Welcome to a World of Web-Based Business Opportunities

Just a year or two ago no one would have believed it. Even those pundits who were most optimistic about the Internet’s future in the world of commerce and business would have been surprised to look ahead a few years to the present and see how pervasive and persuasive the Web has become in day-to-day life.

People shop on it. Investors trade securities on it. Businesses market and sell their products and services on it. Ads in magazines and newspapers, radio and television spots, mailers, and brochures direct consumers to it. "E-commerce" has become a household term. People who don’t have access to the Internet are fast becoming as out-of-date and out-of-touch as people without telephones were 40 years ago.

What is perhaps more surprising than anything about the rise of the Internet is its phenomenal invasion of the business world. Not long ago it was a novelty – a plaything for kids and even adults who could afford to "play around." Today it is a mainspring of success in the world of money-making.

Looking for a business opportunity for your future? Thinking of expanding an existing business? Then think about the Internet. With your own Web site (sometimes referred to as simply a "Web" or "URL"), you can market what you sell to the rapidly multiplying world of Internet users not only locally or nationally, but internationally. You can focus on the types of buyers you’re after, let them look and read and even listen to information designed to get them to buy, take their orders automatically over the Web, and accept their credit card payments via immediate online payment options.

?In fact, there is little you can’t do over the Web these days, and the already narrow parameters of what can’t be done are shrinking by the day.

?This publication is designed to give you a good idea (101 of them, as a matter of fact) of the types of businesses that are using the Internet as an integral part in their operations. Some of the businesses you will read about here need little more than the Internet to run smoothly. For others, the Internet is just one of several components necessary for their operations. In every case, however, the Internet is helping them do more, better, faster.

?We trust that the following directory of 101 Web-based or Web-assisted businesses will give you some inspiring and practical ideas for moving ahead into the booming, profitable world of cyber-success.

<<<NOTE: The following are the disclaimers. You will probably want your legal counsel to check them out and see if more is necessary.>>>

The purpose of this publication is to provide information and ideas in regard to the subject matter covered. It is offered with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, business, or other professional services or advice. If such services or advice are required, competent professionals should be sought. All suggestions and ideas regarding the business opportunities addressed in this publication are merely the opinions of the publisher, based on our understanding of these particular opportunities and the market at the time of writing. No claims or warrants are made as to the feasibility, profitability, or risks inherent in these opportunities. We strongly urge readers to carefully research any businesses they consider engaging in before becoming involved.

The Web sites’ URLs (addresses) presented in this publication as sample sites for each business category were selected randomly for the purpose of example only. These Web sites were accurate and operational at the time of writing. However, due to the dynamic nature of the business world and the Internet, we cannot warrant that the information and URLs will be accurate or functional at any given time in the future. Their inclusion in this document does not imply an endorsement by the publisher of these companies or of their products and services.

Accounting Services

?Even accounting firms, which are traditionally known for their conservative attitudes, are taking their services online to find new clients, explain their services, and communicate with existing clients. The Web offers a plethora of tools to allow these firms to accomplish these goals with pizzazz.

?If you’re an accountant and you want to market your firm to a wider audience, you don’t have to restrict yourself to your own geographical area anymore. With the Web, you can reach out beyond typical boundaries and find clients wherever they happen to be located. At your Web site, prospective clients should be able to see photos of you and any other members of your group. Supply short biographies so that they can familiarize themselves with you and your people. Include degrees, professional associations and designations, work experience, special areas of expertise, and anything else that is impressive about each person.

?The Web site should also include a description of the types of accounting services you offer, and reasons why people who need these services should come to you. Providing tax- and accounting-related information is yet another valuable function your Web site should offer. This is a great medium for posting special bulletins, tax changes, monthly or quarterly newsletters, and other ongoing communications that can benefit your clients.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.ndpcpa.com/acc.html

Adoption Agency

?Be aware that this is a very regulated business with high legal exposure. You are dealing with people’s children and their lives, and if you don’t do it right and cover all the bases, you could face not only lawsuits but even criminal charges – even if your intentions were good. Many (though not all) adoption agencies are non-profit organizations. But this doesn’t mean you can’t make a good living as the founder and director of such an organization.

?If you decide to start an adoption agency – or if you already have one – the Internet provides one of the finest business tools you could ask for. The Web’s unprecedented ability to link people to other people throughout the globe is a true asset when it comes to linking babies that are up for adoption with adoptive parents and making the right matches wherever they may be found.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.adoptionservices.org/index.htm

Advertising Agency

?Traditionally, all but the larger ad agencies with offices in various locations around the country catered to clients they could work with within their own geographical area. But with the advent of modern electronic communications, including the Web, e-mail, and faxes, the geographical boundaries are being torn down and increasing numbers of small and medium-sized ad agencies are going after clients wherever they can find them.

?While the wonders of advancing communications and data transfer are making this type of long-distance client relationship not only feasible but effective, it is the Internet that helps agencies reach out and market themselves to far-flung prospective clients. With a well-designed Web site, and using marketing tools that are available for such sites, an agency can target specific types of clients (i.e., accountant firms, software companies, sports equipment manufacturers, etc.) anywhere they are located.

?At the site, a potential client can get to know the agency and its people via online descriptions and short biographies, as well as the type of work they’ve done via an online portfolio. Convenient e-mail and other avenues of contact can be offered for further personal contact options. Clients can visit the site and request services such as logos, newsletters, ads, and so on, supplying important information and getting bids or estimates. Jobs in progress can even be "published" on the Web for the client’s approval and comment. Billing matters can also be handled via the Web site with online credit card payment. Be aware, however, that many clients will want to pay by check. But online payment capability is a nice option for those who will use it.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.logix.com.mt/logix/about.htm

Antiques and Collectible Sales

If you physically collect antiques to sell, and have a store or a warehouse (or even a messy garage) filled with old and valuable things, a Web site can help you offer those items to a much larger audience than you currently cater to. By listing those items at your site, along with photographs, details, prices, and other pertinent information, you can easily "show" them to a world filled with potential buyers. Because your new customers will be far-flung geographically, you will have to have trustworthy and competitively priced packaging and shipping channels lined up.

There is another way to make money in the Web-based antique and collectible business: become a broker. This means that you won’t have to acquire and physically store the items yourself – two financial hurdles that might otherwise prohibit you from getting into the business in the first place. Instead, you line up sources – companies or individuals who have antiques and collectibles to sell – and arrange to broker these items for a fee or commission. On the other side of the coin, you must market your Web site in a way that will put it in the faces of people who buy these sorts of things.

Once you have your suppliers on line and a growing stream of potential buyers are visiting your site, that site becomes an efficient way to link them, using search features, online ordering and payment (or auction bidding tools), and other Internet technology.

Should you specialize in a particular niche in the antiques and collectibles market? That depends on your interests and expertise, and on the size of the niche you choose to specialize in. If the niche market is too small, it might not support even a part-time business. If you take a "shotgun" approach, you might not be able to effectively market your site to the best audiences. And remember, it’s always better to know what you’re dealing with. If your site offers only old comic books, chances are you can stay "on top" of that market. But if you add antique furniture, jewelry, photographs, art, and religious icons to your list, it would be difficult to maintain your expert status in all those areas.

A word of warning: you must be sure that the suppliers you work with are reputable. If they aren’t, your customers will squeal. This will hurt your reputation and could even land you in an unsavory and expensive legal action.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.tias.com/stores

Aromatherapy Product Sales

Ah .. that smells good! It’s amazing how powerful our sense of smell is, and the effect it has on us. Aromatherapy products such as scented candles have been around for a long time, but in recent years the public has demanded more and more of them.

It doesn’t take a huge, high-tech plant and tons of raw materials to make candles that smell good. Wax, essential oils, and a few other sundry items can get you off to a good start.

In the past; however, aromatherapy product entrepreneurs have not had the Internet to help them take their products to market. Now, even a small operation can have a big Web presence for very little cost, and reach an unlimited number of potential customers. The site can easily show photographs of the candles or other products, along with a list of the scents or flavors that are available, with a description of the effects those scents typically exert on the human body and soul. And of course, the site can and should provide easy ordering options, complete with online credit card payment.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.aromanaturals.com

Art Dealer/Gallery

Who needs to foot the bill for the high overhead expenses of running a physical art gallery when you can reach a much larger audience with almost no overhead expenses? With an online art gallery, you can invite artists to submit digitized photos of their works to you, which you will offer through your online gallery to the world if you decide to accept them.

Of course, you will take a healthy commission for each sale. You can work with a "corral" (a selected group) of artists, or with any artist whose work you think will be good for your gallery. You can specialize in specific types or subjects of art if you wish, such as Western art, art deco, or Southwestern landscapes.

On the buyers’ end of your operations, you can cater to specific markets and audiences, and develop a clientele of repeat buyers. If you specialize in Western art, for example, you could advertise your site on other sites that sell Western apparel, equestrian tack, or guest ranch travel arrangements. Or you could place an ad in magazines that specialize in all things Western. As always, marketing creativity can spell the difference between success and failure.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.airnyc.org

Associations for Professionals, Tradespeople, or Special Interests

People like to belong to associations – especially professionals, tradespeople, individuals who work within particular industries, businesses, or trades – even those who are involved in particular hobbies or special interests. Associations provide a pooling point for group-rated products and services, a forum for ideas and education, a place to solve problems and network with peers.

Millions of people are willing to pay substantial dues for the privilege of belonging to worthwhile associations. The Internet gives responsible entrepreneurs an excellent tool to create and manage associations and earn livings as the directors of these associations.

Okay, you’re not going to replace the National Association of Realtors® for real estate agents. Nor are you going to overthrow the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) with its 30 million members and more than 4,000 chapters. But what about all those dog-groomers who are looking for a really useful professional group to associate with, or all those baseball cap collectors who would gladly pay yearly dues to be able to tie in with a local, national, or even international network of people who love collecting caps?

Finding the right niche where an association is needed and then putting together a batch of benefits that is so attractive that people will jump at the chance to join is the trick (along with marketing your association to potential members, of course.) And a "members-only" Web site of the Internet is the perfect medium for it.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.coloradoroofing.org/membership.html

Auto Parts Sales

Why pay the high overhead of a large car part store that you have to keep staffed with sales help when you can run a virtual shop with a lot less hassle and expense? A well-planned Web site can allow customers to quickly and easily find the desired parts and click up photos and descriptions of them, along with prices and other important information. Customers can then order and pay for them online using a credit card.

If you’re interested in running this type of business on the Web, you can keep the parts stocked at your own location (even a garage or basement storage area might suffice) and ship them from that location as the orders come in. Or, you can make an arrangement with suppliers to supply them with the orders for a commission and let them handle the shipping – perhaps even the billing. This arrangement permits you to offer a much larger selection of parts because you don’t have to actually stock the items.

The keys to success in running this type of business on the Internet are (1) get in front of your market and become a favorite auto parts resource, (2) offer excellence prices that are significantly lower than they would have to pay at the local auto parts store, and (3) make your site easy to use.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.subaruparts.com

Auto Sales

Car dealerships can increase sales by going online. If you own or are involved in a dealership, or are thinking about the possibilities of doing so, don’t forget the enormous possibilities of the Internet.

Existing dealerships have had significant success with Web sites. They make their customers and prospective customers aware of their sites with letters, mailings and on-site signage. They use these sites to advertise their new and/or used vehicles and service values, and include fast search capabilities so interested people can find the exact car or truck they’re after, searching the database by various criteria (new or used, make and model of vehicle, type of vehicle, sticker price, etc.). They attractive photos of their inventory into their sites so that their customers can see them even though they can’t smell the "new car smell."

They also offer special "Internet Pricing" on their vehicles to those who visit their sites. This might consist of a blanket discount on any vehicle, or specials on specific models. Because the sales process can be streamlined when it takes place online, savings including lower salesperson commissions can be realized while increasing the ease of "shopping."

One technique that seems to work is to hire one or more dedicated Internet salespeople. These individuals are given the responsibility to quickly reply to online sales inquires and pursue potential sales to their conclusion.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.grangermotors.com

Barter Exchange Service

Bartering is older than money. In fact, it’s the oldest known form of economic exchange, and continues to be a primary exchange medium in many parts of the world today. You may not know it, but even in the United States, bartering is alive and well – commonly used by entities ranging from individuals to Fortune 500 companies. By leaving money out of an exchange of goods and/or services, savings can often be achieved and trades can be made that would not otherwise be possible. For example, a carpenter who might not otherwise be able to afford a home computer could arrange to build something for someone who has a computer to sell and wants something that a carpenter could build.

Taking this one step further, let’s say that the person with the computer to sell doesn’t need the services of a carpenter, but instead wants a DVD player. How can they both get what they want? A barter exchange service makes bartering much more flexible by issuing "trade units" and allowing members of the exchange to use those units to acquire anything offered by any other member. In this case, the guy with the computer would give the carpenter the computer and get, say, 100 trade units that could be used anywhere in the system. The carpenter would owe 100 trade units. Now, the guy with the 100 trade units could go to another member of the exchange who wants to sell a DVD, and pay for the DVD with his trade units. (To keep it simple, we’ll assume that the DVD cost 100 trade units.) Of course, the carpenter would still owe 100 trade units. So let’s say that the DVD-seller who just got the 100 trade units for selling his DVD wants a lamp stand that the carpenter could make (we’ll say it costs 100 units, again for simplicity’s sake). He could go to the carpenter and pay for that lamp stand with his 100 trade units, which would cancel out the carpenter’s 100-unit negative balance in the system.

The networking power of the Internet lends itself perfectly to this type of an exchange. Should you decide to make this your business, you could earn a very lucrative income through commissions, exchange fees, or membership dues by bringing people and companies together to barter commodities and services.

Sample site in this category:

http://aoa1.com/barter.htm

Bed and Breakfast Inn

Ah, for the life of a bed and breakfast inn owner! Increasing numbers of people are buying into that dream and turning nice large homes in strategic locations into bed and breakfast inns. But many of these people are running into a big problem: keeping their inns filled with paying guests.

The Internet provides one solution to their problems. By putting up an effective Web site for their bed and breakfast inns on the Internet and making sure that their sites are listed properly in search engines, hosts can send out compelling invitations to people throughout the entire world to come visit them. Not only do their Web sites help them advertise their establishments, they also allow them to dispense a plethora of information, take and confirm reservations, and accept deposits or payments to confirm the reservations.

