If you are an online entrepreneur or marketer, then you will probably be doing most of your work online. To get online, you will probably use a PC, or maybe another device such as a laptop, netbook, tablet or a smart phone. There has been a lot of talk lately about cloud computing and the benefits that it can bring to business users. However, is it time to switch to cloud based applications yet?

When we are talking about cloud computing, one should know what exactly this concept means. It is actually quite simple to understand. It means that your applications are running on a remote server online (on the “cloud”), as well as the majority of your files can be saved remotely. This has the advantage that your files will be accessible from anywhere and that your programs are actually running on the server, you are merely viewing them on your PC or other device.

One mobile computing device that has caused a lot of talk in the IT industry lately is the Google Chromebook. It is basically a netbook, a smaller version of a laptop, that runs on the Google Chrome OS. With it, all applications are hosted on Google’s cloud servers. Therefore, to do anything useful with it (except play Angry Birds, which can be downloaded to it and runs locally), you need to be online.

Now the problem is that the current set of applications available is quite limited. It is mostly designed for business users that want to browse the web, check their email and remotely connect to another server or use a remote desktop tool on a regular PC.

Now since most applications that are used by internet marketers, such as SEO tools, web design applications, graphics tools for creating logos and ads, etc. will not run on the Google Chrome OS, we can see that the device is quite useless for most online marketers.

There is also the issue of price. It is much more expensive than other netbooks, without bringing in any features that are significantly superior to them. Sure, the Google Chrome OS may be a simple interface if all you need to do is browse, but if you really love it, then there is another way to get it without needing to spend almost $500 on the Chromebook. There is actually an open source version of the same OS made by Google called the Chromium OS, which can be downloaded for free and installed on any desktop, laptop or netbook computer.

Many online marketers would find that getting a netbook would be an excellent way to catch up on work while outside their home, thanks to a very portable mini laptop. However currently, it would seem that the Chromebook does not really have anything that outperforms some of the other netbooks on the market today, which run Windows or Linux and sell as low as $150.

Previously, we have explored some ways that you can make some money off Craigslist by promoting an e-commerce site that you own, as well as providing services. These are some great uses of this free classified ads site. However, there are some other ways that you can use it to your advantage as an online entrepreneur. Here are some more ideas:

• Find Temporary Staff to Help You With Your Projects

While you can definitely do this on internet marketing forums, you can also use Craigslist to build up your virtual team of staff members. There are a few advantages of doing so: first of all, the people who respond to your ad will usually have a genuine interest in earning a bit of money for small, part time jobs and will be less likely to be scammers. By getting some staff members on Craigslist, you will also be “creating jobs” for your local city, even if they are just temporary positions. Also, since these people are local, you are far more likely to find people who understand and can write in proper English, as they will be located in your city.

Let’s say you need some regular blog posts for your business blog. You can hire someone and pay them $10 a day or so to create 2 or 3 blog posts for you. Or, if you need someone who can create simple web pages cheaply, you can hire a web designer for $10 to $15 an hour, instead of paying a professional design firm 10 times that amount. There are many unemployed people or students who are looking for part time job opportunities on Craigslist and who would be quite happy to find a legitimate opportunity to work from home and earn a few extra dollars.

But unfortunately, there are plenty of people who are still spamming MLM offers or some other scam programs on Craigslist. For these reasons, avoid using the words “make money online” or “work from home” in your ad. It will often be seen as spam/scam by viewers and will be flagged down rather quickly. Be as descriptive and professional as possible to avoid this.

Here is an example of a bad ad:

Make money online! Looking for people who can work from home today! Email Bob for more details.

Here is a better one:

We are an online advertising firm looking to hire 2 workers for the creation of promotional content. Must have excellent written English skills. Knowledge of web hosting industry is an asset. Contact Bob @ Acme Inc. if you are interested in this position.

Many people ask if you can still use Craiglist for affiliate offers. The answer is yes, but there are a few things that you should do and other things to be avoided if you want to see any kind of results from this. We will take a look at other uses of Craiglist for online marketing tomorrow.

