Home Business

Start a Home-based E-business
Make money from home by selling products or information on the Internet.
By Jim Doherty
Aug 31, 2010

You're tired of working in the corporate world or you’re a stay-at-home parent, and maybe you've wondered if there's a way to establish a home-based business and start making money from home without incurring heavy startup costs.

The answer may be staring back at you right this very moment from behind your computer screen. If by now you’re not using the Internet in some fashion to conduct any form of business, you should be ashamed of yourself!

In this day and age, you have no excuse not to be utilizing this extraordinarily wide-reaching medium to generate income for yourself. It's 2010 now, and the breadth and quality of opportunities for the home e-business entrepreneur is unparalleled, reaching a level not seen since the 1990s dot-com boom days.

"But wait," you may be saying. “I just don't know very much about e-commerce or Internet technology, so maybe there isn’t an opportunity for me here.”

Ecommerce Not Just for Technological Experts

Before you head off to examine the next home business opportunity on the list, you should realize that there are extremely viable ways for even Internet novices to establish a home e-business. In fact, it is entirely possible for the technological layperson with only basic knowledge of the Internet to start making income online within 3 months, or even less time depending on your motivation level, time commitment, and desire to learn new skills--skills which in fact are not very difficult to learn at all.

The amount of business being conducted on the Internet is constantly growing at a rapid pace, and the number of people making online purchases is increasing each and every year.

Seven years ago in 1999, a Nielsen Media study reported that only an estimated 45 million Americans were Internet users. By 2002, a U.S. Department of Commerce survey had found that the number had jumped to over 150 million. Of those, 56 million had made purchases online.

Since then, online shopping has grown at an approximately 25% clip every year. From a business perspective, a 25 percent yearly rise in any given market is a very dramatic increase. By 2005, the Department of Commerce found that the total e-commerce sales for 2005 had reached $86 billion, a 24 percent increase over 2004. For 2006, e-commerce sales are estimated to have topped $110 billion.

And these numbers are just for the United States alone, which accounts for only 20% of the world's Internet users. Many leading analysts are calling 2010 the “Year of E-commerce,” as new industry trends usher in a new era of doing online business that experts predict will result in a $1 trillion market by 2012.

In this booming environment, there is abundant opportunity for enterprising individuals to grab a slice of the Internet pie for themselves.

If you're unfamiliar with the concept of the lone entrepreneur selling products and information online for big profits, commonly referred to as “Internet marketing” or “affiliate marketing,” it’s a huge and growing industry that’s enrolling new recruits every single day.

Right this very moment, there are already countless self-employed people working from home and making a very good living entirely on the Internet. Every time an item is bought and sold online, these home business owners have an opportunity to get a small piece of the action. Over the course of hundreds and thousands of such transactions, the profits garnered by these transactions quickly build up.