Once they have set up their Web sites, owners can promote their establishments with attractive photos of the neighborhood, the building’s exterior, and interior spaces such as the living room, dining area, library, and individual guest rooms. They should also include an easy-to-understand list of rates for the various types of rooms or plans they offer. Maps (and perhaps photos) of the area with local sights and attractions spotlighted should also be included, plus directions to help guests get there from nearby airports if they are flying in, along with highway route maps if they are driving. One nice touch is to include a photo of the host or hosts, showing him, her, or them to be the warm, inviting, hospitable people that they surely are.

With more and more people visiting Web sites to book travel arrangements, the Internet is quickly becoming the bed and breakfast owners’ premier way to advertise and book their establishments, and to coordinate business with guests.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.merlinnkeywest.com

Bicycle Custom Building and Sales

Biking is not what it used to be. Neither are bicycles. In the "old days" people would buy cheap, heavy, dependable bikes just for transportation purposes. Bikes back then were simple. Dependability was foremost. Bells and whistles were almost unknown. Weight was not a factor. Prices were very reasonable.

Things have changed! Walk into a good cycle shop today and you will find high tech bikes that cost as much as some cars do – bikes with materials and gadgets on them that would feel at home on a space shuttle. You will also find clothes and accessory that cost more than low-end bikes do. Cycling has become a competitive sport that enthusiasts take very seriously. And they’re willing to spend bundles to get the right equipment to do it well.

Building custom bikes that are specially ordered and tailored to the buyers’ wants and needs can be a lucrative business. Essentially, you become a designer and parts assembler, helping customers select from a wide range of parts, and then assembling those components into a highly customized, high-quality machine.

With a Web site, you can make this fun and easy to do. Customers can use your interactive site to view the various available components and read about them – their relative or absolute prices, limitations, benefits, drawbacks, and cross-compatibilities. They can then "assemble" these components, creating the bikes of their dreams. (Your site can be designed in a way that allows only compatible components to be put together.) A final price is then given as well as suggestions for upgrades or cost-cutting measures. Once finalized, customers can submit these orders, together with payments for them: deposits or full payments, depending on your way of doing business. Then you simply build the bikes and ship them.

Of course, almost all of these customers will want to speak with your "real life" voice before they actually commit. Be sure to give them your telephone number and an e-mail box. Sometimes they just need to connect with a human voice or shoot a few e-mails back and forth in order to feel comfortable placing an order for such high-ticket items.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.waterfordbikes.com

Billing Services

Everyone likes to get paid, but no one likes to bill. Unfortunately, most business people and professionals don’t get paid until they bill (and sometimes not even then). Their misfortune can be your business opportunity … if you’re willing to take the task of sending out bills and invoices and tracking payments off their hands. Because some types of businesses and professions have specialized billing standards and procedures, you may want to specialize in a particular niche and market your service strictly to that corner of the market.

Running a billing service is something almost anyone can do these days with the help of a PC and any of the many efficient, easy-to-use billing software programs that are on the market today. A Web site will also be an invaluable tool. You can use it to go after specific types of clients. It will also serve as a "home base" for your client relations and communications.

The following are a few business and professional niches that have a history of outsourcing their billing: medical practices, dental practices, hospitals, counseling centers, cleaning services, nursing homes, answering services, health clubs, internet service providers, cleaning services, veterinarians, rental companies, computer repair, homeowners associations, civic organizations, advertising agencies, paging services, paralegals, country clubs, private schools, psychotherapists, gardeners, lawn service, marinas, massage therapists, messenger service, mobile home parks, pest control, self-storage warehouses, condominium maintenance, trucking companies, court reporters, collection agencies, chambers of commerce … to name a few. As you can see, you have many options for a niche to specialize in.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.nbdsinc.com/billing.htm

Books-on-Tape Sales and Rentals

Books on audiocassettes (and now on CDs, too) have become popular ways to make long commutes or even short trips to the grocery store pleasant and instructive. And there are few better ways to take your mind off the boredom and pain of spending long periods of time walking or jogging around the neighborhood or on a treadmill.

A business that is set up to efficiently take orders and deliver rented or purchased books on tape at competitive stands to do well … as long as that business can effectively market its service.

The Internet can help in all these areas. It allows "audio entrepreneurs" to make your target markets aware of who they are and what they offer, and at the same time, makes it easy to list and describe the titles that are available, the rental rules and procedures, and so on. With the Web’s easy search tools, customers can instantly search for books-on-tape they are interested in, and see rental and sales prices displayed, along with any pertinent information about those particular productions, such as who the reader is, if the book has been condensed, and so on.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.audioadventures.com

Book Sales: Rare and Fine

Believe it or not, there are books out there that would command six- and seven-figure prices if they were sold today. In fact, we would all no doubt be surprised to discover how much money is being exchange throughout the world this very day as rare and fine books change hands. Rare and fine books comprise one of the oldest and most potentially lucrative markets. But like anything else – indeed, to a greater extent than in most areas of commerce – you have to know what you’re doing when you buy and sell these high-ticket tomes.

If you do have that expertise, or if you plan to acquire it, the Internet is the best news that has come along for years. With a Web site dedicated to your wares, you can keep a list of your inventory with plenty of information about each book (even photos of books you want to highlight). And you can keep that list up-to-the-minute, changing prices, adding new items as you get them and deleting books as they sell. You can also include a variety of valuable information on your site – facts about estimating the worth of rare and fine books, tips about how to care for them and insure them … the possibilities are vast. The more good information you include, the more book lovers will peruse your site, and the more books they will end up buying from you or offering to you to include in your collection.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.planetlinks.com/books/inside.htm

Business Brokerage

The buying and selling of businesses is a common happening. Unfortunately (for the sellers), many businesses are sold for much less than what they’re worth. Why? Because few business owners know how to sell their companies for the prices they are worth. They are good at doing what their business does, not at selling a business.

With a good sense of business savvy, valuation, and an effective Web site, you could broker the buying and selling of businesses just as real estate agents sell homes. Businesses are significantly more complex than homes, of course. You will have to know how to place an accurate value on the businesses you are selling, then develop strategies, ads, and marketing packages to successfully sell those businesses to potential buyers. You should also qualify parties who are interested in buying the business, and then work out the best deals for the sellers you represent.

It helps to specialize in a specific business area. Become familiar with the general mechanics of buying and selling companies, but also stay in close touch with the market in the industry, trade, or profession in which you choose to specialize. The Internet can supplement your efforts to achieve this specialized knowledge.

Your Web site will be an invaluable tool in this business. Using proven Web site marketing and exposure methods, you can become a presence in your area of expertise – a trusted broker people will go to when they want to buy or sell that type of business.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.aplusbb.com

Business Plan Writing

Entrepreneurs need money to start and expand their businesses and professions. But to get that money, they need business plans. Fact is, almost all lenders require borrowers to submit business plans before they will consider making loans. The better the business plan, the better the chance of getting the loan. A good business plan is crucial today because business start-up and expansion capital is scarcer and more difficult to obtain than it was a decade or two ago. A business plan is also valuable because it can be used to guide the growth of a company in a logical, goal-oriented way.

Not surprisingly, not many business owners or managers know how to write good business plans. Few still want to take the time it takes to develop and write them. This represents an opportunity for you. There is, in fact, a growing demand for good business plan writers. This can be a lucrative business. There are business plan writers out there who charge several thousand dollars for their business plans.

With a Web site, an understanding of what makes a results-getting business plan, and the ability to write clearly and competently, you can take advantage of this opportunity. You don’t have to be a great literary genius. You don’t even have to be a good writer. You just need to know how to put words together properly, and how to develop and write a realistic business plan that will guide the company’s growth and make it attractive to lenders.

There are software packages that basically automate the task of writing business plans. However, if you want to be successful in this business, you need to go beyond the standard formats these programs offer and create plans that are more specifically designed for each individual company. "Boiler plate" business plans are looked down upon in the lending community.

You Web site must enhance your image. Make it look good. Write it well. Feature testimonials of clients who have been happy with your work. Show short clips from plans you have written as samples of your writing. And of course, make sure your Web site is seen by the right people.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.barclayassociates.com/busplanpreps.html

Buttons and Badges

Manufacturing your own buttons and badges (even magnets with messages) is neither a difficult nor an expensive proposition. Yes, you will need to purchase some equipment and materials. But you won’t need a lot of space or even a lot of experience and expertise.

Marketing your wares doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive either, thanks to the Internet. A good Web site can do your selling for you. All you have to do is get your site seen by the right people, such as association leaders, charity drive managers, political whips, or team sports coordinators. These are just some of the many types of people who occasionally place orders for huge numbers of badges and buttons to be used at special events, conventions, fundraisers, etc.

You will be able to do cool things with your Web site. You could, for example, show graphics (or photos) of all your standard badge and button designs, plus all the designs that can be customized by inserting specific names or words. You could also show samples of special custom jobs you have done for other customers. These would serve to excite your potential customers about what can be done, and at the same time, give them ideas that they can use or adapt to their own purposes.

Be sure to carefully explain how they should go about ordering, what the prices are, how long they can expect to wait for the order to arrive, and any other bits of information they would want to know in order to make a buying decision. Let them know what they would have to do to have a photo printed on the badges or special artwork on the buttons, as well as any addition charges they would incur for those options.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.ccreations.com

Carpet and Upholstery Cleaning

There are basically two ways to handle this business opportunity using a Web site. One is more traditional: you have a carpet cleaning business and utilize the Web to market your services to potential customers, focusing on those who live within your geographical range of operations.

You can offer several Web-based conveniences, such as allowing your customers to use your online, interactive scheduler to book your services. An online quote or estimate utility is another nice feature. With it, they can enter information about the job they want you to do, and it will tell them how much that job will cost. Information is another feature your site should provide – information about carpet and upholstery care, cleaning methods, why they should go to you and not your competitors, etc.

The other way to approach a carpet cleaning business on the Internet is to become a broker of services that are provided by carpet cleaners around the country. Of course you’ll need to cover your bases with firm connections to dependable, quality carpet cleaning companies in the geographical area you wish to cover. (The larger the area, the more you stand to make.) On the flip side of the coin, you will need to go out and get the customers by marketing your Web site effectively. Like most other brokers, you will make your money by finding jobs and turning them over to the actual service providers, earning a fee, mark-up, or commission in the process.

How should you handle the money? It’s up to you. You can arrange with your network of independent carpet cleaners to send you a fee or percentage of the work you send their way. Or you can bill the customers yourself and then forward the payments (minus your fees, commissions, or mark-ups) to the carpet cleaners.

The same Web-based enhancements and conveniences mentioned earlier can be built into your Web site if you choose this second approach. By presenting a high-image site to the public – one that is easy to use, informative, and convenient – you should significantly increase your sales and your prospects for success.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.dalworth.com/default.asp

Checks for Laser and Inkjet Printers

The demand for inexpensive checks for laser printers and inkjet printers has skyrocketed in recent years with the rising popularity and widespread use of computer-based checkbooks and accounting systems such as Quicken®, Microsoft Money®, Managing Your Money®, Quickbooks®, Peachtree®, MYOB®, and others.

With a Web site, you can offer these checks to the public, allowing them to choose from a variety of different styles, then place their orders and make their payments. You don’t even have to do the check printing yourself. You can establish an arrangement with a printer to do the "dirty work" for you. You can even have the printer or a fulfillment company handle the shipping for you.

Be aware that the checks will need to be compatible with the software packages that are commonly being used. In addition, you’ll want to incorporate safety features into the checks during the printing process to help deter fraud.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.checksforless.com

Classified Advertising for Niche Markets

Newspapers have been running classified ads since their inception. Special classified ad publications have been around forever. These business make money simply by serving as a "bulletin board" to link people who want to sell products and services to individuals who are looking for those products and services.

The Internet lends itself well to this sort of business. In essence, the Internet is a huge "publication" with distinct advantages over printed publications. First, it covers the entire world; not just a selected geographical area. Second, it is immediate. New ads can be placed whenever they come in and will be been seen online immediately. Ads for items that have sold can be deleted at any time. Third, it is easy to specialize. You can effectively target a Web site to a particular niche market or segment of the population that would be likely to purchase a specific type of product or service.

One of the beauties of a classified ad Web site is its simplicity. Think of it as a bulletin board in cyberspace. When people want to place ads on your virtual bulletin board, they have to pay you to do so. This can be easily accomplished online with credit card payments, or you can accept mailed checks or money orders. Like the newspapers, you aren’t involved in the transactions at all. You just post the ads.

The other part of the equation, of course, is to make sure that your classified ads get results. The only way to do that is to make sure that the people who would be interested in the advertised items know that your site is "the" place to go to find these offers. This can be accomplished by placing ads (or by trading ad banners) on related sites or in related publications – anywhere they will be seen by your target market.

How focused should your site be? That depends on several factors, especially on how you plan to market it. If you tackle several niches, you may not be able to afford to advertise in all those areas. But on the other hand, if you choose one niche that is relatively small, you might not have enough business to make the site profitable. It makes sense to choose a niche that is large enough to drive your classified ads business for years to come, yet one that can be accessed by tapping into a single type of buyer, such as musicians (but not just piccolo players) or pet owners (but not just gerbil owners).

Like other classified ad publications, it makes sense to charge more for ads that take more space. Offer daily, weekly, and monthly rates – even quarterly or annual rates for people who want to advertise products or services they plan to offer continuously. If you have a flat fee and promise to leave the ad in until it sells, how will you know when it sells? You may end up with a high percentage of "dead" ads that will frustrate buyers and send them scurrying to other classified ad sites.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.musiciansbuyline.com

Closet and Storage Systems Design and Sales

It seems that the sheer volume of "things" is multiplying out of control. With the advance of technology, there is more to buy than ever before – not to mention the proliferating smorgasbord of everyday gadgets, clothes, and everything else that seems to expand and reproduce out-of-control, filling every available nook and cranny in our homes and garages.

Helping people take control of this predicament with storage systems and products can be a profitable business venture. There are many reputable manufacturers of excellent storage systems out there looking for productive sales representatives. To become one, you don’t have to spend a small fortune to open up a traditional shop. Simply open a Web site and market it effectively to consumers.