Some recent security breaches such as the whole LulzSec affair have been reported in the media, where groups of hackers have targeted companies such as Sony, as well as agencies of both the British and American governments. Many online business owners are wondering what they can do to keep from becoming a target of hacking attacks. Here are some things you can do:

• Make a risk assessment

This basically depends on how big and popular your website is. There is little prestige for a hacker group to attack a website of a small business which contains no sensitive information. However, this doesn’t mean that you should not take any precautions and there are still some reasons as to why you may get hacked, which brings us to the next point:

• Avoid making people angry

Obviously, don’t go on “underground” websites and start taunting hackers. But also, you should know that certain hacking attacks have been motivated by revenge against businesses who are alleged to have engaged in disloyal competition, intentionally sold poor quality products, or otherwise ripped off their customers or business partners. So in other words, try hard not to make anyone angry at you.

• Use security measures, such as encrypting your customer information database

While no e-commerce or content management system is completely secure, they all have security features either built in, or available as external plugins. Learn what they are, how they work and what they do. And don’t forget to PUT THEM TO USE! Also, avoid systems which store sensitive info, such as customer details in plain text without any encryption.

• Secure your own computer as well

Make sure that any computer you use as part of running and administering your website or online business is free of malware, such as trojans and keyloggers. Quality anti virus and anti malware programs exist and there are some excellent ones, such as AVG, which are completely free. Therefore, there is no reason for you not to use them, as they are FREE!

• Exercise common sense

This is quite simple to do… but yet a lot of people fail and fail hard here. Don’t use “password” as a password for your web hosting account. Don’t leave the passwords at the default password for the system you are using either. Don’t open attachments in emails if you have the slightest suspicion it may not be a legit file. And if you have to visit “naughty” websites or download pirated software… at least don’t do it on a PC you use for your business, as these are also a popular source of viruses and malware.

• Get a security analysis of your site done

There are many online security firms that can do a complete security analysis of your website for a very low cost. They can point out any security vulnerabilities that your website has and then tell you which actions you should take to plug these holes.

Now that we have seen the importance of taking care of your online reputation and the way to respond to negative information, here are some more best practices to consider in order to make the job a lot easier for you and even prevent negative things about your business from being posted online in the first place.

• Make your contact information easy to find

On your website, make your contact information such as your email address and phone number easy to locate. Avoid simply putting up a “contact us” form and give your customers various options to get in touch with you. While this may seem obvious, many online complaints about e-commerce sites are based around the fact that the contact information for a site operator is difficult to find on the site or is hidden somewhere in the terms and conditions.

• Respond to inquiries rapidly

If you receive an email concerning a problem and you do not have time to look into the issue right away, inform the customer of this and let them know a realistic time frame regarding when you will be getting back to them. If you don’t understand what the specific problem is, ask them for more clarifications. Avoid using “scripted” emails or automatic responses, as these often give the message that you don’t care and do not want to provide personalized service. People will feel a lot more comfortable knowing that there is an actual human being that has read their message and is truly going to resolve the matter at hand.

• Participate in industry forums

There are plenty of discussion forums online in various niches. Create an account on them and announce your presence to other members. That way, if someone is not satisfied of your customer service, they can contact you on the forum to resolve the issue, rather than making a public post about it. Furthermore, being present on online forums can give you the opportunity to interact with current and potential customers as well as business partners who might be posting questions related to your company.

• Be present in social media sites

Even if you just create a simple page with your company description and your contact information, it can provide your customers with another avenue to contact you should something go wrong. It also provides you with a quick way to get in touch with customers who are not satisfied about something related to your business.

• Delegate tasks if you don’t have time for them

If you run a larger business that gets many customers each day, it could be quite time consuming to keep checking on consumer advocacy sites, social networks and discussion forums regularly and respond to any posts. Therefore, you can assign this task to a worker who will be responsible for managing the customer service aspect of your online presence and who will forward any particular problems to you so that you can take action to resolve them.

