10 Popular Ways to Start a Home Business Online

There are many ways to start an online home business so you can be your own boss and not have to worry about the corporate grind anymore. Most of them can be done alone or combined to make more money. Some are more complicated than others but all can be done by just about anyone if you are willing to put in the time to learn and the dedication needed to build your business.

Below I have listed and summarized 10 of the most popular ways to start a home based business. It’s not an all-inclusive list as the ways to make money online are really only limited by your imagination and creativity. However, you can start with any or all of these while working on your own system if that’s what you want to do. You can combine them or put your own twist on them, or whatever else you can think of. The sky’s the limit!

Anyway, here is the list, in no particular order:

1) Content Websites – This is where you build a very large website with many pages and lots of information about a particular topic. The main intent is to cover everything there is to cover about the topic and become the authority site on the subject. You will go for top search engine rankings and earn money through various methods such as Google Adsense, paid advertising, affiliate programs, and others. This is one way to tie many different home business models together.

2) Network Marketing – Also called Multi-Level Marketing or MLM, this has been a popular way for individuals to start their own businesses for many years and still is today. It’s basically a way to tap into an existing business with a product line and marketing system to become your own independent business owner within the larger company. It often gets a bad reputation due to the shady operations of some companies, but a good network marketing opportunity can be a great way to start an internet home business.

3) Affiliate Marketing – Certainly one of the easiest ways to get started and one of the most popular online home business ideas out there today. Basically you promote other people’s products and get paid a percentage of each sale. The vast majority of affiliate programs are free and there are lots of ways to promote them for free. So, affiliate marketing can be a free way to make money without a lot of hassle to get started. But actually becoming successful at it isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds. It does require plenty of learning and effort.

4) Information Products – Most people these days have read or at least heard of an ebook. They are the most common form of information products and can be a really good way to build a business on the internet. This is similar to writing a regular book except it’s totally online and much easier and cheaper. You can write about pretty much anything you want. However, you need to do niche research first to make sure you are writing something that has a market or else nobody will buy it and you won’t make any money.

5) eBay – No big revelation here. Everyone knows you can make money selling on eBay or even start a full blown online home based business on there. In fact, a large percentage of people who do decide they want to begin making money from home start out by selling stuff on eBay or other similar sites. Earning a full-time living doing it isn’t as easy as it used to be but it can still be done. If nothing else, it at least gets your foot in the door and leads you to other home business ideas.

6) Membership Sites – These can highly lucrative if done correctly and they can bring in a lot of residual income. What you do is start a private site that only members can enter with some sort of monthly value that makes people want to continue to pay every month in order to keep their membership. An example would be a membership site that gives members a new researched niche, website, keyword list, content, and so on every month. So all they have to do is put it all together and they have a new fully loaded site ready to make money for them each month.

7) Blogging – One of the hottest things on the internet right now is the potential to make money blogging. Everyone knows what a blog is these days and if you don’t, you can figure it out by doing a quick search on Google. Actually, you are reading a blog right now whether you knew it or not. There are numerous ways to earn money from a blog so that part is easy to find. The hard part is finding a good niche for your blog and building up its popularity once you have it built.

8) Site Flipping – This has skyrocketed in popularity over the past few years and it’s because of the great opportunity it presents for huge online profits from doing something a little different. The basic system for flipping websites is to buy a site that has potential but needs a little work, or build a new one from scratch, then increase the stats, looks, income, etc… And resell it for a lot more than it cost you in the first place. A lot of people have built very successful internet businesses through buying and selling websites.

9) Freelancing – Most people equate freelancing with working from home rather than being in business for yourself. But in reality you can run a home based freelance business. Yes, you will still be doing the actual work for other people but you do get most of the freedoms of being your own boss. You can even build up enough of a reputation to where people will be constantly coming to you for projects and you can pick & choose whatever you want to do.

10) Services – There are a lot of people willing to pay you to do certain things for them and you can start a service home business online. For example, you could start an article writing service or a link building service, or some other type of service. If you do good work and offer competitive prices, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting a lot of orders from internet marketers.

Okay, now you know the top 10 ways to start a home business online! Or at least ten of the most popular ways, if not the exact top 10. You should have no trouble coming up with an idea to start your own home based business now. As I said at the beginning of this post, you can combine many of these methods or do them alone. It’s up to you. Just get going on building a brighter future for you and your loved ones immediately!