With a Web site, you can do much more than merely tell people what you are selling. You can show them a variety of storage solutions using your products. You can invite them to fill out and submit to you an online form that describes their storage needs. You can then take that form and quickly design a system for them, complete with a list of the products they will need to buy, and the price. Once again, the versatility and capabilities of the Web adds value to the products you offer.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.spacesavers.com

Coin Sales: Rare and Precious

Like rare books, rare and precious coins have long been a valued commodity in the world marketplace. Coin collectors and investors alike keep trading brisk and prices high. This is a business for well-informed experts. But if you qualify, it can be a lucrative one.

The Internet allows you to create a site filled with enough inventory, fun, special offers, auctions, news, and information to attract newcomers and pros alike, and keep them coming back for more. Consider adding features such as an "Ask the Expert" feature, where site visitors e-mail you questions, which you answer by posting your responses where everyone can read them, and offering an index or topic guide to those responses. Such a feature can quickly turn into an encyclopedic information source that will draw aficionados to your site frequently.

And don’t forget to use all the common retail tricks that work well on the Internet: specials, sales, discounts, and contests, plus the tools that make Web sites so effective, such as online purchasing.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.heritagecoin.com

Collections Agency

Businesses often turn their collections problems over to outside agencies. Collections represent a fast-growing business. The need to collect money on past-due accounts has skyrocketed in recent years as people make fewer cash-and-carry purchases and operate increasingly on a credit basis. Collections agents can go into business with little overhead and have an advantage over larger agencies in that they can generally work with smaller accounts, and pursue unpaid bills longer.

Interested? By tapping into the power of the Internet, you can dive into this business and make it a lucrative source of income. No – you don’t have to be mean. In fact, the best collections individuals aren’t the meanest. They are simply the people who cry the loudest and the most often to be fed. If you call more frequently than the other agent, your accounts are more likely to be paid before the other guy’s.

Be aware of two important limitations: (1) collection practices are strictly regulated because of harassment abuses in the past, and you must be willing to work within these regulations; and (2) you should have the kind of personality that can deal firmly but fairly with debtors day after day.

Before you start, it is important to determine how far you are willing to go in the collections process. Do you want to handle the legal ramifications or will your firm just send out a series of letters threatening to sue and then turn the account back to the client or an attorney? You should also decide how you will charge. Will it be a minimum flat fee or a percentage of the amount collected?

Your clientele will grow as your collection successes grow. Once you have a good track record under you belt, go after the large contracts – corporations with over 5,000 clients who hold charge accounts or other type of credit plans. Just one corporate contract could mean months of work. But a company like this won’t give their business to anyone who doesn’t have a solid track record.

If you get into this line of work, several software programs are available to streamline your operations. A good Web site, of course, will be invaluable for research, marketing, and communications.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.maicollects.com

College Entrance Test Preparation Courses

Good colleges and universities are getting increasingly harder to get into, and the two main things they look at are (1) the students’ grade point averages and (2) their ACT, SAT, or other college entrance exam scores. ?It’s not surprising, then, that more and more students (sometimes on their own, but often pushed by their parents) are paying big bucks to take test preparation courses.

Traditionally, most of these courses have been and continue to be in physical classroom settings where the students gather and garner information and training from qualified instructors. But now the Internet makes it possible to provide interactive, Internet- or software-based test preparation training with a level of effectiveness that would have been impossible outside a classroom setting before.

You might decide to ramp up for such a service, and deliver it to the public with a well-designed Web site that will take the place of a human instructor. (Of course, you’ll need an experience, knowledgeable human instructor and a Web site designer to help you set it up in the first place, unless you have those sets of expertise yourself.) Or, like the site listed below, you could design software-based test preparation packages and sell them via your Web site. Either way, the marvels of the computer age can make it possible to deliver a highly effective service without the physical classroom.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.testprep.com

Computer Equipment Rentals

Computer rentals? Sure. Under certain circumstances, renting computers and peripheral equipment makes excellent sense. Take, for example, a seasonal company such as a tax preparation service that has to staff up big time during part of the year, but coasts during the rest of the year with minimal personnel. The company’s CEO realizes that all the additional people who will be there during the few "rush" months will need computers. What to do? Sure, he could buy them all computers, but that’s a huge expense, and by the following year they could all be "old" and out of date after giving only a few months of service.

Or what about a seminar company that gives two weeklong seminars each year in different parts of the country to about 100 people per seminar, and needs to supply each participant during the seminar with a laptop computer that has been loaded and configured with a specific type of software? Buying 100 laptops that would be "old-timers" in two years after being used for just four seminars hardly makes sense.

There are many other situations in which renting computing equipment makes more sense than buying it. The point is this: computer equipment rentals is a business opportunity that will go nowhere but up in the coming years.

The challenge is to market your company effectively to corporations and institutions, and to make a wide selection of the latest laptops, desktop systems, monitors, LCD data projectors, networking hardware, and other equipment available on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. In order to do this effectively, you will have to tie into equipment suppliers that can allow you to quickly fulfill orders of any size. (Obviously, you aren’t going to go out and buy hundreds of laptops, desktops, etc. and keep them all in your basement.) It also pays to have suppliers in strategic locations around the country in order to keep shipping/delivery costs down.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.rentcomputers.com

Computer Training and Consulting

If you’ve ever had a problem with your computer, you know how frustrating it is to not know how to solve it or who to turn to for help. If you’ve ever grappled with trying to set up a new computerized system or process, or learn a complex, new program, you know how maddening it is to grope blindly in the digital darkness.

Increasing numbers of businesses are turning to outside consultants to help them set up and maintain efficient computer hardware and software systems, fix problems that arise, and learn how to use software programs with maximum effectiveness. In fact, outside expert help is becoming more the rule than the exception because of the mounting complexity of computer technology.

Becoming a computer consultant may make sense for you if you have or are willing to develop an expertise in this field. It makes sense to become a specialist, however, because of the growing complexities – either an expert in systems for a particular type of business or client, such as retail operations, accounting firms, warehouses, etc.; or an expert in a specific corner of the computer industry, such as programming, the Internet, networking, etc.

And don’t forget opportunities in training. Employees need to know how to use the computers systems their companies install. After all, you shouldn’t just set up the system, wish them luck, and walk away. No, the people who will be using the system need to know how to handle it effectively. Computer training has consequently become a huge industry in recent years, and could become a major source of income for you.

An effectively constructed Web site for your computer training and consulting business can help you market yourself to the right people and companies. It will also serve as a valuable tool in your day-to-day operations. For example, you could set up online training sessions and resources for employees at different levels in the learning curve.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.sv-system.com/default.htm

Coupon Service

Some people will pay to save money. If you can offer coupons for groceries, restaurants, movies, or other common expenses at a low enough price, you stand to make a lot of money via an Internet "coupon-cutting" service.

Another twist to this is to offer free coupons, but charge the stores, companies, or organizations that offer the coupons a fee for your efforts in distributing them. After all, coupons are advertising tools design to drive traffic of potential buyers, and companies are aware that it costs money to get advertising tools in front of the faces of their potential customers.

The Internet allows you to take coupon-cutting into new, high-tech frontiers. For example, people who want coupons can join your service and fill out an online form that will tell you what types of coupons they want, and the geographical area from which they want their coupons to come. This type of specificity can make your service highly valuable. The wonders of technology also make it possible to send e-mail coupons over the Internet virtually automatically. Someone could go to your site and request that they be sent coupons that are or will become available for certain types of products from stores within a specific geographical area. Your system (if it has been properly designed) would take over from there, doing all the work with little, if any, input from you.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.hotcoupons.com

Craft Tool and Supply Sales

Crafts are big these days, thanks in part to a comfortably robust economy that has given more people more time and money to participate in them. Whether the craft involves scrapbooks, photography, or woodworking, you can bet there are hordes of people out there who are very involved in it … and willing to spend a pretty penny on the supplies and tools to do it right.

They also need information: how-to articles and instructions, news and trends, and reviews of new tools, materials, or technologies that can help them do what they do better, faster, or easier.

You can supply all these needs with a Web site dedicated to fulfilling the demands of the practitioners of a particular craft. Your object, of course, will be to sell tools and supplies and make a profit. This is basically a retail operation for which you will earn retail mark-ups or commissions from suppliers.

You can supercharge your sales, however, by supplying plenty of good information at no charge to draw them into your site – information such as tips from experts, reviews of new tools and supplies, in-depth descriptions of techniques including new and experimental methods, and notices of upcoming meetings and events. This free information will make your Web site a favorite among many of your potential customers. They will visit it to see what’s happening or to find out how to do a particular technique. And while they’re there they will see all the cool tools and supplies you are offering at competitive prices, and may do just what you want them to do: place orders.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.cuttingedgetools.com

Credit Counseling Services

In a perfect world, no one would spend more money than they made, and no one would leave bills unpaid. Nor would there be any nasty calls and letters from creditors. But since it’s not a perfect world, there is a need for counselors who know how to help other people get out of credit jams and get back on a sound financial track. In order to make this Web-based business opportunity easier to understand, here’s an example of the type of services you could offer.

Jim Brown comes to you, a consumer credit counselor, with a $25,000 debt. He owes $5,000 on his car loan, $7,000 to a credit union for a student loan, and the rest is the result of a gradual three-year build-up of credit card mismanagement. By the time he asks for your help, he is cash advancing one credit card to pay off another. Because his income has not increased as rapidly as his debt, he has started living with a negative cash flow – that is, he is paying out more money each month than he is taking in. The payments he is making on his credit debt aren’t even covering the principal, just the interest.

You ask Jim to fill out a detailed report on the money he owes, including the payment dates, the amount, and the balance. For this service, you charge a modest monthly fee. You calculate the total debt owing, the total monthly payments including rent, car payment, utilities, etc., and Jim’s take-home pay. Then you calculate a percentage of each payment or minimum amount required to pay on his credit debt. You notify Jim’s creditors that he does indeed intend to pay, and that they are required to go through your agency for payment instead of through Jim. You assure them that you will send out checks on a monthly basis. When one debt is paid off, you send the amount that you normally sent to that creditor to another. At the same time, you help Jim control his spending by creating a budget. You can go so far as to take Jim’s entire paycheck, pay his rent or mortgage, utilities, and all other debts, and then give him an allowance for food and miscellaneous items.

Be aware that this business opportunity is highly regulated and you will have to meet specific requirements. Then comes the marketing challenge: you will need to let people know about the service you offer. Again, your Web site will be key in this process. Contact department stores and other types of companies that have a credit system. They may be willing to refer you to their delinquent debtors. One large referral system could be enough to get your company going. If your services prove effective, more business is likely to come your way through word-of-mouth referrals. Powerful, low-cost software is available for this type of business. And the Internet is an excellent tool for receiving funds and paying bills electronically.?

Sample site in this category:

http://www.credit.org

Data Processing Services

Face it – a lot of the work that goes into making a business survive and prosper is mechanical and repetitive in nature: "no-brainer" work. But it has to be done efficiently to save money; and done accurately to prevent mistakes. Paying an outside data processing company to do these tasks can make sense by saving employee overhead.

The Internet is an extraordinarily apt tool to serve as the foundation of a data processing business. You can use a Web site to advertise your services and facilitate them, communicating with your clients and shooting data back and forth as e-mail attachments.

You can offer services for word processing (including document conversion to html or pdf), mailing lists, spreadsheets (including document conversion to html or pdf), index cards, surveys/questionnaires, guest books, microfilm/microfiche, customer and prospect lists, proxy forms … virtually anything that has anything to do with data.

To be successful, you’ll need to be versatile. That means being able to work in a variety of formats – whatever your clients need or want. Be prepared to work in text format (*.txt), Word format (*.doc), ASCII, HTML format , database format (*.dbf), Excel format (*.xls), Acrobat Portable Document format (*.pdf), Access format (*.mdb), Zip format (*.zip), binary, and common data formats. Make sure you have the capability of outputting data via e-mail, 3.5-inch diskette, FTP upload, direct modem transfer (such as Telix and Hyper Terminal), CD-R, or CD-W.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.keypunch.com

Data Storage Online

Too many businesses have been thrown into chaos and even bankruptcy because they lost their computer data for one reason or another. Viruses, electrical surges, accidental deletion of important files, smoke, water damage, natural disasters, theft, sabotage, hardware failure – these and other data-killers zap critical data ever hour of every day throughout the computerized world.

Services that store data for organizations and individuals for a fee provide a valuable service and can earn substantial income at the same time. This is obviously a high-tech endeavor that requires an investment in storage equipment and facilities. But one of your prime business tools will be very inexpensive: a Web site. Your site on the Internet can be used to promote your services, and to lead your clients through the process of transferring data to your facilities for safe, secure storage. The Internet, of course, will be the vehicle you will use to transfer data back and forth.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.securedatasolutions.com

Dating Service

This can be a fun and rewarding business if you avoid even the slightest hint of raunchiness. (There are sites on the Internet that claim to be legitimate dating services, but are, when all is said and done, little more than escort services or worse.) The fact is, people of every shape and size from every walk of life are out there right now desperately seeking someone to date – someone to who they would be attracted, and who would be attracted to them. Unfortunately, for any of a number of valid reasons, the typical dating game has not yielded the desired results, or perhaps they do not want to play it, and they are more than willing to list themselves with a reputable, confidential dating service that can match them up with the right person … or at least suggest good matches for them to pursue.

The Internet is perfect for this type of business. A dating service with a well-designed, frequently updated site can act as an extremely efficient and immediate clearinghouse for people who are looking for romantic interests. The site can reach out within one or more specific geographical area and find people who want to be listed. It can display their personal information and even their photos if they choose to show them. It can then act as a "bulletin board" and a matchmaker to bring people together.

Many dating services allow anyone to view the listed parties, but charge a fee if they want to contact one of those people.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.americansingles.com

Electronic Publishing

A sometimes confusing job description, electronic publishing is revolves around Internet Web sites, electronic bulletin boards, and network systems. Basically, electronic publishing involves downloading information from one or a number of sources, making a few changes, and publishing or making the information or materials available through the Internet or your computer. When writers, analysts, anyone with an interest in the subject covered, or any other "information consumers" want to tap into the information you have placed on the Internet via your Web site, they pay you to allow them to access it and to download the material onto their own computers.

A properly structured Web site will automatically keep track of who downloads what information, and then charge the users who downloaded the material, preferably via their credit cards. There are other ways to bill, of course. For example, the system could be designed to give you the records you need to bill each customer on a monthly basis.

