If you can build a simple website you can start an online business in Ireland, or anywhere else for that matter. The internet, thankfully, does not restrict you to jurisdictions or geographical boundaries.
There are two great ways to build an online business-
1) Becoming an online publisher with the Google Adsense advertising program;
2) Becoming an affiliate marketer with Amazon.com
Becoming a Google Adsense publisher
An adsense site is basically a site, generally small or niche but can easily become large and “autority”, which is set up and optimised to do one thing and that is to get the visitor to click on a Google Adsense advertisement.
It will use a design and layout which will not present many opportunities for visitors to click on any links other than the Adsense block which is generally a 336 x 280 block pasted “above the fold” before or at the beginning of the content or post.
This means that the ways by which anyone can exit the site will be very limited and there will be no fancy graphics, banners, affiliate links or other distractions.
The desired outcome from every visitor is to get them to click on an Adsense ad and earn revenue for the blog owner.
The business model associated with this sort of site will involve either setting up multiple small sites in various niches which are not ultra competitive and which are easy to rank for in the search engines or building one or two large “authority” sites with lots of content.
It is the proliferation and spread of these sites across a large range of niches and which will derive a small income on a monthly basis that amasses into a good, online publishing empire which is appealing to many under the radar entrepreneurs.
The opportunity for you as a budding online entrepreneur is obvious and the best niches to concentrate on, at least initially, are product niches where small, boring sites about taps, windows, radiators or whatever can form part of a successful publishing empire for you on the internet.
The cost of entry into this business is tiny, you can learn on the job and your only input is to build small product oriented blogs and churn out lots and lots of articles to generate backlinks and move you up the search engine rankings which in turn will lead to free traffic and opportunities for “clicks” and revenue from your blog.
Adsense publishing may not be the best online business but it is certainly one of the easiest to start with minimal start up costs and is a great way of starting a business online for a newcomer because of the ease of entry into the business and it’s simplicity.
And you do not need any selling skills.
Amazon affiliate marketing
Being an Amazon affiliate basically involves attracting traffic looking for specific products and then sending them to Amazon through your affiliate link.
Firstly, regardless of how successful you are in starting an online business you can rest assured that you will be paid quickly and on time because you will be in partnership with two of the largest online businesses on the face of the planet.
This certainly reassures me a great deal and the fact that when somebody visits Amazon through my affiliate link I know that they are in good hands.
Why? Because Amazon are very experienced online retailers who will be far more successful in converting leads that I send into buyers. In a way I feel that I am piggybacking on the huge amounts of money that Amazon have poured into their online selling platform.
I know that some online business owners turn up their noses at what they perceive to be small returns from both of these companies but this is a big mistake. For example, how much does Mars make per Mars bar sold?
Yes, small money. But sell enough Mars bars or airline tickets (a la Ryanair) and you have a viable and profitable business model with little or no initial investment.
If you create multiple sites you can switch between Adsense and Amazon depending on performance and the feedback you will get from both will allow you to differentiate between your sites which will benefit more from one program or another.
If you are thinking about setting up your own business then the likes of Amazon and Adsense provide real online business opportunities for the savvy online business owner.
Filed under Affiliate Marketing, Google Adsense 
If you have a desire or dream to start an online business in Ireland or elsewhere one of the best ways to do it is with the Google Adsense program. I make this assertion from significant experience as an Adsense publisher.
If you are not aware of the Google Adsense program you should check it out at https://www.google.com/adsense/ to get a good understanding of what is involved. You will find good explanatory videos and explanations about advertising with Google and how to profit from it.
Simply you need to understand two common terms-1) publisher and 2) advertiser.
It is as a publisher that you can start your own online business.
Being a publisher involves the following steps:
- Create an informational website which is tightly themed
- Place the Adsense code provided to you by Google once you sign up with them as a publisher at various strategic locations on your site
- This piece of code allows Google to sell that space to advertisers who place their ads with the Google Adwords program (for advertisers)
- Generating visitors and traffic to your site will ultimately lead to many of them clicking on the context relevant, themed ads on your site.
- You get paid then for each click on an Adsense block on your site.
The above is a simple outline of how you can generate income with Google Adsense and I will take a look in more depth at how best to capitalize on it to build a real online business in later posts.
Adsense myths
One of the biggest myths is that because you get a relatively small amount per click that you can only make cents or pennies and can’t really build anything of substance.
This is completely untrue and generally reflects the experience of people who either
- don’t really know how to capitalize on this business model or
- have tried and failed.
Publishing and benefiting from advertisers need to advertise from the invention of the newspaper right to the present day opportunities presented by online publishing have always been a good business model..but only to those who do it right.
Online business plan template
This is an outline of the online business plan template that I use to generate a growing income with my online business which allows me to work from home in my spare time.
In the interests of full disclosure let me say that I have a full time job as a legal professional so my work from home business entails working about 3 hours Monday to Friday and about 6 hours on Saturday and Sunday.
Even though I only work these limited hours at my online business I have benefitted significantly from being an Adsense publisher.
My methodology is that I build niche websites (blogs) and target specific key words or phrases for each and every piece of content on my site which allows me to garner search engine traffic for free.
Online Business Strategy-Step 1
I will expand on what I outline here in later posts but for now I will set out the framework in which all the later details will sit and hopefully this will allow you to see the bigger picture later on as I go into more detail.
You will be able to reference this step by step guide and see where the later more detailed information fits in to the overall online business strategy.
Your first step is to decide what market you will build your website for so
- Pick a market, preferably a niche market.
A niche market is a sub market or section of a larger market.
For example “pens” is a large market but I will not pick this large a market because it will be too competitive.
Instead I will drill down to, for example, fountain pens and then drill down some more into a particular type of fountain pen, for example, Pelikan fountain pens.
When picking a market or niche in which to build your site you will have two broad options-
- pick something that you know a lot about and are passionate about or
- pick the market that is most commercially attractive to you.
The benefit of the former strategy is that it is easier over time to continue publishing content about stuff that you really like and can build your niche site out into an authority site over time.
But the second more commercial option works very well too and if you are just in this gig to make money, recurring income, then you might prefer the more commercial approach and choose accordingly.
The next post in this series of building an online business with Adsense will take a look at one of the most important aspects-keyword research-and which will determine how successful or otherwise you will be.
You might also be interested in building niche websites for profit..
Filed under Google Adsense
