Building an online income is a topic that attracts a lot of interest, primarily from people looking for a catch-all effortless money making system. Unfortunately, this isn't really a reality in the initial stages of an online entrepreneurship or marketing career. However, with a bit of work, and a lot of intelligent planning, it can be possible to automate and outsource aspects of your online career that either don't interest you or cause you too much stress and both to be worth regularly completing. The focus of this article is on building a scalable income -- one that you can scale back and forth effectively, and how to control that income, rather than having it control you.

All too often, big money is associated with big energy and time input. This is true nowhere more than online, where the biggest earners are often pulling 80+ hour weeks updating, maintaining and optimising their websites. This is partly the result of their meticulous nature, as many ultra-successful online marketers like to be able to control all aspects of their online business, and partly due to the massive amount of work that running a non-scalable online business builds.

The most important step for any online business is a focus on scalability -- Will the business have the same outputs for variable input levels? If your business requires you to bill a certain amount of hours per week (a service business for example) then you're not going to be able to effectively scale your profits to enlarge without increasing the amount of time you put in. Marketing businesses, particularly affiliate based businesses, scale very effectively, with each extra customer creating no extra time cost for the business owner or employees.

It's probably best to fall into the second camp if you're looking to create a sizable online income. The most successful marketers typically scale their businesses early on, either through market research or by experienced intuition. If you're business is ultra-niche, and only appeals to a small subgroup of people, then you'll need to scale the amount of time you put into it accordingly. Find out who your audience is and work out a plan to keep them satisfied, then you'll build the relationships that will help create your scalable business.

The next question is: what type of business to build? Generally, any type of business that doesn't require an input in order for a sale is ideal for internet marketers looking to scale their business effectively. Affiliate marketing, one of the most popular forms of marketing for internet entrepreneurs, is something that can be vastly more effective than other forms of work for internet marketers looking for a scalable business and highly effective lifestyle. Trial various businesses and see which ones require large energy inputs and which ones don't, then you''ll get closer to that ultra-scalable business that you're after.