You can electronically publish almost any type of materials: fiction, non-fiction, artwork, real estate information graphics information or designs, or just about anything else that people will pay to get. The Internet has become the prime medium for spreading information to a large number of people without geographical restrictions.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.millstar.com

Employment Agency

The Internet lends itself perfectly to the employment agency business. People looking for good jobs can e-mail you their resumes, and companies looking for good people can e-mail you their personnel needs, along with job descriptions, salaries and benefits, and other important information.

You can take an active role in match-making, or you can let individuals and companies post their information in your site for a small fee, and then visit your site to find what or whom they are looking for. You can work out other forms of payment for your services as employment agencies do.

The trick is to become an important player within a given industry. For example, if you decide to operate in the oil industry, you want to establish a name for yourself as "the" place petrochemical professionals and scientists go when they’re looking for a job with an oil company, and "the" place oil companies go when they’re looking for petrochemical experts. No matter what niche you choose – whether it’s airbrush artists or violin-makers – you can do well if people know your Web site is where potential employees find companies in that line of work, and vice versa.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.charlesfoster.net

Entertainment Booking Service

If you’re hooked up with the world of entertainers, the Internet can help you get those talented people gigs at various functions, such as company events, conventions, private parties, holiday celebrations, weddings, birthday parties, religious celebrations, or any other event where people get together and want to be entertained.

The types of entertainment you can book are diverse. You can specialize or take a shotgun approach. The possibilities include comedians, keynote & motivational speakers, masters of ceremonies, magicians, various types of dancers, actors and actresses, caricaturists, disc jockeys, and the whole spectrum of musicians, including classical, jazz, ethnic music, variety bands ranging from swing to rap, pop, rock bands, country and western bands, and blue grass groups.

As a booking agent for entertainers, a Web site will allow you to feature video clips, audio clips, photographs, and plenty of information about the entertainers you represent. Clients and potential clients can visit your sight, see and hear enough to make their decisions, complete the bookings, and make their deposits online.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.erols.com/btam/index.html

Environmental Products Sales

The care of nurturing of our environment is becoming an increasingly crucial issue with the mounting threats from industrial pollution, petrochemical pollution, and other sources of environmental hazards. People everywhere are becoming more aware of the problems our environmentally insensitive practices and attitudes have caused and are causing, and growing numbers of consumers are willing to spend a little more money if they have to in order to buy products that will help us save our earth.

A business that markets environmentally friendly products can use a Web site not only to display, describe, and sell those products, but to provide plenty of compelling information explaining why the purchase of those items will help protect the world around us. Many of these products also provide significant personal benefits. For example, environmentally friendly soap might be better for human skin; environmentally sensitive cleaning solutions might be much safer than regular cleaning solutions (a definite plus in homes where children live); and environmentally responsible organic foods might deliver more nutrition and less toxic substances than typical foods.

If these types of claims can be made, they should be driven hard into the market’s consciousness. What better tool to do this than the Internet? For savvy entrepreneurs, here is an opportunity to do something nice for Mother Nature, while at the same time tapping into a booming market that will only get better in the coming years.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.earthbaby.com

Event Planning

Do you have or can you acquire the expertise and resources to help a company plan a special meeting, executive retreat, sales event, grand opening, or convention? Could you help a large and widespread family organization pull off a family reunion at a mountain resort or beach retreat? Could you take charge of planning and pulling off these events on time, within budget, and without a hitch? Could you arrange air travel and hotel accommodations, airport transfers, spouse activities, meeting facilities and catering, children’s programs, sightseeing tours, recreation, and everything else it takes to make a special event happen for a large organization?

If so, consider a career in event planning. This is a booming specialty niche of the service industry that has become important to large organizations because of the increasing complexity of arranging and carrying out group events. Event planners can earn big bucks in the form of commissions from travel and special event service providers.

A Web site has become a virtual "must have" if you want to succeed in this business. Whether you set yourself up as "the" event planner in a specific area that is popular for special events, or cater to certain organizations (or types of organizations), taking them wherever they want to go as their events planning guru, your Web site can help link you to your clients and to the suppliers of travel and special event services. Plus, of course, the Internet can help you market your services to prospective clients.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.eventsolutions.com

Executive Recruiting

Often called "headhunting," executive recruiting involves, on the one hand, finding the right higher-level executives and managers for organizations that are looking for them, and on the other hand, finding the right organizations on behalf of the executives. Most executive recruiters restrict their focus to a specific industry or business, or to a limited geographic area that they stay abreast of.

As a executive recruiter, you will use a database or contact management software to keep tabs on people and organizations, and to stay in close touch in order to know when and where needs arise. You must then get the word out through a Web site, making a name for yourself in the niche in which you operate, letting everyone know that you put people and companies together. Use testimonials and other credibility-building devices lavishly in your Web site. No one is going to want to waste their time on you unless you can convince them that you can do the job for them. You Web site will be the key to accomplishing that objective.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.bishopinc.com/executiv.htm

Fitness Supplies and Training

With the baby boomers now at the age where they can’t take fitness and good health for granted anymore, fitness supplies, supplements, and training are coming on strong. Want to get in on the profits? Try a Web site. Some sites have successfully taken a wide variety of great products to this growing market by offering value-added information and services.

For example, personal training can be offered, in which people interactively communicate their personal and physical information, situations, training objectives, and capabilities to an on-line training expert, who provides a free evaluation and sets up a training program for that person.

The core of the site, of course, is the product catalog. People who come to the site and get free personal training services, as well as lots of exercises, health and fitness tips, are primed to stay right there and purchase the products that have been suggested by their trusted personal trainer. Here again, the Web offers the perfect tool to pull people in and create sales.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.betterbodz.com

Flower Grower

There are less pleasant ways to make money than growing flowers. But once you grow them, you have to sell them. Instead of seller your blossoms at wholesale prices to middlemen, who will turn around and market them to the public for a hefty markup, why not keep some of that loot yourself and give the public a discount while you’re at it?

You can now do it with a Web site – one that will attract people to it and make it easy to place and pay for flower orders online. Part of the attractiveness of your site will be the ability people will have to see photos of the beautiful bouquets they can order. This is something you can easily do on a Web site – something you can’t do over the telephone (which is how consumers typically order their flowers).

Spice up your site with information about flowers from experts – what they are, where they grow, what they symbolize, how to take care of them, etc. Offer specials: holiday specials, weekly specials … maybe even daily specials. Provide articles about flowers and flower-related things. Add value to your products and generate ongoing repeat sales by giving people discounts for signing up for an automatic feature in which you send a specified order of flowers to a particular person on their behalf on a special day each year, or on a more frequent basis. This adds up to convenience for them and big profits for you.

By selling direct to the public, you, as a grower, must of course get into the distribution business. You will have to arrange efficient, fast delivery options with carriers, and explain those options to your customers when they order, allowing them to order even overnight delivery for an extra charge.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.proflowers.com

Food Specialty Vendors

If you have expertise and connections (or are willing to develop them) in specific food or libation niches, consider marketing these specialty products on the Internet with a well-designed Web site. In order to make a good profit, chances are you will have to select higher-priced items – such as specialty caviar, wine, coffee blends, or meats, to name a few possibilities – products that people will be willing to buy at higher-than-grocery-store price levels for festive occasions and gifts.

The Internet’s ability to drive traffic from particular demographic or special interest segments of the population to certain Web sites makes it possible for you to market your specialty foods and drinks to the market segments that will most likely produce good customers. (For example, you could get advertising space on a wine-lovers’ club Web site.)

Marketing on the Internet allows you to increase sales by offering more information about your products than you would offer in a typical retail setting. Let’s say you are going to offer wines from around the world. You could have a write-up on the nature of the wines from each of the different parts of the world – how they differ from other wines, how they are produced, what they are known for, their history, and so on.

You could also use your site to sell value-added services, such as membership in a wine club that automatically sends you (or the person for whom you buy a gift membership) a bottle of exotic wine from a different country every month of the year.

To enhance your e-commerce sales, be sure to take advantage of traditional retail sales techniques that have been successfully employed in physical retail settings – if they apply, of course. Special sales offers for the various holidays is one of many techniques that works great in any retail application.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.secretcellars.com

Foreign Language Study Aids

In a world of increased internationalization, many Americans are finding that it pays to know another language. On the other hand, many non-English speakers are coming to the United States and need to learn English. Whether the task is to teach English to non-English speakers, or to teach non-English languages to English-speaking people, there is a brisk market for language study tools that work.

If you offer these tools, or want to get into the business of selling them, a site on the Internet will help you succeed in this growing business. Audio learning tapes, video courses, books, interactive CD-ROM courses, and other aids can be listed, described, shown, and even sampled at your site by Internet consumers. Don’t hesitate to "prime the pump" by offering some freebies, and by including links on your site to other foreign language resources (not to your competitors’ sites, of course).

Sample site in this category:

http://www.tlwh.com

Freelance Job Brokerage

There are a lot of freelancers out there – graphic artists, photographers, writers, illustrators, editors, and others – who want work. These people aren’t looking (generally speaking) for jobs as regular employees. They’re looking for individual freelance job assignments. That is the basic distinction that makes a freelance job brokerage Web site different than an employment agency site.

In many other ways, the two are similar. As a job broker for freelancers, you will want to establish yourself in one or more particular niches. Why? Because your success will depend on being perceived as the best site to visit if you are, say, a photojournalist looking for a job; or if your are an editor looking for a photojournalist to tackle a particular assignment – perhaps one that requires specific experience or expertise.

There are various ways to earn money in this business. One way is to charge freelancers and those who are looking for freelancers a fee for posting their messages on your site – similar to a "Help Wanted" or "Looking for Work" classified ad fee. Or you could actually broker the jobs that come in, matching projects that need professionals with professionals that need projects, and taking a commission for your labors.

By operating within a particular niche, you can more easily and cost-effectively target your marketing efforts where they will produce the most results. However, you will have to decide how narrow to make your niche. If you get too tight, you might be needlessly restricting your opportunities.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.freelanceonline.com

Fulfillment Services

Packaging, logging, and shipping orders that have been received and paid for by a company’s clients is a process called "fulfillment." In its simplest form, fulfilling orders involves putting on labels and shipping a finished and packaged product which has been delivered to you by your client, the maker of the product. You will usually be required to document your deliveries.

But fulfillment can be much more complex than that. It can involve the entire, start-to-finish ordering, payment, and delivery functions of a business. It can entail large warehouses filled with packages that have come in from various manufacturers – items which must be assembled into single packages and shipped around the world. It can also involve an army of order and payment processing personnel.

Of course, you don’t have to start out on this scale to make good money from fulfilling orders – especially if the product you are fulfilling is small enough to allow you to store a sufficient number of them in your home office, basement, or garage. Beyond that, a Web site and the normal assortment of office equipment will supply the tools you need.

Use your Web site to help you market your services to mid-sized companies and distributors, or wholesalers – they make great prospects because they are not large enough to have a designated shipping department may not have an effective inventory system.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.hutchins.com/fulfillment.html

Furnace Maintenance and Repair Service

Like any other piece of equipment, furnaces need repair occasionally and maintenance on a regular basis. Beyond changing filters, people typically let their furnaces go year after year until a breakdown occurs, at which time they don’t know who to call, and fear that whoever they do call will rip them off, do a lousy job, or both.

By offering your furnace maintenance and repair services online, you can tap into the benefits of being "listed" in the world’s most popular "yellow pages." With a Web site, you can create the credible, trustworthy image you deserve, providing testimonials, instructional information about the proper care and feeding of furnaces, and other information about how much you charge, how long you typically take to respond, and so on.

The trouble is, as a furnace repair technician, you will be limited to a geographical area that is within relatively easy reach of your home or shop. Thus, your potential market will be limited. There is a way to get around this, however. Instead of providing the service yourself, consider becoming a broker of furnace maintenance and repair services. That is, you set up a network of good, trustworthy repair people or companies throughout the country (you can start with a one-state or one-region area and move out from there), and use your site and peripheral marketing tools to get the customers. Once the customers come to you, you refer them to a repair service in your network that is closest to them. Of course, you will have worked out money arrangements with these services in advance so that everyone knows what the customers will be charged, and what you will earn for making the referral.

You must decide how much of the billing process you want to handle yourself. You could, for example, do it all: bill customers, receive their payments, and send payments to your networked services. Or you could let the repair services do their own billings and send you a fee or commission for the referrals you make.

Sample site in this category:

http://syracusebusiness.com/hvac/seastead/seastead.htm

Genealogy Research and Services

For some strange reason, millions of people have a craving to discover their roots; i.e., learn who their ancestors were, where they lived, what they did for a living, who they married, how many children they had, whether they were upper class or lower class (everyone seems to be descended from at least one king or queen), whether they spent time in jail or were hanged for stealing horses, and so on.

Using the Web as your primary tool, you can help people find the answers to those questions and hopefully create family trees whose roots reach back hundreds of years. Creating a site on the Internet that will provide a comprehensive approach to genealogy and an efficient engine for searching back through the centuries for lost ancestors is not an easy task. But it can be done. Indeed many have done it.

One word of caution: many genealogy Web sites – very good sites –offer information at no cost. This means that you must target serious genealogy enthusiasts and design a site that will be valuable enough to them to pay for yearly or quarterly subscriptions or memberships to use it. Such a site would include educational materials to help interested newcomers learn the ropes. There should be material at the site to help even the experts perfect their techniques. In addition, the site should create a virtual community of genealogists who are willing to share information with you and with one another as they discover it. This will help you expand your database and give more people a broader and more in-depth level of help.

Another way to make money with a genealogy-oriented Internet site is to offer to perform the actual "detective" work for people who want to discover their roots (for a fee, of course), and use the Internet and other resources to accomplish that goal.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.ancestry.com

Graphic Design

Are you a graphic artist? Do you want to offer your services to a wider audience of potential clients than you now reach? Would you like to focus your marketing efforts on a specific niche or niches?

Then you should have your own Web site – a site that will enhance your image to prospective and existing clients alike; a site that will explain how you work and what you charge; a site that will display a "portfolio" of your best work. Because you are a pro, you can design your own site to be a true showcase … a real image-enhancer.