Previously, we have looked at why it is important to keep an eye on information posted about your business in the online world. The principal reason behind this is quite simple: not all of the stuff that will be posted about your company will be positive. Some of it could be complaints or dissatisfaction from your customers or members of the public. What is the best way to react to it? Here are a few tips:

• Don’t try to remove negative information

Why? Simply because chances are very high that you will not succeed in doing so. Unless the information posted is libelous or is blatantly false, it will be very difficult to remove it from the internet as many websites, such as consumer advocacy and complaints boards have a policy of not removing content from their sites. You should also know that attempting to censor information can very well create a “Streisand Effect”, where doing so will cause the information you want to hide to actually gain much more popularity and thus spread even further on the internet.

• Respond to complaints

Rather than trying to have them removed, one of the best ways to deal with complaints and negative information about your company is to actually respond to them. This can be done through various methods. Consumer advocacy sites give business owners the option of giving a “rebuttal” concerning any complaint posted about them. YouTube lets you create a video response to a video that was posted. On forums, you can join in on the discussion and make posts.

All of this will give you the chance to present your side of the story, ask for more information from the complainer to see what happened and reassure people online that you care about defending your company’s reputation.

It will also give you the opportunity to straighten out any potential incorrect information that was posted about your company and to further explain your products, services, policies and the way these work to your customers and other people in the online world.

Responding to complaints will show that you are interested in running a legitimate and honest business and not a fly by night company.

• Fix the issue

Responding to complaints is of course an important step to take, but what is even more important is to fix the problem that was reported by the person who is dissatisfied with your business. In some cases it will be quite easy, while in others it will take some time and require you to negotiate with the customer to try and come to a solution.

In some cases, resolving the issue may not be possible, especially if someone is making unreasonable demands or doesn’t want to cooperate to resolve the problem. But in these cases, you will at least show that you have in good faith attempted to fix the problem and solve the issue at hand.

The internet is known to be an excellent place for consumers to find out information about a company that they have done business with, or have the intention of doing so soon. This has given the rise to various websites, such as consumer advocacy sites, industry review websites, complaints boards and various discussion forums and social media groups.

Many of these sites have also become places for people who are dissatisfied with a certain company to voice their their displeasure and make it known to others. So, how do you, as a business owner, deal with this? Here is some useful advice:

• First, conform to standards of good business practices and ethics

Whether you run a physical business, or one that is strictly online, you really need to have good relationships with your customers if you want to avoid complaints and negative information about your company appearing on various websites and blogs.

Make sure that your prices, policies and service terms are clearly indicated on your website. Provide good support and customer service and respond to inquiries in a timely manner. If someone is not happy with your company or its products, make sure that you take action and correct the situation, or at least make a genuine effort to negotiate a solution with the affected party.

Also be aware that your actions as a business can affect your corporate image very quickly. News spreads very fast in the online world. So obviously if your business is involved in things like disloyal competition, dumping toxic waste, selling weapons to dictators, well, be prepared for the fallout because the news will soon be on dozens of websites.

• Monitor any information posted about your business regularly

This is not hard to do at all. Do a Google search for your business name, or the name of one of your products if applicable. Add the words “scam”, “ripoff”, “sucks”, “is evil”, well you get the idea,  to your name and see if you get any results. Browse social networks and see if there are any posts or discussions about your business. Check out YouTube. Search for your business or products on consumer advocacy sites like RipOffReport or ComplaintsBoard. Of course, you don’t have to do these things every single day if you don’t have the time for it, but depending on how big your business is and how many customers you have, you will need to do so regularly enough. Know that the more customers you have, the higher the probability that one of them could be unhappy, and that, even if you think you do everything well. By being aware of what is written online about your business, you will then be able to take the necessary actions to respond to it and prevent it from affecting your online reputation in a negative way.

Tomorrow we will take a look at what to do, and what not to do, if you find complaints or negative information about your business on various internet sites.

