Setting Up Your First Online Business

OK, so you've decided that you want to start your own online business.

You may have any number of reasons; you might want to make more money in addition to your "regular" job, you may be out of work and have decided to take the plunge with your own home based business, you might simply want to have more control over your future, or you may have free time that you want to use profitably.

There are many different reasons why you have made the decision, but where do you go from here?

>>>> For a complete newcomer to the world of online marketing, a safe option might be to go for a ready made, proven business.

The best of such "One Stop Businesses" (aka "Business In A Box") should provide everything you need to get up and running: site design, hosting, built-in products, and comprehensive training and support. This eliminates trial and error, you don't need to know anything about site design, marketing principles, or have to create or find products to promote. Find a business that has been around for some time and is well proven to get you up and running in the shortest possible time.

>>>> Starting from scratch with your own unique business

Starting your own business is perhaps not so straightforward for the complete newcomer, but shouldn't necessarily be ruled out as a viable option. The advantages are that you have complete control over every aspect of your new business; selecting your hosting service, products, site design etc..

Your first step is to either create your own products or find existing products that you wish to promote.

There are thousands of ready made products to choose from at Clickbank.com, possibly the largest source of affiliate products on the internet, and getting an account is a simple free process. All the products that you promote should be related to the particular niche that you will operate in.

Once you have your products, the next step is to select a hosting service.

There are many to choose from, but you're probably best avoiding free hosting services - they're often limited in features and may well cover the costs of the service by placing competitor's advertisements on "your" web site. Make your choice taking into account the features that you are going to need (amount of web space, ease of uploading and updating, built in email account(s) etc.) and bear in mind that features you don't need to begin with may be essential as your business grows - transferring to another hosting service later can be a frustrating process.

Creating your site.

Once upon a time, creating your own web site required a fairly detailed understanding of html, but that is no longer the case. There are many programs available that make the process fairly straightforward, with little or no knowledge of html required. You could pay a considerable amount for a design program, but this is hardly necessary; Microsoft includes the Frontpage editor in most versions of Windows, and there are other free programs such as Nvu.

Promotion.

OK, you now have your web site up. If you had a traditional high street store, you'd gain some business simply from the curious, but you'd probably still need to promote your business in the local press etc.. With internet marketing you don't have a physical presence, so if you don't want your business lost amongst the millions of websites on the internet you have to promote it (no one will even know it exists if you don't!).

There are many different ways to advertise your new business, some of which may involve a fairly hefty advertising budget, and there are free methods such as traffic exchanges, search engine optimisation (making it easy for the search engines to index your site) and so on.

Traffic exchanges can be effective although the percentage of ads displayed to visitors is often not great, but as they are usually free they should perhaps form a part of your advertising strategy.

When thinking of web site promotion, the first thing that comes to most people's minds is Google's Adwords; you set up an account and pay for each click on your selected keywords. Adwords is BIG and can be hugely effective, but can also be a huge money pit for the unwary. Select the right keywords and the right payment for each click though and Adwords could be very profitable in terms of the return on your outlay.

Don't neglect one of the best sources of free traffic for your site - article directories (just like this one!). They are very good for generating traffic, not just from the "resource box" or "sig" at the end of your articles, but also from the fact that the search engines love them. Write a few articles, post them on the free article directories, and watch as your traffic soars!

Getting the most from your visitors.

Many visitors to your site may simply be browsers, but still potential buyers. To make the most of every visitor, your front page should encourage every visitor to give you their contact information so that you can send them follow up emails. Offer a free gift as an incentive for them to sign up, and keep their contact information in a database for later email follow up, or better still get and auto-responder account which will automatically send them your pre-programmed emails. With an auto-responder you will be able to save a huge amount of your valuable time as your business grows.

Whether you decide to go for a ready made business or create your own, like any business you should constantly analyse your results and develop your business accordingly.

Be prepared to remove products that are not working, or change the way you promote them. Do not attempt to do too many things at once (you're likely to fail). Instead, focus on one aspect of your business at a time, achieve the desired result, then move on to the next.