In addition to helping you get graphic design jobs, your site on the Internet can serve as an excellent image "brochure" to which you can refer new clients or potential clients – people who come to you by word-of-mouth or through other avenues. These people might have heard of you or been referred to you, but haven’t seen samples of your work. Before the Internet, you would have had to show them your portfolio either by taking it to them in person (an ineffective use of time if the prospect lives close by, and usually an impracticality if the prospect lives out of your town or state), or by shipping it to them and hoping that your prized and irreplaceable portfolio doesn’t get lost or damaged.

When you have your portfolio displayed proudly on your Web site – just a few clicks away from the eyes of potential clients – you avoid all the hassles and wasted resources. Any interested party can see what you’ve done immediately – even while you’re on the phone discussing the project.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.brunz.com/profile.html

Grocery Store

An online grocery store? Sure! The benefits to consumers are many. For starters, few people really enjoy grocery shopping. It takes time; it’s boring; and there are all those bags they have to haul to their cars and then lug into their houses. The idea of going online and ordering the coming week’s worth of groceries in a few minutes’ time would have to be appealing to customers – especially if the site makes it easy. They can just browse through the virtual store, drop the items they want in their virtual shopping carts, pay online with a credit card (no waiting in a check-out line), and that’s it. Within a few days their orders will arrive on their front porches. Another consumer benefit is the fact that shoppers will save money by not buying "impulse" items, which has been said to account for 60 percent of all grocery store sales.

There are compelling benefits from the grocer’s point of view, too. One overwhelming benefit of going online is the fact that you will immediately expand your market area from a few miles radius to the entire nation, or beyond!

There are some limitations, of course. You won’t want to offer groceries that have a short shelf life. Yes, you can send frozen goods – frozen meats and other frozen items can be packed in dry ice and shipped in special containers. And of course you can ship canned and bottled goods, dry goods, and other items that won’t go bad soon.

Some online grocery stores offer an assortment of items that is almost as wide and diverse as what you would find in many physical stores. Many, however, limit their offerings to specialty items – top-quality frozen meats, for example – and market themselves to those niche markets.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.groceronline.com

Group Discounted Buying Service

It’s no secret that when you get a lot of people together who want to buy the same thing, you can often go to the seller and get a discounted price, thanks to the power of volume buying. In fact, huge chains like K-Mart and Wal-Mart have built empires on the clout that comes with making large-quantity purchases.

The Internet makes it possible to take this principle to an exciting new level. There are sites out there right now that having already gone there, and there is room for other aggressive cyberspace entrepreneurs who want to get involved.

The concept behind such a site is relatively simple. You arrange with manufacturers of commonly used products to give you discounted prices on specific products. These are not flat discounts, mind you. They are sliding-scale discounts which make the price drop as the number of units that you finally order rises. For example, you could arrange to get $400 VCR decks for $350 if you order 50 of them; for $325 if you place 100 orders; for $300 if you get 150 orders, and so on down to a rock-bottom price.

Once you’ve arranged for sliding-scale discounts on a number of products (the more the merrier), you list these items on your site along with photos and descriptions of them, their normal retail prices, their current discounted prices, and the remaining time that the offer will be available.

An interested party can e-mail a "bid" for one of these products to your site, specifying the maximum price he will pay for it – a price which may be below the current discounted price. As more people "buy in" to the product, the price will drop as per your sliding scale discount arrangement with the supplier, and additional people who placed bids below current prices will "buy in" as price levels fall to and below their bids. (If the final discounted price is lower than their bids, they pay that price – not what they bid.) This system creates a snowballing effect which drives prices even lower. It is also a good idea to allow bidders to raise their bids. This comes in handy as time runs out on particular product offers and they see that their bids are still below current prices and they want the products anyway. Rules and procedures for the site can be customized to your needs, but this is the basic protocol.

This type of a site benefits greatly by word-of-mouth advertising as people who want to buy the product call and e-mail friends to tell them to get in on the action. This of course is self-serving, because the more buyers participate, the lower the cost falls. But it serves its purpose. Customers benefit, and the site benefits as more and more buyers see how great it is and decide to put it on their "favorites" list.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.mercata.com

Guidebooks

With a site on the Internet, you can do more than just sell guidebooks: you can create them! Let’s say you want to write a comprehensive guidebook on bed and breakfast inns throughout the United States. You know that taking a few years off work and spending a fortune to visit them all would be an unfeasible (though pleasant) proposition. So how do you gather the information you need? You solicit reviews from people who have stayed at bed and breakfast inns via the Internet.

What will make them want to submit reviews to you? There are a number of incentives you could use, such as offering them a discount on your bed and breakfast guidebook when it becomes available, or offering a free, inexpensive gift. You may not even have to offer more of an incentive than letting people know that the collective reviews that are sent in will result in a great guidebook that will help them avoid the bad places in the future and zero in on the good ones. After all, wouldn’t you rather hear what 10 or 50 or 500 people have to say about these places after they’ve actually stayed there – everyday people rather than paid reviewers or critics?

Also, ongoing input from people over the Internet will keep the reviews up-to-date, catching the changes that inevitably arise.

How will they people about your site in the first place? That’s a matter of effectively listing and marketing your Web site using such methods as cross-Web advertising, banner exchanges, appropriately placed print advertising, etc.

Once your guidebook is published in a hard-copy format., you can offer it at a fair price to the public, and capture their names, telephone numbers, and addresses for the purpose of marketing new editions to them in the future. You might even consider offering an online edition of your guidebook, to which they can buy a yearly membership and tap into the very latest reviews at any time.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.zagatsurvey.com

Home Care Providers Network

In virtually every city throughout the country, and in many rural areas as well, there are elderly and recuperating people who need in-home personal care services. These people may have no one to care for them, or perhaps their normal caregivers (their spouses, family members, or friends) need breaks occasionally.

Often, the services these people need do not require medical care. Rather, they involve simple tasks that are beyond the physical and/or mental capabilities of the person being cared for. These tasks might include light housekeeping, companionship and conversation, meal preparation, helping with wheelchairs and walkers, laundering clothes, hairdressing, accompanying clients to appointments, changing bed sheets, grocery shopping, medication reminding, running errands, local sight-seeing or shopping trips, and generally helping with personal care matters such as bathing, dressing, and grooming.

Home care service providers may be needed for a few hours a day, a day a week, every other day, 24 hours of every day, or to cover for normal caregivers during vacations or specific periods of time when they cannot be there.

Creating a network of home care providers is a potentially profitable business opportunity. A site on the Internet can be a key tool to take advantage of that opportunity. The site could be used not only to help build and manage a network of providers, but to market your services to people in an unrestricted geographical area and administer caregiving assignments.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.homewatch-intl.com

Incorporation Services

If you have the legal wherewithal to help people incorporate their businesses, form limited liability companies (LLCs), perform trademark searches, and provide registration services, consider offering these services online via a Web site. You should be able to make a good profit and still do it for significantly less than it would cost otherwise.

Make sure you can provide these services for businesses located anywhere in the United States. Streamline your operations by using an online form to gather the necessary information from your clients. Include lots of information at your site regarding the benefits of incorporating, the unique features of limited liability companies, the tax and reporting requirements involved, and answers to other common questions and concerns.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.bizfilings.com

Instructional Books, Manuals, Reports, and Tape Sales

If you want to sell instructional materials – books, manuals, reports, tape sets, etc. – the Internet provides an excellent medium for advertising, selling, and distributing them.

?One word of advice: In order to get, give! That is, in order to get sales, give free information. Let’s say you want to launch a site that will sell instructional publications and tapes for aspiring graphic artists. You round up a collection of the best books, reports, and manuals you can find. You arrange with the publishers of these items to give you distributor discounts on them, which will allow you to sell them to the public for healthy retail mark-ups. These will be the products you will sell.

Now, the trick is to get prospective buyers to visit the site and get interested in your products enough that they will buy them. How do you do that? One very effective way is to obtain permission from the publishers to offer bits and pieces of their materials for free at your Web site. Thus, when would-be graphic artists are surfing the Internet to find information about graphic design, they will be led to your site (assuming it is properly listed with the right search engines) and their appetites will be whetting with valuable information.

This will accomplish two objectives: first, it will help members of your target market by giving them information that they can use; second, it will serve as a "carrot on a stick" to persuade them that they need to get "the rest of the story" by ordering the full book, manual, tape, or report from which the information came.

Be sure that the information you offer is truly valuable and worth the time your potential customers spend to find and read it. Only then will they use your site as an ongoing reference and become buyers … and hopefully even repeat buyers!

Sample site in this category:

http://www.parapublishing.com

Jewelry Sales

When people buy fine jewelry, they typically expect to pay high prices. Moreover, they accept the fact that a good chunk of those high prices goes to middlemen who have hefty overhead expenses.

What if you set up a Web site that would be the only "middleman" between the manufacturer and the consumer? By doing so, you could cut out the cost of at least one and probably two or more levels of middleman expenses. And because your Web site is a low-overhead operation (no brick and mortar shop to pay rent for; no sales personnel to pay salaries to; etc.) you can make a healthy profit without adding significantly to the manufacturers’ costs.

Shoppers will want to see your wares, of course. In a physical retail jewelry store, they can do more than see them: they can touch them and try them on. Your buyers won’t be able to do that, so make sure that your site provides excellent, attractive photos of these items; and make certain that the photos are large enough to show them in beautiful detail. You may even want to include a measuring ruler to the side of the photo to give your shoppers a fix on the actual sizes.

Tell your potential customer what a great deal they are getting when they buy jewelry from your site, and why prices are so low. Also stress the quality of the items you are selling. Remember value cannot be established on the basis of price alone or quality alone. Value is the right combination of price and quality levels. Be sure that whoever visits your site realizes why you can offer the wonderful values you offer. Drive it home simply and clearly, without taking much time/space to do so.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.bestwishes.net/bestwishes/earings.html

Jewelry Custom Creations

"Do-it-yourself" now comes to the fine jewelry world – well, at least "design-it-yourself." If you’re a jewelry-maker and you want to expand your business, consider allowing customers to make their own selections from your basic designs for various types of jewelry, and then choose the color and type of metals, gems, etc. to complete the jewelry. Once those decisions are made, you produce the items and ship them out after they’ve paid for it, of course).

You can make all this happen with a Web site. You can go after customers from virtually anywhere you can safely ship jewelry to. By visiting your site (assuming that your site is well designed, which of course it will be) they will be able to see the various basic designs for the different types of custom jewelry you offer (earrings, necklaces, broaches, rings, and so on). They will also be able see a wide range of options that may be selected for each design – options that include a variety of gems and precious metals. They will then be able to select the options they want and virtually design the jewelry on their own, letting their preferences and creativity run amok.

One suggestion would be to include prices for each basic design, and prices for each of the options. Design your site so that as they select these options, the price for the piece of jewelry changes to reflect their choices. This will allow them to keep tabs on the price as they proceed through the design procedure.

Once the piece or pieces of jewelry are designed to their satisfaction, they simply submit their orders to you while still at your site, and pay for the jewelry and shipping/handling costs with their credit cards. With this kind of interactive freedom, your customers will soon become addicted to designing and buying custom jewelry from you!

Sample site in this category:

http://www.st7.yahoo.net/sparklers/customjewelry.html

Legal Services

Are you an attorney? Do you have a law firm? Will it pay to have your own Internet presence? If so, how will it pay?

Yes, a Web site will pay if it is designed right and includes the right information. What information? For starters, you need to tell about your firm: what you specialize in; who you and your people are; what your credentials are; and everything else that will make prospective clients feel comfortable with you. You should also describe the types of legal services you deliver, and link those services with the particular professional or professionals who provide these services in your firm.

Information about legal matters that has been geared to the typical client’s level of understanding should also be included on your Web site. This information will help your clients and build loyalty among them. It will also attract non-clients to your site who are searching for that information and may result in new business for your firm. This is one way a legal service firm’s Web site can pay huge dividends.

Another way the site will be valuable to your firm is its ability to serve as a "brochure." Potential clients who want to know more about your legal services can go to (or be referred to) your site and get all kinds of information – much more than a typical corporate brochure would offer. Not only can you provide more information, you can do so at a significantly lower cost than if you provided it via a printed brochure. And you can keep it up-to-date easily, without the cost of having to reprint a paper brochure.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.robertdebry.com

Lifestyle Design Products

Do you have a flair for beautiful, warm, and comfortable things – from home furnishings to art to knick-knacks and everything in between? Then consider becoming an online guru of lifestyle design products and selling your special products online via your Web site. Here, more than in most endeavors, you must put up a site that reflects your tastes and products. Create a site that transports visitors into your own warm, inviting world – a domain in which they will feel at home and will be willing to buy your products in the hope that they too can create an environment in which they will feel just right.

Your Web site will give you plenty of opportunity to show beautiful photos of the products you are offering. Don’t be shy about offering descriptions of these items. Let them click on photos of the items they are interested in and unlock all the information they could ever want. Make this information enticing – so alluring that they will order it and pay for it online before leaving your site.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.tracyporter.com

Lingerie Sales

For men who are uncomfortable going into lingerie stores to buy something special for the women in their lives, a Web page that sells these items is a true service. But if you consider making such a service your business, be careful. The very nature of lingerie places it in a category that is highly susceptible to tackiness or outright smut. A Web site selling lingerie can be classy and restrained. But many merchants of these wares choose to cater to the lower tastes in people, making their sites little more than pornography centers.

Don’t make the same mistake. If you want to run an up-front, long-lasting, profitable business in quality lingerie, reflect that attitude by running a clean site. Sure, you’ll have to show models wearing lingerie, but this can be done without crossing the line into the realm of the pornographic. Another thing to watch out for: don’t use your sight to sell peripheral "romance" items. Doing so will clearly push you across the line and will destroy your credibility as a reputable merchant.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.lingerie-shopping.com

Loan Brokerage for Businesses

There’s an old saying: "It takes money to make money." It’s true. Businesses need money to get up and running, to smooth out cash flow "dips," and to expand and take advantage of new opportunities. Lending money to businesses is something that lenders throughout the world have done profitably for thousands of years. And because their success depends on finding plenty of promising businesses to lend money to, they are often willing to pay a brokerage fee to the person or company that can put them together with qualified business loan applicants.