Now that you know about the kinds of ads that you can run when you buy media, let’s take a look at where you can actually place your ads. While there are plenty of places where you can place them, you will need to choose wisely so that you are able to get the maximum benefit from them. Many websites sell advertising space to cover their hosting costs and make a profit. You will often see “advertise here” or “your ad here” somewhere near the ads on the site. If you don’t, you can always contact the webmaster directly to see if you can place an ad for your business on their site.

• Sites Often Visited By People from Your City

These could be the websites of local newspapers, TV stations, radio stations, etc. Basically any website where people that live in your city will visit. This will give you exposure to the local traffic that you want.

• Sites Related to Your Niche

Obviously, you can’t advertise on the website of a business that offers the same thing than you. Would you ever see an ad promoting Honda cars on a Ford dealer’s website? Definitely not. But you can find websites of businesses that are related to your niche without being competitors. For example, if you run a moving company, then you could advertise on a site that people who are about to move will visit, such as real estate sites or websites that list rental properties.

• Discussion Forums

Web forums that are related to your niche can be an excellent place to get traffic from. For example, if you sell mobile phones, placing your ad on a mobile phone discussion forum would be a great match. However, if you only do business locally, be sure to deal only with forums that have mostly local traffic, or at least that offer geo targeting for their ads, which will let you display your ads only to people who are from the area in which you do business.

Advertising Networks

When you look for places to place your ads, you will see that many websites are affiliated with an advertising distribution network such as Adbrite. The main reason is that managing advertising on a website can be quite time consuming for the webmaster, as he will have to manually put up the ads, collect payment for them, etc. This is why many websites instead sell advertising space to networks, who then resell them to advertisers.

This is also advantageous to you as an advertiser. By signing up for an advertising network, you will discover many other sites on which you can promote your business. All you would need to do is select the payment options, choose any settings such as geo targeting and then give them the ad copy you want to use. You can thus easily manage your media buying campaigns and keep track of things more efficiently.

Now that we have seen what media buying consists of and the various business models available when it comes to paying for your ads, it is time to take a look at two things that are just as important: what type of ads you can run and also where you can place your ads.

There are various types of ads to choose from:

Text Ads – These are similar to the sponsored ads that you would find on Google search results, except that they are served on various websites rather than on search engine results. Depending on the network, you will have a certain amount of characters that you can use for your title and for the body of the ad. Remember, you want people who are interested in what you have to offer to click on your ad, but also to avoid those who are merely curious or looking for freebies. This is especially important if you are paying on a CPC model, as you don’t want to waste your advertising budget on non productive visitors to your site. As such, your ad should inform the viewer of what you have to offer as well as be cleverly worded and attractive.

Banner/Graphic Ads – These are another popular type of ad in the media buying industry. You basically create a graphic ad, which can have various shapes and sizes. Some are the classic horizontal banner, while others are more in a vertical “skyscraper” format. There are also banner ads available in a smaller, usually square format. When you create a banner, you want to do the same thing than with a text ad: captivate the viewer’s attention, but still give them enough information to decide whether your business offers them something they need. Banner ads are basically an animated GIF file, which can easily be created with a graphics program. Or you can also pay a freelancer $5 – $10 to create a banner ad for you.

Popup/Popunder Ads – These types of ads are still being offered, although they have lost most of their efficiency, due to the fact that browsers now have integrated popup blockers and if an ad does get past those, most people simply get annoyed and close it. As such, it is not recommended that you use them if you are promoting a local business, as they are more suited for affiliate offers.

Video Ads – This is a relatively new type of ad, but is growing in popularity. It is basically a mini commercial, like one that you would see on TV. The video is played either before the user watches another video on a video sharing site, or plays automatically when the page serving the ads is loaded. You will, however, need to create a video ad by yourself and have it approved by the ad network. Since this is a new type of ad, their success rate has not yet been fully tested, so unless you have a significant budget to devote to your media buying, it is best that you try the other ad types first.

Tomorrow, we will see where you can put your ads and how to optimize them in order to take maximum advantage form media buying.

When it comes to online advertising options for a local business, there are plenty of choices that are open to you. Some of these options are completely free, while others will require you to spend some money and thus create an advertising budget. But one of the advantages of online advertising is that it is not as expensive as other methods, such as television or radio ads. It is also possible to very specifically target the audience that you want to reach, so that only people who have a high chance of being interested in your products end up seeing your ads.

