auction sites available, but do some research and some reading on the online auction action so you can avoid the pitfalls. E-Bay For Dummies published in the IDG series could help you get started.

30. CONDUCT TRANSLATIONS: Start a translation service for companies that want to have their website in a variety of languages. You can be the translation agent, hiring others to do the actual translations if you are not proficient in the language. There are plenty of software programs that will help you translate documents.

31. GO CYBER IN YOUR CURRENT BIZ: Add online capabilities to your existing business. If you have a coffee bar, install a few terminals and rent them to your customers by the hour. If you have any type of business, conduct a survey to see if your clients would like it if you added a terminal so they could go online—for a fee, of course—while hanging out in your shop, store, cafe.

32. WRITE FOR OTHERS: Write articles for companies that need to create material for their websites that change frequently—in fact, daily. Companies need a lot of material to keep their websites fresh and you can work on a complete repertoire of choices, graphs, contests, interviews and photo stories to keep their websites active and build traffic.

33. PERFORM PR SERVICES: Start a business that specifically targets online businesses as your clients. You will be their public relations, publicity and marketing communications center and help publicize their website and web-related activities. Develop contests and other interesting promotions to keep their websites “sticky.”

34. DIRECT SELLING: Take your direct selling products or line of multi-level marketing products and sell them online via your very own website. If you are involved in any type of multi-level marketing program, develop a website to further extend your reach and market penetration. Check with the headquarters to make sure starting your own website won’t jeopardize your relationship with the corporate bigwigs.

35. MARKET YOUR MAIL ORDER BIZ ONLINE: If you already have a mail order business, it is a natural that you consider extending the reach of your enterprise into cyberspace by developing a website. These products could be your own creations or you could market your own online e-mail order catalog via your website.

36. HELP ENTREPRENEURS GET ONLINE: You’ll investigate all the Internet Service Providers and help get your clients online. You can even help them pick out a computer if they need that, too. You’ll educate yourself and become a savvy shopper before launching this business. Make sure you have patience because some clients might resist change and need to be carefully coaxed along.

37. MANAGE E-MAIL FOR CLIENTS: Some businesses and even individuals get 100 e-mails a day. Many are junk, but a significant number might have to be answered even with a short, polite response. You can start your own business offering to manage the e-mail for your clients.

38. CREATE ONLINE SCRAPBOOKS: Thanks to scanning technology, it is very easy to store hundreds of photographs on a disk. And, thanks to the many fonts available it is easy to wrap text around the photographs and create interesting, witty or
sentimental scrapbooks for a wide variety of events. You can start an online scrapbook business that provides a wide range of books or that specializes in one type—say weddings, for example.

39. SELL ADS: Sells ads for others on their websites. Engage sponsors. You’ll be starting your very own online advertising agency. You can sell ads on your own website too, but consider helping others get ads for their websites. Study their business, develop a target list of potential advertisers and jump in selling banner ads that will run across the topic of their website, boxes, and consider sponsorships.

40. PROFIT FROM NET AFFILIA-TIONS: Make money via commissions from your network affiliations. This is the charming business that enables one to make thousands of dollars a month while sleeping. This is how it is done: You develop a website that lists affiliations with other website businesses. Amazon.com is probably one of the most well-known net affiliations. Every time your visitor goes to Amazon.com directly from your website—and buys a book—you receive a commission from the sale. There is no bookkeeping involved, you’ll just receive a check at the end of every month. There are dozens of net affiliations that you can use. To find them, search through Affiliate Sales Program Directories. Here are a few you can search:
www.associate-it.com, www.associateprograms.com, www.clickquick.com and www.sitecash.com

41. BUILD AN ONLINE STORE: Build an online store and sell products from other entrepreneurs. Do you know a lot of crafts entrepreneurs who could benefit by reaching a worldwide audience? Organize them and offer their products for sale on your website shop.

42. BECOME AN INTERNET TUTOR: Conduct Internet tutor workshops for students, other small business owners and anyone who wants to become a “webizen” if not a webpreneur. You can teach privately or you can set up classes, which are much more cost effective.

43. DESIGN WEBSITES: Launch your own service as a website designer. You can follow software that exists if you are already web savvy, or take a course to really hone your talents and skills.

44. START A B2B BUSINESS: Sell services and products related to online ventures. Sell them over your own website. You’ll research and compile ways to help businesses use their online capabilities and sell them support services and products to help them conduct business in a way that is competitive, faster, cheaper and much better.

45. LAUNCH AN ONLINE ZINE: Select a topic you are very interested in and launch a website about it. It will be your online zine and you can make money selling ads. If you love what you do, the money will follow. The Internet is open to all types of interests, so don’t hold back because you feel others won’t be interested in your zine on surfboards that were shaped from 1955 to 1961. If you build it, they will come!

46. COMPILE MAILING LISTS: Put together e-mailing lists for other small business owners. Your clients will be small businesses, organizations, hospitals, charity groups, fund-raisers, clubs, and others who need to compile specific lists for an event or ongoing project.

47. START SPECIAL INTEREST SERVICES: Start a service website that contains listings for events, concerts, and other activities that will attract a dedicated group of followers. Sell ads to companies that are compatible with your products and service listings. For example, if you are developing a website of holiday parties and planning, contact appropriate companies that might be interested in advertising on such a specific site.

48. OFFER PIGGYBACK WEB SPACE: Visit existing businesses in your area and ask them if they have a website. If they don’t, invite them to piggyback on your website for a fee, of course.

49. SELL YOUR PRODUCT: Sell your product via an online cyberstore. You don’t even have to have your own website to sell your wares online. You can tie in with a cybermall or cyberstore by contacting one of the many existing online stores. One of the biggest and most popular is store.yahoo.com. For about $100 a month, you can list up to 50 items for sale using their website and technology. You can design the store yourself, but they’ll help you build a storefront for your new Internet shop.

50. EVALUATE ONLINE NEEDS FOR OTHERS: You can establish a small business helping other entrepreneurs figure out what value the Internet holds for them. You can help them determine whether or not they would profit with an active website, or if they merely require an e-mail address to keep in touch with their customers and offer a means by which customers from all over the globe can contact them. You can also most likely establish an online consultancy helping small business owners get online and manage their online business and website presence. •

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