If you decide to be a broker who finds the "right" businesses who need money and lines them up with business lenders who have money, a Web site can be of tremendous value. First, it will serve as a geographically unlimited advertisement, reaching out to tell potential borrowers everywhere who you are and what you do. Second, it can and should start the qualifying process for you by asking loan applicants to submit an online form that gives you information about who they are, what they do, how much money they need, and what they need it for. Once they submit this information to you via e-mail, you will know that they are serious about wanting the money, and will have the information you need to know whether or not the applicant has a good chance of getting a loan.

Underlying all this, of course, is your network of connections with lenders. As a business loan broker, your success will not only depend on finding the right businesses that want to borrow money, but on being able to get them the loans they need. A well-designed and managed Web site will also help give you credibility in the eyes of these lenders.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.financing-solutions.net/businessloans.htm

Maid Service

In the days of Ozzie and Harriet and Leave It to Beaver, the man of the house would go to work each day and the wife would handle the housekeeping chores. Today the situation has evolved. No longer are single-worker families the rule. Now they are the exception. In most home, both the man and the woman head off for work each day and drag themselves back in the evening ready for some relaxation. The last thing they want to come home to is a dirty house. They have neither the time or the energy to cope with such distractions. No wonder residential maid services have become so popular.

Can the Internet help you run a housekeeping service? Absolutely! First, you can use a Web site to market your company (even if your company consists of just you.) Because you won’t want to drive too far to get to a home, be sure to focus your Web site marketing to your geographical area.

Your Web site can also be used to give prospective clients all the information they would typically waste a half hour of your time on the phone to get. A "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQ) page on your site will be valuable. Use it to let people know how you work, what you charge, what your references and credentials are, and so on. You might even want to let your customers schedule your time using a scheduling tool on your Web site, or at least submit requests for your services, specifying the number of hours they will need you and when they would like you to clean.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.housekeepingbykaren.com

Management Consulting

It is a generally accepted fact that a business is only as good as the people who comprise it. Management consulting firms that can improve a company’s bottom line by improving its people are considered excellent investments in the corporate world.

If you are a management consultant or plan to acquire the expertise necessary to become one, you can raise your level of effectiveness and success with a Web site. Using site advertising and exposure techniques, you can make sure that your home on the Internet is viewed by prospective clients. Your site will also serve as a sales brochure for you, giving your service credibility and persuading other companies that yours is the best management consulting firm out there. Communications with your clients and information delivery to them (reports, articles, interactive quizzes and "tests," etc.) are other functions that can be handled with unparalleled speed and efficiency via your Internet site.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.hewittassoc.com

Market Research

The Internet was made-to-order for market research firms. Its awesome information-delivery capabilities make it a research tool such as the world has never seen before. If you’ve ever been inclined to go into market research as a business, wait no longer.

Research can be done for any company, product, or service if you are willing to take the time necessary to develop an in-depth research analysis. Research is, by tradition, a time-consuming occupation. Market research is no different, as there are so many variables that need to be examined to give the proper perspective on a situation. Also, a client may request that very specific items be covered.

The importance of good, accurate market research cannot be overstated, and successful companies know this. If a company such as NIKE is going to spend millions of dollars manufacturing a new shoe, several thousand dollars spent to research the most effective styles and colors for the shoe is a small investment. Be aware that this type of work demands attention to detail. Your success in the field of market research will depend on the completeness and accuracy of your reports. NIKE, for example, will ask customers if the striping should be red or black and what socks will sell better with certain types of shoes. The more specific an answer can be, the more time, effort, and money it saves your client.

In addition to using your Web site as an information-gathering tool, use it as both an advertisement for your services, and a credibility tool.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.mrsi.com

Marriage Counseling Online

When people go to marriage counselors, they communicate with these professionals and pay a hefty price tag, hopefully getting their money’s worth in good advice. Why couldn’t they do the same thing by going online and doing basically the same thing with a competent counselor on the Internet?

They could. Some do. In fact, some people are less threatened and open up more to a counselor And they typically don’t have to pay as much. Internet counseling services make sense for people who can get along without the face-to-face dynamics of a live session with a counselor. A marriage counselor with an online service can draw patients into his Web site and "listen" to them as they type in their situations and questions. He can then respond via the Internet. This cyber-dialogue can go back and forth (even in real time) in much the same way it would in person. Patients can also fill out and submit online forms and quizzes designed to help the counselor accurately assess the problems, as well as exercises and articles to help them solve problems.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.rkwebs.com/apple2/product.htm

Model and Talent Agency

Serving as the booking agent for models and talented people can be a lucrative and fun career. The Internet is the perfect tool to help you do it efficiently and effectively. One of your most important functions will be keep an updated portfolio of photos and personal information for each of the models and talents you make available. Traditionally, modeling agencies offer printed pieces that fulfill this function. Not only are these pieces expensive to produce, but they are subject to rapid obsolescent because people come and go … and age.

With a Web site, you can save money by creating and maintaining an online portfolio of photos and information on your models and talents rather than producing and reproducing hard copy versions, only to have to update them periodically. You can keep your online portfolio fresher a printed portfolio could ever hope to be, even if it’s hot off the press. Plus, you can build easy-to-use scheduling features into your Web site so clients can easily see who is available, and when, and make their bookings online. (You’ll want to confirmation these bookings of course, to make certain that all parties are lined up and ready to proceed.)

If you’re offering voice talent or musical talent, you should include sound clips and even video clips (for musical talents) in your online portfolio.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.kiddproductions.com

Motivational and Self-Improvement Training

If you’re a motivational/self-improvement guru, you can make excellent use of the Internet by putting up a Web site. If your site has been listed properly with the right search engines, organizations and individuals looking for what you offer should be able to easily find you. Of course, they will find your competitors too. So make sure that your site gives a great first impression – one that will make them want to follow up with you, and not "that other guy."

Include in your site everything prospective clients will want to know about you and your services. A substantial bio about yourself, including photos, will be important. Make it very clear what experiences, expertise, or past successes have molded you into a great motivator. Include a fee list, showing what you charge for what types of services. Testimonials from past clients will be important here. Use them liberally. Also give visitors to your Web site a few samples of what they’ll be getting. These might include printed articles or excerpts from speeches, or even audio or video clips.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.a-motive.com

Moving Services

Obviously, you can’t use a Web site to actually move people’s belongings from one location to another. That takes real live human muscle. But you certainly can use the power of the Internet to let people know about your services and give them plenty of information about where you operate, what you charge, the quality of your movers, and anything else that would give you credibility and persuade customers to use you.

Your Web site could also offer a quick tracking capability, so your customers can visit the site and check the status of their belongings that are being moved. Such "extras" will ease their anxieties and save your office lots of time answering phones and holding clients’ hands.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.ssmovers.com

Musical Accessories

Selling accessories to the musically inclined – from metronomes to instructions books to sheet music – can be accomplished with flair and efficiency on the Internet. Applying the diverse capabilities of a Web site, you can display your products in graphic and textual detail, providing more accurate information about each than customers would likely be able to get in a traditional retail environment from typical salespeople.

Suggestion: offer a wealth of non-sales information on your Web site as well – information about music in general, history and current trends in the music world, innovations in musical instruments, articles of interest, profiles of notable musicians, etc. These educational resources will increase traffic to your site, as long as it is properly listed with the search engines. And as you know, more traffic means more sales.

Why not sell musical instruments as well? You could. But most people like to touch, feel, and play a particular instrument – even "test drive" it – before they buy. Also, shipping costs for sometimes bulky and often sensitive and fragile instruments can offset much or all of the savings you could offer.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.hickeys.com

Music CD Sales

Want to get into a business where the awesome powers of the Internet can be utilized to a high degree? Try music CD sales! With a Web site, you can do much more than list the titles and covers of the CDs in your inventory: you can let potential buyers hear parts of them, download sample tracks from the CDs free (the samples, of course, act as carrots on sticks, increasing the chances of orders), and even download entire CDs for a price.

In addition, you can provide tons of information about the CDs you are selling, including short biographies of the artists, lyrics, production notes, etc. You can have customers sign up and express their musical preferences, and then e-mail them with news about artists or new titles in their categories of interests. What about a "top ten" list of titles? What about reviews of new or coming-soon CDs? The possibilities of what you can do on your music CD Web site are almost endless.

Of course, you can also make it easy for your customers to place orders for CDs with credit cards on your site, and automate much of the shipping/handling process, such as creating mailing labels.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.rock.com

Music CD Sales: Customized

The wonders of the Internet and the marvels of technology team up to facilitate an exciting concept in music enjoyment: custom-made CDs. Here’s how it works: customers visit the Web site. There, they see a wide range of options for selecting songs to include on their own customized CDs. They can go to sections for the various types of music – rock, jazz, country, folk, classical, etc. – and click the selections they want to include on their CDs, specifying the order they desire. They can also go to sections for different artists. They can click a button for each selection to hear a clip from the song if they choose. They are told how many selections they can include and what the price of the customized CD will be. Once they do this, the CD is created and mailed to them. Of course, they have already paid you using their credit cards and your online order/payment process.

?Slick! If running this type of business appeals to you, be aware that you will need to have the equipment and music inventory to create the customized CDs. If you don’t have it and don’t want to make the capital investment to get it (or if you don’t want to be involved in that aspect of the business), consider finding an individual or company that does, and work out an arrangement with that entity. If you choose the latter option, you are essentially becoming a broker or middleman. You will pay X number of dollars for each customized CD order you submit to your supplier, and you will charge your customers X+ dollars to cover your costs and profit.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.cdnow.com

Movie Sales: VHS and DVD

If you want to buy a DVD or VHS movie video, you can always go to one of the chain stores that sells them and pay regular retail prices. Or you can visit the video rental stores or even some grocery stores where you’ll probably get a good price, but will find only a limited selection. You could also sign up for one of those clubs where you get some movies for free up front but lock yourself into buying more flicks in the future at fat prices.

Here’s another option: go online and order from an enormous selection of VHS and DVD movies at discounted prices. It’s the best of both worlds, and you can do it all from the comfort of your home or office.

If that sounds good to you, it will sound good to everyone else. No wonder online movie sales are gaining a very firm foothold in the e-commerce world. If you want to get involved, be aware that in order to be successful and keep buyers coming back, you’ll have to offer an exhaustive list of titles. You will also need to make the prices right, including shipping costs. If you tack down those aspects of the business, you will be well on your way to success, as long as you follow the rules of successful e-commerce, including marketing your site effectively to potential buyers, offering plenty of auxiliary information, running sales and specials, and making your site inviting and easy to use. You might even want to have a "Frequent Customer Club" that taps members into special "members-only" prices, and sends them e-mail alerts to coming movies in the categories of their choice.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.bigstar.com

New Age / Spiritual Products

The rise in popularity of the spiritual or "new age" movement has manufacturers and merchants scrambling to meet the material needs of this growing market – a market comprised of people who seem to be more than willing to spend money to soothe their souls. However, the demand for these types of products, though it is growing, still puts them squarely in the specialty category, which means that people who want them have to seek out specialty shops (often a good distance away from their homes) or shop via mail-order catalogs.

This makes new age/spiritual products prime candidates for Internet e-commerce. With a good Web site, you can reach a huge audience filled with people who are used to ordering mail order items, and welcome the chance to get what they want without having to take a long drive to get it.

What products do these people buy? A partial list would include books, magazines, and tapes (audio and video) that deal with spiritual (Eastern or Western) issues, integrative and holistic health, yoga and other body/mind fitness techniques, human potential, and relationships. You would also want to include incense and scented candles (plus holders for these), natural bath and body care products, meditation implements such as stools or cushions, as well as any other products people need and want to help them make their spiritual journeys more comfortable.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.buyitonline.com/spiritualguide

Novelty Letters and Mailings

Believe it or not, there are tens of thousands of people out there who would pay good money to have someone send a nasty letter to someone they are mad at. And the jokesters in them would pay to have someone send a friend an official-looking but phony request to appear in a talent show, or a fake summons to court. The possibilities are virtually endless.

A Web site that offers this sort of service has definite financial promise. People can order the letters and mailings online, pay online with a credit card, enter the name and address of the person who they want to send the item to, as well as their own name and address for the return address – all online. And your site can be set up to spit out the orders almost automatically.

When you take into account the fact that people can pay upwards of $4 and $5 for greeting cards in grocery stores, they should be willing to spend about that much for your service.

Of course, you’ll have to get your inventory of fake letters and mailings lined up. These are the products your site will sell – the items your customers will make their selections from. If you have a natural sense of humor, you may be able to do it all by yourself. If not, you could hire someone initially to generate these for you.

Sample site in this category:

http://rubberchicken.infospace.com

Office Supplies

With discount office supply superstores like Office Max dotting the landscape, is there really room for online office supply stores? Yes. Efficient online stores should be able to meet or beat the prices of physical superstores, thanks to the efficiencies and low overhead of online retail operations.

Shipping? Sure, the cost of shipping adds to the price of online office supply orders. But keep in mind that sales taxes are not typically added to these orders. This more or less offsets the shipping costs.

A tip for success: competition in the office supply industry is strong, so in order to drive traffic to your site you’ll have to advertise it well – both on the Internet and through other mediums. Also, any site that hopes to succeed in this business needs to offer a comprehensive selection of supplies. Shoppers enjoy "one stop shop" convenience. And of course, making the ordering and payment process easy is an obvious "must."

Sample site in this category:

http://www.sun-rise.com

Online Newsletters

Paying to subscribe to a newsletter is nothing new. People have been doing it for years. Whether they come from Kiplingers or the American Rabbit Breeders Association, newsletters are popular tools to disseminate news, trends, education, and other information that focuses on specific professions, trades, type of business, or special interests.

With the skyrocketing use and popularity of the Internet, it is now possible to create electronic newsletters that have special advantages over newsletter that have to be printed and then mailed.

One advantage is the length of time is takes to get the information from the keyboard of the writer to the eyes of the reader. A printed newsletter needs to be formatted and printed, then mailed. This means that the "hot" information in printed newsletters is often a few weeks old. An online newsletter, on the other hand, can be written and put up on the Web site at any time and is immediately available to read. The time it takes to get the information from the writer’s keyboard to the reader’s eyes can literally be just a matter of minutes. And in today’s fast-paced world, that can often make a huge difference.

Another advantage is cost. By avoiding the costs of paper, printing, and mailing, an online newsletter can be published at a much lower cost than a printed newsletter can. This can translate to a lower subscriber cost, which typically means more subscribers, or higher profits, or a combination of the two.