One of these options is media buying. Now, many of you who are not familiar with online marketing terms may wonder what media buying consists of. Basically, it means that you will be buying advertising space on another website and paying for these ads according to different business models. Here are the ones that are the most commonly used in the media buying industry:

Fixed fee – You pay a certain fee to have your ad displayed in a permanent position on a certain website. This fee could be for a day, a week, two weeks, a month or even longer. Usually with this option, your ad is not rotated, meaning that it stays in one spot on the website for the entire time that you have paid for it. The costs will vary depending on the ad location as well as the traffic that the site receives. As such, the price for a daily ad on a site with a moderate amount of traffic could be as little as $4, while one on a site receiving tens of thousands of daily visitors (such as a popular news site in your city), a daily ad could cost you $1000 or even more.

CPM (or cost per views) – Here, you will pay a certain amount for every thousand visitors that view your ad. Every view is counted, so you will pay the same amount whether a visitor clicks your ad to go to your site or not. Once again, the amount you pay will vary on the popularity of your site, as well as the location of the site where your ad is put in. Ads which are displayed in prominent parts of the site tend to cost more.

CPC (or Cost Per Click) – This is similar to pay per click (or PPC) ads that you see on Google sponsored results. You will pay an amount for each person that clicks on your ad and is thus redirected to your site. Costs will vary depending on the site where you are advertising. They can be as low as $0.01/click up to $1.00 or more for each click you receive.

Tomorrow, we will explore more details about online media buying, such as which websites you can advertise on and the types of ads that you can create for your business.

Even those who know nothing about online marketing are aware of the fact that social media is having a big impact on our world today. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are keeping people from around the globe informed and entertained on a daily basis. But what does that mean to you, as a small business owner? Is it possible to use social media sites to your advantage? The answer is yes. How you do it will depend on your goals and budget.

Social media is very versatile in terms of an advertising medium. This is because there are free options and paid options to advertise on it. You can use any of them, or both at the same time to maximize your impact. Let’s explore what you can do with social networking sites:

Paid Option

Many social media sites, like Facebook and MySpace, have a paid advertising option that helps advertisers get traffic to their websites, while bringing in revenue to keep the social site running. The payment model varies from one network to the other, but in most cases it is a CPC (cost per click) type, where you pay an amount that you bid for each click.

The advantage of social media ads is that they can be very highly targeted. You can, for example, select who will get to see your ads based on factors such as location, age, gender, marital status, etc. This will allow you to get better quality traffic.

But since you are paying for this traffic, you will need to track and test your campaigns accordingly, in order to get the maximum benefit from them and avoid wasting your funds.

Free Option

This is a bit more simple and doesn’t involve you paying for traffic, but requires more work on your part. Depending on the network, you would normally build a page for your business, which provides contact info, a link to your site, news updates, and details of your products.

You will then need to attract people to become fans of your business and follow what you are saying on your page. This can be accomplished by various means. You could put social media buttons on your main website that will allow people to instantly become your fans. You could also include a link to your page on your communications with customers, such as on invoices or in your email newsletter.

If you have a very good product, or a page that is quite unique and engaging, your fans will do the marketing for you, by spreading your page around to their friends, who can also become fans of your business. This is called “viral marketing” and can cause your page to be seen by millions of people in a short time. But of course, you will first need to have something interesting to offer on your page which will captivate your audience. When you put together your page, look at what other businesses have done with theirs for clues on what made them successful on social networks. This will give you a good idea of what to do and what not to do.

When we talk about internet marketing, many people instantly seem to think that it is related to affiliate offers and building a website to host some Adsense ads. Sure, these things are what many people do to earn money on the internet, but they are not the only components of online marketing. If you have a local business, you can use the internet to draw more clients and above all, to get your business known in the community. There are various options for you to use to get the word out. Yesterday, we have talked about local SEO and your options for doing it. But search engine traffic is not the only way for you to get visitors to your website and clients for your business. Let’s examine a few other ways to get what you are looking for.

