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If you have spent any time searching at all you know that there are hundreds of opportunities to start an online business. But how can you decide which one to choose and which one you would succeed in? What is the difference between network marketing and an affiliate program? How do you weed out the scams? How can you know whether you will succeed in the business?

If you have absolutely no experience with any online business all this can be quite confusing.
First, how do you find a legitimate online business? In order to be an online business some product or service must be provided. There are continually online moneymaking schemes where you simply send a given amount of money to someone somewhere above you in the scheme. Even if these are called gifting schemes to keep them from being illegal, they are not online businesses. They will not legitimately support you for any length of time.

Look for a product or service you genuinely believe in, because you will be using it yourself as well as promoting it online. One way is to select a product category, such as online marketing information or health products and look at all the online businesses you can find that provide that product or service.

There are essentially three different types of online businesses; network marketing, affiliate programs and sales. In a sales business you promote something online that you buy wholesale or make. You then ship it to customers when they buy it. In an affiliate program you market a product or service for the company that produces it and get a commission for each sale. They ship the product. In a network marketing program you promote the product or service and also recruit others to do the same. You then receive a commission on the sales of those you recruited and those they recruited.

Network marketing programs are often the most popular with newcomers because there the upline, or sponsors have a vested interest in your success and are there to help. These systems are set up in a variety of ways so that you may have two or three people in the level below you and may be paid on the sales of differing numbers of levels below that. They also have different ways of handling your recruits once the given number of levels below you fill up. Be sure you understand the system and compensation plan of any online business you are considering.

Another very important aspect of the business is how you will recruit people. In some online businesses recruiting involves several telephone calls to interested prospects. Do not choose a business like this if you have telephone phobia. In other online businesses most people sign up or buy directly from the web site. In still others paid marketers do the sales and signups for you. These are more expensive to get into, for obvious reasons. Select a recruiting and sales style you are comfortable with.

When you have found the product, type of business and education you want, sign up for the online business. Then stick with it. Despite many of the advertising claims you have seen, you are highly unlikely to make a fortune overnight. You are even highly unlikely to make a fortune in a month or two. You need to build the business. You can probably get someone to buy from you or sign up from you in two to three weeks, but you will not reach the full potential of the business in that time. Stick with it for at least six months, doing everything you are told by your sponsor or the educational program.

If you have absolutely no results in the first month, talk with your sponsor and find out what you did wrong. If you keep promoting the online business for a few more months and do not see continuing results, seek out one of the many educational programs online that will teach you, independently, to market your home business. Learn all you can from the free sites, then perhaps sign up for paid assistance if you feel you need it.

One estimate is the 1.25 million people are seeking an online business. With a little effective promotion some of these people can be drawn to your site. Persistence pays off. You will make money if you keep promoting and keep learning.

This is the fourth installment of a five -part series on global corporate leadership. This article focuses on Information Technology

Economics (Debt)

Environmental Factors

Political Factors

Technology

Social Factors

The series taken as a whole should help you define the answers for your company to these nine questions:

The Opportunity

For many years, companies have devoted more than half of their capital budgets to information technology, and have acted under the simplistic assumption that ‘improved information’ results in increased productivity. The same companies have not based their computer investments on careful calculations of returns or added value, but rather on cultural and political concerns. Successful information systems must focus more on relationships and interaction than on the information itself.

The Solution

Tomorrow’s strategic technology investments will present more choices for organizations than they will know what to do with. Companies will be able to set up the technology that best fits their organization rather than the other way around. The value that organizations gain from these investments will depend on the foresight and intelligence that go into determining how their people will use technology.

There is a cliché that goes something like the following: If organizations only had greater quantities of cheaper, faster, and more useful information, they could increase their profitability and enhance their competitive positions in the global marketplace, etc., etc. On the surface, that seems to make sense. If you offer employees greater quantities of better information more quickly and at a lower cost, you should reasonably expect their performance to improve as a result.

Although in many situations where better performance resulted, even the improved information access often had little or no impact on people’s behavior. Most of us are aware of the risks of smoking. Yet millions of people still pick up the habit. Though there should be strong links between information and behavior in the enterprise, the real problem most executives face isn’t inadequate information, it’s the organization’s unwillingness to change behavior in the face of good information.

On an industry-wide level (micro level), some companies get strong returns on their digital technology investments. What seems true, however, is that on a macro level more money has been wasted on computerization than has been created.

No one denies that computerization and networking can add enormous value. But when we look at the numbers, it is clear that companies are not basing their computer investments on careful calculations of returns or added value. Other factors such as culture, politics, fashion, and competition also come into play. Best-practice methodologies often are irrelevant benchmarks for many companies investing tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in computers and networks.

There’s a fundamental difference between managing an information system and running a business on information, just as there’s a difference between operating a rivet gun and making airplanes. Managers intent on establishing technical systems subscribe to different values and practices than managers trying to set up productive business environments for their workers. Operating a business on information has a much broader array of interaction and interdependence than managing an information system.

When managers try to fit inflexible, mechanistic systems into organic contexts, they need new vocabularies to explain how people in organizations really use these systems.

Indeed, the word information loses its edge when redefined in business contexts; culture and politics and relationships may generally become at least as important.

Does the organization want to use its networks to centralize or decentralize responsibility? Does the enterprise want to make every bit of data accessible to everyone all the time? Or does it want to build a new information-access hierarchy into its intranet? Should individuals be rewarded for sharing information? Should people be encouraged to strike up electronic relationships with employees in other departments? Or should interdepartmental fraternization be deemed an inappropriate use of the network? For now, these rhetorical questions provide food for thought, however some of us encounter them in our daily business lives.

Conclusion

If an organization does decide to improve the way it shares information, it should focus first on changing the culture of sharing. Most information managers know little about designing incentives for enterprise collaboration, much less invoking it. That’s why responsible information departments have to insist from the beginning that effective enterprise computing and groupware don’t depend on transparency, replication, and semi-structured databases. They depend on how individuals are rewarded and punished for sharing and withholding information. They are about behavior, culture, and politics.