A good marketing technique is to offer some information to anyone who enters your newsletter site, and then require readers to subscribe online using their credit cards if they want the full, in-depth material.

The trick is to regularly write truly useful newsletters that can be marketed to a target audience that will pay to read them.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.periscope.usni.com/contact.html

Outdoor Recreation Equipment, Clothing, and Supplies

The Internet’s ability to enhance normal retail sales efforts by providing tons of information and interactive options is nowhere more beneficial than in the outdoor recreation equipment, clothing, and supplies industry. Why? Because backpackers, bikers, skiers, mountaineers, snowshoers, canoeists, and other outdoor types are very fussy about what they buy. No wonder – if you head out into a chilly great outdoors with a sleeping bag that doesn’t keep you warm, or a tent that doesn’t keep out the water, or a kayak that tends to sink, or a faulty climbing harness, you could be in for more than mere discomfort. You could be placing your life in jeopardy. People who buy goods from these types of stores want lots of good information from qualified, reliable sources.

Another reason why these buyers want information is because they are buying items that they need to know how to use and operate. These are not typically items that are commonly used and understood, like spoons and toilet paper. When they buy a backcountry water filter, they want to know what its capabilities are, how to use it, how not to use it, and how to clean it.

If you decide to go into this type of business with an Internet site, know that the more information and resources you offer, the better the chance you will have to be a success. Take backpackers for example. Sure, you can offer them all the equipment in the world at great prices, but you will attract and earn loyalty from far more of them if you provide such value-added online services as product reviews, maps and directions to favorite backpacking destinations, how-to articles for safe and comfortable backpacking, lists of items you should take for various weather conditions and geographic locations, and other helpful facts and ideas. Offer these free to anyone who visits your site. Your buyers will appreciate it, and potential buyers will be drawn to the site to get the information and will be more likely to become a customer once they’re there.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.rei.com

Perfumes

Distribution chains that take goods from the manufacturer to the consumer can involve many links. Each link makes the product’s ultimate price tag higher, and the consumer often ends up paying prices that are far higher than they need to be.

This is where the Internet comes to the rescue. Let’s say that you can place yourself right in between the manufacturers of the finest original designer fragrances (not cheap knock-offs) and the end users, cutting out one, two, or more middlemen. By doing this, and by operating in cyberspace rather than out of a physical store or distribution center, your overhead will be minimal. This means that you should be able to undercut traditional perfume retailers’ prices by a significant margin. That means you’ll be able to attract more buyers (many of whom will likely become repeat buyers) and make a nice profit while you’re at it.

There is one thing you can’t do with your Web-based perfume sales business: let them smell the scent before they buy. This is one thing that brick-and-mortar perfume retailers have over their Internet competitors. However, keep in mind the fact that many people already know what scents they like and don’t need to take the "whiff test." These are the people who will become your customers.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.perfumesdirect.com

Personal Background Check Service

The "trust, but verify" mentality is not only operative in the business world, but is becoming increasingly prominent in the realm of dating and personal relationships as well. This is no surprise. In the "old days," people typically dated people they already knew. They often knew their families and friends. They knew where they lived and who they lived with. They knew what they did. But today, with the rise of Internet dating and an increasingly mobile society, chance encounters with attractive strangers about whom we know nothing are becoming all too common. When these encounters lead to dating relationships, a person is placed is usually placed in the position of having to take a leap of faith, hoping but not knowing that the other party is in fact who and what he or she purports to be. Lives have been destroyed by a lack of information about prospective or new romantic interests.

Consequently, companies have been formed in order to provide valuable personal background check services for people who want to do more than look before they leap. They can check out a person’s name (and any aliases) and Social Security number, telephone numbers, relatives’ and neighbors’ names and addresses, criminal record, property ownership record, history of bankruptcies, history of liens and judgements, 10-year address history (from all major credit bureaus, and other sources), real property ownership, corporate involvements as an owner or officer, business loans, and more.

Running such a service demands some expertise, which can be acquired relatively easily and quickly. It also requires the Internet and a good Web site. The Web site serves as an excellent marketing tool, while the Internet serves as a powerful tool to do the actual research for the background checks. The payments for background checks can be handled over the Internet before the services are performed.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.checkmate1.com

Pet Adoption Agency

If you love animals and want to see them placed in good homes, you might want to consider running a pet adoption agency on the Internet. In a way, an "agency" of this type is a lot like a pet store, but with wider market coverage. It’s perfect for people who breed pets – even if they keep them in their homes instead of pet shops.

The Web is also a great tool for pet "brokers" who arrange the sale of newly born or unwanted pets to buyers for a commission or fee.

A pet adoption agency Web site can easily provide photos of the pets that are up for "adoption," along with pertinent data about these animals, prices, delivery charges, and any other important information about them.

Pet adoption agencies may offer a wide range of pets via the Web, or may focus on just one or a few types of animals. Some sites specialize in one particular breed of a species, such as Labrador Retrievers. Here again, the Web provides a medium that is highly flexible and easily targeted to a particular niche in the market.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.rh2o.com/shope/adoptdog.htm

Pet Sitting Locator Service

When people with pets go on vacations where they can’t or don’t want to take their pets, or when they have to spend time in a hospital or elsewhere where they can’t care for their pets, they look for a reputable pet sitter or pet sitting service. "Reputable" is a key word here, because most pet owners are deeply attached to their animal friends and don’t want to leave them with "just anyone."

That’s where you come in (if you decide to going into this type of business) with a locator service that refers people who need pet sitting services to reputable pet sitters – whether individuals or centers – services that even the most fussy and protective pet owners can feel good about. Your income will come from commissions that the pet sitters will give you for referring business to them.

The key to your success will be to line up competitively priced pet sitters all over the country and to make sure that they are worthy of the pet owners’ trust. Your reputation as a pet sitting locator service will depend on the quality of the sitters you refer people to, so set minimum standards and make certain that they meet them. As an ongoing quality control device, you should contact each pet owner after using your referral to find out if he or she was happy with the sitting service. This will help you avoid undesirable sitters in the future.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.petservice.com/petsitting_loc.html

Print Broker

Want to get into the printing business without all the overhead? Thanks to the power of the Internet, you can! Becoming a virtual printing shop means your don’t have the overhead of a brick and mortar business, which can be very expensive for equipment-intensive businesses like printers. You won’t actually print your materials. Instead, you will be acting at the electronic broker or connection between people who need printing services and companies who supply printing services.

As an Internet-based print broker, you can work with top commercial printers in the industry (not just within a specific geographical area) and negotiate discount prices according to your volume of business – discounts you can use to attract more business and increase your bottom line. Basically, your profits will come from marking up the services of the printers with whom you work. The lower their prices, the bigger your mark-up can be.

You can use the power of the Internet to streamline all the operations of your business, including displaying various types and designs of standard and customizable business cards, greeting cards, stationery, and other commonly needed printed materials. You won’t have to publish expensive catalogs that soon go out-of-date. You can take orders from your customers and place orders with your printers at the speed of light. You can advertise specials on your site to keep your customers coming back. You may also decide to sell products that are related to printed materials to expand your income, such as frames, mugs, T-shirts, rubber stamps, etc.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.iprint.com

Recordable Media Supplies

Techies love tapes, discs, cassettes, CDs, and anything else they can record digital information on. That includes blank cassettes, recordable blank CDs, minidiscs, dat tape, video tape, 8mm tape, DDS tape, ADAT tape, DA-88 tape, and more. And don’t forget the accessories and recording supplies that go with them -- items such as storage racks and boxes for the various types of recordable media, cassette labels, cassette "J" cards, dat labels, dat "J" cards … the list goes on.

If you have a mind to become a retailer of these types of products, the Internet is the place to be. Why? Because it’s a favorite playground and workplace of the type of people who are most likely to become your customers.

Insure your success by offering more than just an online catalog of products and ordering/payment tools. Go the extra mile and provide information about the different types of recordable media you are selling. Explain what they are, how they are used, what their capabilities and limitations are … in short, everything you can say that will inform your customers and help them feel good about buying.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.tape.com

Refrigerator Magnets

You see them on refrigerators everywhere – those flat magnets that hold up photos, wedding announcements, children’s sterling report cards, reminders to stop eating, and the plethora of items that people want to be visible. Now the magnets themselves have become works or art, emblazoned with quotes, photographs, and funny statements.

Like badges and buttons, creating and selling refrigerator magnets is a business opportunity that is within the reach of most people. You will need some equipment and materials, but buying them shouldn’t break the bank. You will need some work space, but you won’t need a lot. You will need to market them, but a Web site will help you do that with affordable effectiveness.

There are many reasons people would buy refrigerator magnets from you, and most of them involve customization. Corporations might want you to put their marketing message on them so they can give them away to customers and trade show attendees. And artist or graphic designer might want you to put a sample of his work on them, along with his name and contact information, to promote his business. Tourism agencies might ask you to create magnets showing photos of the favorite tourist destinations for promotional purposes. People might want you to create customized photographic keepsakes for weddings, anniversaries, births, and family reunions.

You could also offer an array of standard magnets with such things on them as funny quotes covering several general topics, photos of animals or landscapes, and special holiday scenes.

All of these standard magnets and custom options can be proudly displayed on your Web site, along with easy ordering and online payment instructions.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.the-art-works.com/fridgemags

Samples and Other Free Stuff

Companies give away free samples, free catalogs, trial offers, and other gratis offers because they want to get people hooked, and because they want to build up their mailing lists. But they pay big bucks to get these items into the hands of prospective customers. These costs are usually for traditional print advertising and mailings that are designed to let people know that the free offers are available.

With the incredible rise in popularity of the Internet, retailers, distributors, and manufacturers are becoming increasingly aware of the opportunities it presents. One of those opportunities is to let people know that they have free stuff to give away. Once interested parties know this and decide to take them up on the free offers, the Internet also provides an efficient, immediate way to gather their personal and mailing information for future sales efforts.

A Web site that acts as a central clearinghouse for free samples and other gratis offerings should be attractive to companies with free things to offer. Why? Because they don’t have to pay the high costs of typical advertising or mass mailings. Instead, they pay the Web site’s owner a fee for every qualified lead he gathers at his site and passes on to them. Or they pay him a flat weekly or monthly fee for featuring their offers at his site. These costs can be far less than what they would otherwise spend for advertising and mailings.

Creating and managing such a site constitutes an excellent business opportunity. Finding clients who will pay you to feature their free offers, catalogs, gifts, etc. on your site should be easy. Simply hunt around for free offers in magazines, newspapers, mailings, and other traditional media. Then contact them with a compelling sales message or presentation. Show them your Web site and dazzle them with the number of leads you are providing your other clients. Finally, clinch the sale by driving home the fact that each lead you give them will cost them much less than leads from other sources.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.free2try.com

Scrap Precious Metals Buyer

Believe it or not, there is a lot of gold, silver, platinum, and other precious metal out there that is doing no one any good. These "forgotten" pieces of scrap metal may be in the form of a forgotten gold broach in a dusty old jewelry box, a set of silver earrings that has been cast off because one of the clips is broken, or even a gold dental crown that fell off a few years ago and had to be replaced with a newer model.

?People don’t know what to do with these items – these scraps that could literally be "worth their weight in gold." With a Web site that is marketed so that people will see it, you could be the person to take these otherwise worthless pieces of scrap metal off the hands of people around the world, giving them a modest price for them (money that they did not expect to get anyway), and then turning around and selling these trinkets for a healthy profit.

?One of the most important functions your site must accomplish will be to create a credible, trustworthy image for your business. If it looks like a cheap, opportunistic, fly-by-night operation, few people will send you their precious scrap metals because they won’t have the confidence that you’ll send them back a check in payment. To create a credible sight that will reflect positively on you, make sure that it looks classy and up-front. And most importantly, use testimonials. When people read other individuals’ comments about how they unloaded a bunch of "junk" and got a good price for it, how easy your company was to work with, and how quickly they were paid, they will be much more inclined to box up those precious but unused trinkets and send them to you. In fact, they will likely tell their friends about it.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.djbuyers.com/gold.htm

Signage Manufacturer

Look around you. Signs are everywhere. They are on your computer case, your microwave oven, your car, your home. They are on the roads you drive down, the buildings you pass by, and the doors you walk through. Walk into a mall or retail shop, visit a trade show, drive by trucks and buses on the highway. Everywhere you look you see signs – signs of every shape, size, configuration, and material.

Now think about this: someone or some company paid for all those signs; and someone or some company made all those signs and were paid to do so. Some of the signs cost less than a dollar. Others cost thousands of dollars. Go to Las Vegas and you will see signs with 7-figure price tags!

The point is, there are fortunes to be made in signs, and virtually anyone who is entrepreneurial-minded can get involved – especially today with the marketing and interactive opportunities afforded by the Internet.

Because the signage industry is so large, and the manufacturing equipment and techniques used to make signs are so diverse, you should select a niche. What will it be – neon signs for retail shops, metal numbers for addresses, elaborate trade show signs, custom banners, vehicle lettering …? The list goes on. Consider the equipment and the materials you would have to purchase for each type of signage, as well as the overhead that would be required.

Also consider how you would market that particular type of signage, and who you would market it to. In such a far-flung industry, selecting a niche will enable you to target your Web site to a specific market or group of buyers, which in turn should yield better marketing results.

Take full advantage of your Web site capabilities to make the design process with your clients – many of whom may be in different parts of the country – as interactive as possible. For example, let’s say you’re doing a large and expensive sign for an business lobby. The client could submit to you an e-mail with a graphic, photo or even a sketch of what he has in mind. You could then work on it and come up with a preliminary design, which you could post on your Web site for him to see and comment on. This process could go back and forth until approval is reached, saving the lag time and expense of mailing or hauling design boards back and forth. This is just one of the many ways a well-planned Web site could help you achieve success in the signage business.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.1prosigns.com

Stock Brokerage

?Securities investing is one of the fastest-growing segments of the Internet. While it is true that online securities investing Web sites are luring many investors away from the care and nurturing of stock brokers, a great many people still want the hands-on care and security personal brokers provide.

?If you’re a licensed securities broker, or plan to become one, having a well-designed Internet site can give you the best of both worlds: the responsiveness of Web-based information dissemination and decision-making without giving up the capability of giving your clients the highly personalized human attention they crave.