Getting Traffic

Whether you are pushing affiliate offers, or have your own, physical small business, you want traffic to your site. Traffic simply means visitors that look at your website. There are many ways to get this traffic: SEO (which we talked about yesterday), online classified ad sites, social media sites and targeted media buying. We will explore these one by one to see what the advantages (and sometimes drawbacks) are of using these methods. That way, you will be able to make a decision on how to advertise your business online.

Classified Ads Sites (Craigslist, Gumtree, Backpage, Kijiji and dozens more).

There are various sites which let you place a classified ad, which is similar to what you would see in a newspaper. There are some main, worldwide sites such as Craigslist, but there are also some local sites which could be geared towards people in your locality. For example, in French Canada where I live, the website Annonce123.com is very popular with people and attracts a lot of local traffic.

In order to maximize your chances of success and to take the highest advantage of the sites it is recommended that you:

• Post on all the sites. That’s right, both the national sites which have a section for your city and the smaller, local sites (if present in your locality). Posting an ad on these sites is free and takes 2 or 3 minutes. Remember, even if you only get 10 views a day for your ad, one of these viewers could be your next biggest customer. Say if you own a car rental place, the viewer could be a diplomat from Monaco on a temporary assignment in your city, who will rent your most expensive car for 6 months. Think of the money you will make with him. Sure, this is rare… but you never know… and if he doesn’t see your ad, well he never know your car rental business existed and use a competitor instead.
• Make you ad look interesting. Your ad should stand out and be engaging to the users. Thus, use a good title and also, make sure that you use proper spelling and grammar in the ad. Believe me, it helps.
• Use the “featured” or “upgrade” options if possible. Many sites, for a small fee of (varies from $0.50 to a few dollars) will let your ad be “featured”. This means that it will be either on top of all the other ads, or will have highlighting that will draw attention to it. If you have a few dollars to spare, use this option.

Tomorrow, we will examine social media sites and how they can be useful for marketing your local business on the internet.

A great number of people are seeking to become internet marketers these days. This is no surprise in itself, given that the internet offers a lot of opportunities for anyone wishing to make money. Furthermore, many are attracted to the world of online business due to the income opportunities that it presents as well as the potential of being your own boss. But do YOU have what it takes to be an internet marketer? There are some qualities and skills that an internet marketer needs to possess in order to succeed. Here are a few of them:

The ability to work independently.

When you run an online business, no one is constantly breathing down your neck to make sure that you are actually working instead of just goofing off and wasting time. For many, this is a good thing. But for some, it can present a challenge in itself. You will need to be motivated to do the work that needs to get done in order to get your business operating even if no one is “forcing” you to do anything.

The willingness to learn… on your own.

To my knowledge, there are only a few internet marketing courses taught in universities. And based on what I have seen, they are usually not worth the money, as all the information given in them can be found online either for free or for far less money.

It comes down to the fact that you need to be able to not only work, but also learn independently. You will have to locate the information you want online, analyze it and take action on it. As the world of internet marketing is constantly evolving, you will always need to be ahead on new developments and do research on new ways to make money. This means devoting some time to continued learning.

The ability to plan and organize things efficiently.

Any successful internet marketer will tell you that the key to earning a lot of money online is having multiple sources of income. The advantages of this are quite obvious, even to someone with no experience in online business: if one of your sources of income dries up for whatever reason, you always have other ones that you can fall back on and scale up. This means that you would probably be operating several websites, dealing with various vendors and service providers, have accounts at multiple affiliate networks, etc.

If you want your business to work well, all of this will have to be neatly organized. You will have to make decisions as to which projects you want to work on, which affiliate offers you will promote this week, which tools and services you will need to accomplish your goals, etc. Needless to say, if you don’t even remember which sites you own or where you are running your ad campaigns, things won’t work out too well for you.

