Anyone who wants to make big money on the Internet should study the business strategies of Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Steve Case (AOL), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Reed Hastings (Netflix), Jerry Yang (Yahoo), Pierre Omidyar (eBay), and a host of other internet millionaire and billionaire entrepreneurs. They have strategies that when replicated could make one a lot of money online.

What are they?

They can mainly be grouped into seven categories:

1. Recognize a trend and take advantage of it

2. Start the business from the bottom up

3. Work without salary

4. Be innovative

5. Have a strong mission

6. Offer free services

7. Reinvest income in business.

Now, let’s look at the strategies:

Recognize a trend and take advantage of it

Internet millionaires and billionaires didn’t just get rich. They were prepared for it. This preparation allowed them to seize the opportunity when it presented itself.

When these guys started their businesses, the Internet was just a fad. But recognizing its potential, they set out to harness it, and their foresight paid off.

If you also want to earn money online, you should be aware of trends; then accept the change and use it to your advantage. This is what distinguishes successful entrepreneurs from their average counterparts.

But know that there are no shortcuts to business success. What it takes is hard work and the right positioning. This way, if the opportunity calls, you can know and take advantage of it.

Start the business from the bottom up

We all know that rich internet entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Larry Page did not start out rich or make money on the internet overnight. They started small, from the bottom and worked their way up. You are allowed to dream big, but if you don’t have the means and if you don’t start where you are, you will never get anywhere.

Remember: Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Jerry Yang, David Filo, Sergey Brin, etc. they started their internet businesses from their school dorms. Jeff Bezos even started Amazon from his garage.

Now, is it the idea that worked for them? No, says Mark Cuban. According to him, if it were the ideas, everyone would be enriched, since everyone has ideas. The winning streak was the task that lets you know if the idea would work in a particular industry. Then prepare to turn the idea into reality.

In other words, when these Internet millionaires and billionaires had their ideas, they didn’t wait for a big investor to put them into action. They started with their meager means and continued until they made money on the net.

Are you prepared to do the same if you had a great idea? Of course you should, if you also want to make money online.

work without pay

Another quality to learn and practice is the ability to sacrifice. Mark Zuckerberg made it clear that he and his colleagues were not working for the money. The important thing for them was that they had created a flow of information for people.

You should also be prepared to work for free for your idea in the early stages of your Internet business. Just like those millionaires and billionaires, don’t worry at all if you’re not getting a dime. Like them, focus solely on developing your business idea and keep sacrificing yourself for it. Success will surely come one day. This is like not gently killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

be innovative

Innovation is key to success in any business, perhaps even more so in Internet entrepreneurship. We said earlier that Internet millionaires and billionaires were well positioned to take advantage of the opportunities that lay before them. But this does not mean that they were pioneers in their niche.

Many of them came even late, but the difference was the innovation they brought to the sector. Larry Page once made it clear that they were aiming for innovation and believed that mobile apps were essential.

See: Before Google and Yahoo, there was the ask.com search engine. There were other small independent online bookstores before Jeff Bezos created Amazon and positioned it as the largest bookstore in the world. Facebook wasn’t the first social networking site either; MySpace was already established. But Mark Zuckerberg joined Facebook. Thanks to the innovative spirit of these internet entrepreneurs, you know the rest of the stories.

So you don’t necessarily have to be first in your industry to succeed. You also don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The most important requirement for success on the Internet is that you bring innovation (improvement) to influence an existing idea.

have a strong mission

Mark Zuckerberg made it clear when he said that what really mattered to him was the mission of opening up the world.

The Internet millionaires and billionaires entrepreneurs mentioned above and others believed that they had a mission to fulfill with their Internet businesses. Not just any mission, but one that would allow them to positively impact humanity.

If you want to give yourself that mission too, at the beginning of your internet business you should ask yourself why you want to start the business. So never lose that focus as the business grows.

Didn’t Jeff Bezos stress that the most important goal for him was to be obsessively customer-centric, to be the most customer-centric company in the world? This can make the difference between success and failure. This is because a trade mission helps maintain focus, keeping the entrepreneur on the right track.

The corporate mission must also be strong. That will help you maintain success when it comes. Perhaps this is what made the difference between MySpace and Facebook, as the stronger mission of the latter became the driving force that caused it to eclipse the former. The same is true for the phenomenal success of Google. According to Larry Page, his mission was to organize the world’s information and make it useful and accessible everywhere.

Offering free services

How much did you pay to use Google search or to have a Yahoo, Google or Facebook account? Any.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, by allowing family and friends to keep in touch, fulfilled a vital need. Offering the service for free made it much more attractive and accessible. Google provided vital information for free. Since people love free services, they no doubt flocked to these sites and service providers reaped more and more money on the Internet. Didn’t Rich Dad say that if you want to be rich, he just serves more people?

So if you also want to make money on the Internet, offer a valuable service to people for free or at least at a rate that many can afford.

Reinvest income in the business

The seventh secret to the success of Internet millionaires and billionaires was that they reinvested what they earned in their businesses. Jeff Bezos, for example, did not pay a dividend for five years; Larry Page and Sergey Brin worked hard without any reward. By reinvesting their profits, time, and resources, these Internet guys stayed engaged and expanded their business through strategic acquisitions. They certainly became millionaires and billionaires.

If you, too, want to get to where you are now, reinvesting in your business would be critical to business growth and expansion.

Now that you know the seven success secrets of internet millionaires and billionaires, why not make them your roadmap to success for reaping internet wealth too?