?Use your Web site to build credibility for your company, and to publish your commentary on the economy, the markets, and specific securities. Let anyone visit your site and get some good information (this is a great marketing tool), but reserve the "real stuff" for your clients, whom you invite into your site after giving them passwords. As for actual trading, the Internet makes it quick and easy.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.jpturner.com

Stock Photography Sales

There are a few different ways to approach this business using the Internet. One way: if you’re a commercial-quality photographer, you could use your Web site to display all your photographs (and even video footage), inviting customers to download whatever they want for a fee or royalty. Or, they may want you to send an actual photograph or tape. Another way: you could become a stock photography broker, lining up as many good photographs from as many photographers as you can, and then marketing these via your Web site. When customers visit your site and download a photograph or video clip, you get the fee for it, then forward part of that fee on to the photographer in the form of a royalty. The difference between what you charge the customer and the royalty you pay is yours.

Your Web site will help you go after the best prospective customers. It doesn’t matter where they are located. If you decide to feature photos from other photographers, you can also use your site to invite them to list their work with you.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.yellowstone.net/russfinley/stock/stock.htm

Student Loans

Lending money can be a profitable business. Lending money to students to pay for all or part of their higher education can also be profitable. Not all student loans are alike. They can be structured and repaid in a variety of ways. A Web site can help you offer your lending services to a wide group of students, and give them the information they will want to know about the structure and repayment options you make available before making a decision. Such a site can also be structured to help you with the approval process by taking loan applications.

As a lender for higher education, make sure that your site presents your business as being highly credible, solid, and helpful. Whenever people deal with money, they want to see that kind of image.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.classcredit.com

Student Loan Brokering Service

Finding the right student loans for the right students can be a profitable business if you do it right. Make no mistake: with the cost of higher education skyrocketing, student loans can be for hefty amounts, and the fees or commissions you can earn for brokering them can be highly rewarding in terms of dollars-per-hour-worked.

The Internet is the perfect tool to link people of all ages who want student loans with lenders who are willing to lend them money to complete their educations. You must line up the lenders, of course, and understand what they need in order to make their loans. Then you must line up the students who want loans, using Web site advertising online and other advertising tools.

You Web site must establish your credibility. It must also give the potential lenders plenty of information about student loans, as well as what it takes to get them, how and when they must be paid back, costs and interest rates, and so on. Offering this information in an easy-to-access manner, linking students to lenders, and arranging the transactions can be relatively easy and quick, thanks to the capabilities of the Web.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.estudentloan.com

Ticket Sales

With the proliferating number and variety of sporting events, music concerts, shows, operas, and other entertainment events, combined with an increasingly mobile and prosperous society, ticket sales agencies have a bright future. Whether they sell tickets on a commission or fee basis, or buy and sell hard-to-get tickets for whatever the market will bear, lucrative incomes can be made.

Want to get involved? On the supply side, you’ll need to establish contacts with ticket sources, of course. The more tickets you offer the better. On the demand side of the equation, a good Web site can be a prime marketing and distribution tool. People can visit your site, look up the tickets they want using your site’s quick and easy search engine, order them, and pay for them online with their credit cards. You will then mail the tickets to them, offering them a few different options, including overnight delivery (at an additional price, of course).

Sample site in this category:

http://www.tixx.com

Tour Operator

Tour operators are companies that offer packaged travel arrangement, tours, and adventures in specific locations. One tour operator might sell tour packages for typical tourists to, say, Guatemala. Another might sell very untypical river rafting adventures in Alaska’s wilderness geared to hale and hardy outdoor enthusiasts. Tour operators advertise their services through travel agencies, travel councils, and other marketing media that are commonly seen by people who travel.

Now that hordes of vacation-planners go online every day to plan their next get-aways, Web sites have become "primo" sales tools for every type of tour operator around the world. By creating and maintaining a well-constructed Web site and referring to it in all other types of advertising they do, they can economize on the size of their brochures and other printed pieces and get information to their potential guests immediately. A Web presence can also facilitate quick and easy bookings, confirmations, and payments using online credit card payment options.

Tour operators can use the Internet to zip messages, travel information, and other communications back and forth between them and the people who have booked with them, or their travel agent intermediaries.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.spav.com/progc/riverexpalaska/default.html

Travel Agency

Travel agencies have been using computers since before the PC revolution to book flights. The industry was a leader in the integration of computer technology in its day-to-day operations. No wonder so many travel agencies and travel councils have been on the forefront of making the Internet an integral part of their businesses. The fact is, the Internet’s incredible ability to immediately link people and companies anywhere in the world as if they were just down the hall comes in very handy in the travel business.

If you have a travel agency, or are thinking of starting one, be sure to include a Web site in your business plans. Your site can help you get new clients, book more travel with existing clients, and communicate with providers of all types of travel services worldwide. In addition, you can offer tons of information at your site as well as links to other informational sites – data, maps, visa requirements, traveler’s warnings, and other information that your clients need. You and your agents won’t have to waste your time going over these important tidbits time and time again with one client after another.

You can even use online credit card payment capabilities to streamline your billing procedures. Plus, you can feature specials, upcoming group tours, and any other travel products you want to spotlight by displaying great photos, descriptions of sightseeing destinations and accommodations, and other traditional sales techniques.

Sample site in this category:

http://2-calls.co.za/default.htm

T-Shirts

T-shirts have become a mark of distinction in today’s society, as well as a medium of communication and self-expression. They proclaim messages, identify their wearers, and often serve as billboards or mobile art works. They can be raunchy or sublime, low-budget or sophisticated.

Setting up a custom T-shirt business can be as easy as putting together the art work for the shirts, contracting with a T-shirt printer to produce the customized shirts, and then setting up your marketing and delivery systems. On the other hand, you can take a more hands-on approach and get the materials and equipment you need to do the silk-screening yourself (certainly within the limits of most people’s budgets) and go to work creating your own shirts.

One way or another, you will find that how you market the T-shirts is even more important than the designs you put on them. Taking them to the public via the Internet has become a very viable marketing tool in the past few years, and promises to become even more effective as e-commerce increases. You can show thumbnail views of all your T-shirt designs on your Web site, and potential buyers can click on those thumbnails for a larger view of them. They can then order them using a credit card right on the Web.

Once you have a well-designed Web site to show and sell your T-shirts, you must make sure that site gets seen by the right people. If your T-shirts cater to a particular market segment, such as snowboarders, then that niche will dictate how you market your site.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.a1.com/shirt/genius.html

Tutoring Services Online

Many fields of scholastic discipline – writing is a perfect example – lend themselves to Web-based, online tutoring. Students can submit essays and other writing assignments; tutors can work them over and send them back complete with mistakes corrected, suggestions for improvements, and other comments. Tutors can also refer students to a library of selected educational materials that are located on the Web site (or linked to it). These materials are assigned to the students as they progress through the curriculum, or to help them overcome particular deficiencies and problems.

Whatever the subject, chances are good that a Web-based tutoring service can be designed to help students improve. Such a service could probably be offered for less than an in-person tutor would cost – especially if the tutor must take time to go the student’s location.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.writingweb.com

Video Special Interest Library Sales and Rentals

Video-based learning has skyrocketed in recent years. And no wonder. Watching is inherently easier than reading, and watching someone teach you how to do something is almost as good (and in some ways better) that having a live tutor. Plus, virtually everyone in the civilized world has easy access to a VCR machine.

Building a video library of special interest titles for rent or sale and marketing it via a Web site has tremendous potential. In fact, other companies are already doing it successfully. But there is always room at the top for entrepreneurs like you who are willing to put the full power of the Internet to work for them.

The availability of quality how-to and educational video presentations in almost every imaginable field of interest is already impressive, and continues to grow by leaps and bounds. There are now excellent videos for learning in the areas of home improvement, jobs and careers, food and wine, gardening, academic studies, family and relationships, personal development, music performance, biography, fine arts, marriage, crafts, hobbies and home arts, business and management, children, religion and philosophy, sex education, sports, classics, boating, comedy, computers and electronics, cooking, documentary and history, drama and literature, exercise and fitness, fishing, games and magic, health and medicine, horses, hunting, investments and personal finance, commercial arts, languages, metaphysical and supernatural, automotive and motorcycle, music and dance instruction, nature and environment, pets and animals, photography, film and video, pregnancy and childbirth, trains, travel and adventure ... and the list goes on!

In short, your video library can be huge. This presents a bit of a dilemma, however. If you’re going to offer these videos on a rental basis, you’ll have to own hundreds of titles so that they are ready to ship whenever orders come in. You may never rent some of these titles. They’ll just sit on the shelf taking up space – a wasted investment. Renting also demands a lot of management and follow-up.

You may choose to only sell these videos and not offer them on a rental basis at all. If you’re selling and not renting them out, you don’t need to stock them. When orders come in, you can order them from your suppliers and either have them shipped directly to your customers or sent to you to ship to your customers. To speed things up, you can stock the more popular titles that sell frequently.

Your Web site should allow your customers to search under specific categories of interest for the videos they want. Be sure to offer plenty of information about each title, including a photo of the video jacket. When they find the titles they want, make ordering and payment quick and easy with slick online ordering and credit card payment procedures.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.indirect.com/user/video/index.html

Video Production

By using a Web site to find and impress potential clients, a video production company can build its credibility and expand its business. A well-designed site for this type of enterprise should allow visitors to view selected clips of the videographer’s actual productions. This is an excellent way to show a portfolio, allowing prospective clients to browse and review, and saving the videographer the time and hassle of having to travel to clients’ locations to show the clips, or having to mail videotapes of the clips out to clients.

If you have a video production company and decide to avail yourself of the many benefits of a Web page, be sure to follow the age-old marketing rule: make yourself look good with all your advertising materials! This includes having a Web site designed that will reflect positively on you and your video production firm. Remember, the Web site will be the first exposure many people will have to your company – their first impression – and no one needs to tell you how important first impressions are. If the first impression is a bad one, if will also be the last impression. Make yourself look good by making your Web site look great.

In addition to showing off sample clips of actual productions, your site should offer plenty of information about how you work, what you do, and what you charge. It should pump up your company’s credibility by spotlighting any awards you may have won, and featuring client testimonials that tell the world how wonderful you are. Add a personal touch by including photos and short biographies for each of our key people. This process of giving your business a "face" helps prospective clients feel more comfortable about pursuing a relationship with you.

Sample site in this category:

http://lazerpro.com/videoprod.html

Wardrobe Consulting and Shopping Services

For those of us "average" citizens, it may come as a surprise to know that there are many people out there who pay consultants to assess them, decide what clothes they look best in, and then do all their wardrobe shopping for them on an ongoing basis, keeping them well dressed in the latest styles, colors, and sizes that are just right for them.

If you have the expertise to perform this service, the Internet can help you market your services to an unlimited geographical area. Although most wardrobe and image consultants work only with people whom they can meet and assess in person, the tools of modern technology make it possible to work with people anywhere in the world, as long as they can send you current color photographs and perhaps a video of themselves, along with personal information such as sizes, and anything else you might need to make your assessment. After that, it’s a matter of shopping for the right clothes for them at the sources you have already lined up, and shipping these wardrobe items to them.

Use you Web site to walk your clients (prospective and existing clients) through the steps they will need to take to enable you to complete an accurate assessment of them. Internal tools within the Web site can also be utilized, such as an online preference form which they can fill out and e-mail to you.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.referall.com/dianakilgour.html

Web Site Design

Not all graphic artists make good Web site designers. The fact is, a Web site is a distinctly different medium than brochures, booklets, print ads, and the other printed media that graphic artists traditionally work with. It has different limitations, capabilities, and parameters. Web site design firms and individuals have been emerging from the larger pool of talented graphic designers and are doing well specializing in Web design only. There is room for more talent, however, given the fact that more sites spring up on the Web each day than all the competent Internet designers could possible handle.

If you do into this skyrocketing niche, it is important – no, absolutely essential – to make your own site a showpiece. If potential clients aren’t impressed with your site, don’t expect them to want to pay you to design theirs. Let them also see other "portfolio pieces" – other sites you have designed. Include your best work, but be sure to include a broad sampling in order to attract the widest spectrum of clients possible. Also tell about your company, how you work, and how you charge. Include client testimonials praising your services and talents. And don’t forget to include a compelling discussion that drives the point home that a well-designed site is an essential component of success in today’s e-commerce environment.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.thenetimpact.com

Wedding Planning Service

Weddings are big business, and wedding planners can use the Web not only to attract business, but also as a valuable planning and resource tool for their clients.

Since people don’t get married every day (with the exception of some celebrities), they approach their wedding plans with fear and trepidation. So much to do – so many things to plan for! What they want at first is information: where to begin; what bases to be covered; what expenses to be paid for; etc. You can supply some of this information on your Web site free to lure potential clients to your site.

For those who become your clients, you can use your site to disseminate important in-depth information resources, such as places to go to get wedding dresses and different styles of dresses that are available. You can e-mail important information back and forth, including contracts for wedding halls, catering options and price lists, and more. You can also have on hand a set of various instructions or suggestions to send them if common questions arise, such as how to deal with difficult parents.

The possibilities are endless. And if you do a good job and prevent the stress of planning a wedding from nipping the nuptials in the bud before the marriage gets off the ground, you have performed a true service.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.kennet.pe.ca/pages/caseley/kindred/index.html

Writing Services

Like to write? Good at it? Then consider offering your services as a freelance writer to the world via a site on the Internet.

The fact is, almost every business, company, and organization in the world at least occasionally needs the services of a competent writer. Annual reports must be produced. Web sites must be created. Brochures, mailers, advertisements, and other marketing materials must be written. Press releases must be released. Instructional manuals and videos must be created. Commonly used business letters must be available. And they all must be written in a professional, clear, effective way that gets the job done and reflects the quality of the company or organization. Little things like using "it’s" when it should be "its" can negatively impact a company’s credibility and image.

The key to success as a freelance writer is to keep a steady flow of jobs coming in. That means getting yourself in front of the kinds of people who need writing services. A good Web site is an excellence way to do this. The site can be used to give a little information about the writer, along with a photo. It can show thumbnail images of different types of work the writer has done, and those thumbnails can be clicked to see the full written ad, article, brochure, or whatever.

As a freelance writer, you can make sure your Web site is exposed to the target markets you’re after using proven techniques for marketing your site to niche audiences. Many of these techniques will cost you nothing, or very little.

Sample site in this category:

http://www.osbornewriter.com