What is your online business?

Your online business is simply an electronic version of an offline mail order company. Instead of working with paper and postage, you work with electrons and email. You advertise, receive and process orders, collect money and ship products.

The beauty of your online business is you're not directly involved in every part of the business. A lot of your business is automated and can run for you on autopilot while you're sleeping, enjoying a fine meal, or on vacation. Of course you have to set it up, do some marketing and answer customer queries, but for the most part, it's quite a passive way to make an income.

Compare that to the offline mail order industry and you suddenly see how lucky you are. If you run a small home based mail order business, a campaign looks something like this:

1. You design a post card
2. You print out your post cards, address them, and stamp them
3. You run to the post office to mail them
4. A couple weeks later, you get orders with checks
5. You fill out your deposit slip with the checks and take them to the bank
6. Once the checks have cleared, you process the orders, package them and address the packages
7. You take the packages to the post office and mail them

Then like your shampoo bottle says. Apply, Rinse, Repeat!

In fact, you're always working several stages of the process at the same time.

Then along comes the internet and wipes out most of the workload. The same information product you were offering offline can now be offered as a downloadable PDF file from your website. But now, 99% of the process runs on autopilot. Your job is narrowed to sending an email.

1. You send an email message to your list
2. Your subscribers visit your website
3. Some of your visitors click the "BUY" button and make a purchase with their credit card
4. Their credit card is automatically verified by your payment processor
5. Your customer is sent to your download page where they download your information product

Since you don't have to use your time printing, packaging and mailing your products, you have much more free time to market. The more marketing you do, the more successful your business becomes and the more income you put in your pocket.

The people who are making money online have grasped this concept. The people who are struggling online…haven’t.

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Terry Telford is a co-founder of iClick University, a step-by-step program for building your internet business. For a full course outline, visit http://www.iClickUniversity.com
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