We have see a massive shift in the way we, certainly in the Western world, work over the last five years.

In fact in the last two years the amount of Online Jobs has increased exponentially. The concept of an internet business being something apart from “normal” work now seems luddite, online jobs and internet business has become acceptable.There is no doubting that although traditional organisations are still in the clear majority it is now acceptable both socially and in a business context to own, operate or just work for an Internet Business.

The thesis that most of us struggle with is connecting the virtual world with the known, aren’t they completely separate? Aren’t internet business opportunities really limited to idea focused services and eBay?

Actually no, with the advantages in technology during the last few years, 3D printing is now a reality and, as the product lifecycle enters the maturity phase, the price of these printers is falling to be within the reach of small businesses.The technology to be able to model 3D things from virtual (software based) designs means that anybody can have what is in essence a factory in their back bedroom. In theory this would allow production to be offered by workers who Work From Home.

Think about that for a second .. as markets become more available, more people will be able to work from home, run their own internet business and online jobs will be the custom. Anybody will be to set up a tool making trade for the home DIY market based on how they think tools should look. There will be particular markets maybe, and probably not challenging to the big DIY stores but a market nevertheless.

You may dispute that not everybody has the abilities to run an internet business producing assembly designs for manufacturing, and that is no doubt the case. However the collaborative idea will work in the cyber world as well as it did in the early days of retailing in the real world. There will be an army of keen helpers who will prop the internet business entrepreneurs, usually for free, in the same way as Linux was maintained, or Wikipedia or any other of the open source collaborative applications that are currently in development.

There is no doubt we will see, actually are seeing, an explosion in the number of people who will work from home running an internet business and assisting organisations who are providing online jobs for an increasing number of people. Once the majority of people appreaciate the power of linking real world production with virtual internet business then we will see another considerable shift in the amount of people who work from home and have online jobs.