Where Do You Draw The Line: Entrepreneurship vs. Internet Marketing

I'm an infopreneur and internet marketing is simply one of the vehicles I use to generate income.

To me the difference between "making money online" and entrepreneurship are mostly...

A) Is your model systemized enough that it's scaleable without increasing your workload significantly?

B) Do you create and provide real value to a specific market? That applies to affiliate marketers as well as infoproduct creators. Affiliates have "customers" too, they're called product creators. It's a b-2-b model, whereas product creation is a retail model. Both can be used to make money, or build a profitable business.

C) Do you have a way to exit the business with cash in hands should you decide to move on to other things or need the money tomorrow to jump on the last spaceship leaving the earth before it's final destruction?

D) Is it portable, meaning can you leverage the assets you build through other vehicles should the opportunity arise (public speaking, physical products, media buys, investment collateral, etc.)?

A few things to think about

Personally, i think an internet marketer becomes an entrepreneur the moment he become aware of the fact that real business can be done through the internet, but as long as the one is just stalking bucks here and there and giving no attention to long term success and results he is way far from being an entrepreneur .

There is people who jump to the online arena to start a business or enterprise right from the beginning, and there is people who started with crappy adsence sites with no long term vision and now they own 7 figures business with full time staff and offices, and many of this people are warriors you are familiar with.

And as a short answer, I think the thin "line" that splits internet entrepreneurs from regular affiliates and freelancers is an online entrepreneur decides in full consciousness that this is what he wanna do for at least the next 3-5 years and and set a goal for them self and make everything else a unacceptable option.

Hamza,

It becomes entrepreneurship when your model is consistently adding value to the marketplace while your model is consistently bringing in profits.

Any solid business out there is following this as well whether it is an Amazon or a McDonald's or a proven autoresponder squeeze page...They're adding value to their customers while earning a profit.

If you are a operating as a legal entity, then I think you can call that a business. If you are just a freelancer - not sure. I mean, you are busy and all, but it's not business in a classical sense.

Seems like apples and mufflers to me. Two completely different things.

I dont think the size matters at all. Anytime you create something new and you are trying to create a profit you are an entrepreneur.

But I see internet marketing as something you do to something that has already been created.

I don't really see the need to draw a line.

That's my two cents.

Well, I'm interested in the line because sometimes I see IM product launches that sell their product as a "business-in-a-box", when really it's just a product on traffic generation or SEO. I started wondering what newbies (especially more gullible ones) think that an IM "business" is. Way back when in my first days of IM when I would surf Traffic Exchanges people advertised network marketing schemes as "businesses", when really you were just duplicating their squeeze pages to try and get referrals. I wouldn't really call that a business.

I wrote a blog post earlier today and used this analogy:


So that's why I'm interested.

Luckily I think that everybody here at the WarriorForum is nice and grounded, and they know what a business is and isn't. You guys all seem to be doing well running actual businesses, so props to that. I suppose this is one of those words-of-warning to a newbie as opposed to a necessary paradigm shift for more experienced people.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts everybody

According to the dictionary an entrepreneur is 'A person who organises and manages any enterprise, esp. a business,usually with considerable initiative and risk.'

In my opinion they seem to be the same as with Internet Marketing, there needs to be an organised managerial system, program with an element of risk to earn the mighty dollar.

Internet Marketers are taking risks everyday especially when they part there money to prove to themselves that a program, system, works.

If the so called system, program does not work at least knowledge is gained, power is implemented with initiatives as experience in time motivates for success.

Time is the factor at all counts. What we do with the time,skills and working smarter for maximum benefits, the time we take is the ultimate cut of reducing workload.

Reducing this work load is the ultimate goal for the'The New Rich'.Lifestyle Design entrepreneurs.
Outsourcing there time in a lot of areas of there lives allows the 'New Rich' to follow there dreams.

The very second you do any form of business that creates your own independent source of income you are an Entrepreneur
and a business owner!
I believe that if you even think about starting any sort of business then you are an Entrepreneur already - you just need to take action...

There is no line once you make money at your endeavor. You are an Entrepreneur in the Internet Marketing field. Whether you make a lot of money or not, or whether your website is just for Adsense or some other PPC, affiliate program, CPA, etc. is irrelevant. Once you make that first penny you are an entrepreneur, doesn't have t mean you are a good one.

Yeah I like a lot of the points that you guys are bringing up- especially how technically, as soon as we start seeking out a profit we become entrepreneurs.

NEW QUESTION: Another definition of "entrepreneur" is somebody who owns and manages their own business. Could you write a business plan for your IM activities in their current state? Do you have clearly defined target audiences (not just "anybody interested in basket weaving", but demographics?)? Do you know who your competition is? What makes your business unique? Can you provide financial stats and make financial forecasts for the future?

The things is very simple actually , for me :

1) Internet marketing is a business if you treat it like a business.
2) Internet marketing is just a way to make some money if you treated it like just to make money online.

That does it. It's really simple actually... is about HOW YOU THINK AND HOW YOU TREAT IT.

P/S : sorry mods for the Caps.