According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Pricewaterhouse Coppers, Internet advertising grew 18% in 2006 to just over $12.5 billion and is the second fastest growing media type behind Spanish language T.V. With so much money being spent on Internet advertising, it makes economic sense to start an Internet business or buy and sell Internet real estate or what are called domain names.

Starting an Internet business
Surely you've heard about Tom Anderson, the 32 year old co-founder of MySpace.com, which was sold to Fox News Corp in July of 2005 for $580 million. And don't forget 23 year old Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook.com, which is estimated to be valued at $15 billion. So what can we conclude? As evidenced on MySpace, Facebook and psychological studies, we can see that there are two things people really love to do, talk about or show pictures of themselves. Therefore, a successful web 2.0 or social networking website can make you wealthy in a few short years. 

You just have to develop the one idea that will attract people who want to view the content or socialize on your website. You don't even need a profitable business model for your site, "just build it, promote it and hopefully they will buy it." You Tube.com, initially was losing $500,000 a month due to the high cost of showing 100 million videos everyday. However, that did not stop Google from buying YouTube for $1.65 billion in November 2006, because Google saw the potential to build a profitable business model around YouTube's users and also to remain competitive with Yahoo, who was rumored to be considering purchasing Facebook.

With the website technology available today, you can create an entire website in less than an hour on sites like Go Daddy.com.  You can sell everything from products you buy on Ebay, to expert information you've compiled in an ebook, or advertising space on your website. First, you should discover what you are passionate about or want to sell and create a unique website for it. Surely, there will be others who share your passion about dogs, flowers, hip-hop music, bad credit etc., just make sure your website is unique and that it can offer something people will be interested in enough to spend time there.

After you have built an Internet audience who regularly visits your site you can begin to compile demographic information about them such as age, gender, income, and email address. You can then use this information to approach advertisers who routinely want to sell to your Internet audience and get paid for showcasing their ads on your website. The beauty of an Internet business is the low startup cost, your business is open 24 hours and 7 days a week, worldwide access to billions of potential customers, and a potential passive income opportunity.

Buying and Selling Internet Real Estate
You may not even be aware that there are about 10,000 people who make their living buying and selling Internet real estate or domain names. Domain names are the addresses of websites, just like the domain name www.TheBlackEconomy.com , the address of this website. USA Today reported that known sales of 5,851 domain names generated $29 million in 2005, compared with known sales of 3,813 names for $15 million in 2004. In 2006, Diamond.com sold for $7.5 million and even misspelled words like morgage.com (without the "t") generated $242,400. Most successful domainers, or the people who buy and sell domain names began buying 10 years ago or longer, but that does not mean there are no more opportunities available.

The Internet continues to grow and evolve across the world and new domain extensions like .mobi for cell phone websites are the latest trend. Domain names are still relatively cheap at $8.99 a year, but the key is to own generic names like athletes foot.com, springwater.com, video games.com or business.com. However, since all of these are taken you must keep your eyes open for the latest social, or business related trends and then go snap up the domain name, hold tight to it and hope to reap the financial benefits of reselling it in the future. The profit potential is huge and the potential losses are small so do your research and try to own some prime Internet real estate.

Create Wealth, Enjoy Life!
James "Bird" Guess
President & Founder

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