If you want to be the owner of your own CPA rebill/trial offer, there is one more thing that you need: a payment processor which will bill the customers. Obviously, anyone who runs any type of e-commerce site needs one. However, the business model behind a rebill offer will require that you put in a lot of effort into selecting a good payment processor. Let me explain:

Most (probably all) payment processing companies and financial institutions in the United States will not want to touch you with a ten yard stick if you run this kind of site. So you can pretty much forget about going to your local bank and asking for a merchant account. They won’t approve you. Or if they do, you will get shut down way before you even get your first check from them. Why is that? After all, what your site is selling is perfectly legal, right? And so is running a membership site that automatically bills the customer after the trial period is done.

Even with that, you will get plenty of fraudulent transactions and chargebacks. Wondering why the fraud rates for these sites are so high? After all, it’s not like you are selling high end electronics or jewelry…

The reality is that free trial sites are often used by fraudsters. But not for the product, which they don’t care about anyways. They use these sites to test if a stolen card is valid and can be used online. Problem is, they of course won’t bother to cancel the trial, since after all, it’s not their card. You then bill the card the regular rate. When the cardholder receives their bill, they then realize that something fishy is going on and report the fraud.

Chargebacks will be another major concern to you. Even though you must put clearly readable text on your site which states that the user will be charged (and the amount) after the (7 day/14 day/etc) trial period and the user should have paid attention to it, you will still get people who don’t cancel and then get surprised when they get billed. Either they weren’t paying attention when they were ordering, or forgot to cancel and now don’t want to pay. What they do next is contact their financial institution and claim that they never authorized the charge coming from your site, resulting in a chargeback.

Due to all these reasons, you need to have what is called a “high risk merchant account.” These are the same types of merchant accounts often used by various online businesses such as adult sites and gambling sites. The merchant accounts are issued by an offshore bank, usually based in a European or Latin American country. You can find plenty of high risk merchant account providers simply by doing a quick Google search. You can also ask for advice on various forums dedicated to online business, or more specifically to payment processing, in order to determine which payment processor is the best to deal with. It is also a great idea to have a backup account issued by a different processor should there be an issue with your main one.

Now that you have your idea on the product, you need something else: funding. Yes, that’s right folks, this business will require an investment, and a rather significant one from you.

The amount that you will need will vary depending on the operation that you are setting up and how you will structure your business. In any case, at the very least you will need an amount in the five figures to invest in this. The main reason behind this is that you will need it in order to get on to CPA networks as a merchant.

The way the big CPA networks operate is that they get they get the funds from the merchant and pay affiliates for their commissions. They need to make sure that the merchant will be able to pay them and with good reasons. If the merchant is unable to pay the network for the commissions generated, the CPA company is stuck between a rock and a hard place, so to speak. If they pay affiliates out of their own pockets, they risk taking a big loss if the merchant folds without paying them. If they refuse to pay the affiliates (under most terms of service, it is their right to do so if they don’t get paid by the merchant), they will get the scorn of webmasters everywhere who often spent great amounts of money in advertising for promoting the offers as well. Tales of “Network X is a scam they didn’t pay me!!!!!! OMG!!! OMG!!!!” will rapidly fill up forums and blogs everywhere, leaving the network in full damage control mode. Potential webmasters who would sign up for the network will now avoid it. Current ones will start dropping their offers in fear of this situation happening again.

Due to all of this, many networks will need you to deposit an amount in excess of $10 000 before even considering running your offers. You will also need cash for various overhead expenses: product creation, the design of your main site and scripts, hosting, landing page design, etc. You aren’t starting your own car company or cell phone provider, so you don’t need millions. But this is not something that can be started with pocket change either.

How do you get funding? A few options are available for you. You could enlist the help of private investors. There are forums where entrepreneurs and investors meet to discuss funding various start-up businesses. You could ask a bank for financing. You could also see if the government in your country/state provides grants or loans to entrepreneurs. Since you will probably need to hire a few helpers and therefore create employment opportunities, this might qualify you for some form of help from the government. The important thing is that unless you have the cash at hand, you will need to spend some time actively looking for funding options for this project. It won’t be easy, but others have done it before and so can you.