5 Steps To Start an Internet Business

Starting an Internet business is not rocket science, but you do need to know what you're doing in order to succeed. Specifically, you have to identify a need and fill it; secure a location to house your business; open your business; advertise and drive customers to it; and then start counting your money. Let's take a look at each one of these aspects of starting an internet business a little closer.
Identifying a Need and Filling It. The only reliable way to establish the viability of an online business is to do research...and lots of it. And one way to do that is to use Google's keyword search tool, which will show you what internet users are searching for when they use the internet.
Once you have that information you can determine if it's a product or service that you want to provide, which you can do any number of ways. You can create the product or service from scratch, join affiliate programs that offer the products and services and offer them as an affiliate marketer, or buy master resell rights of existing products and sell them as if they're your own.
Securing a Location. In "how start internet business" this means that you'll be building a website and establishing a hosting account, thus paving the way for internet surfers to find you. And the way they'll find you is through the abundance of search engine optimized web site content pages on your web site. When you provide lots of good, quality, useful information (content) the search engines will reward you by sending lots of "free" traffic to it, which can result in you making a lot of sales.
Opening Your Store. After building a great web site with lots of excellent content you'll then be ready to open up for business. Another way to say it is you'll be ready it to the internet. While many web site designers complicate this aspect of "how start internet business" to stay in business it often times comes down to a simple act of clicking a link that says "publish."
Advertising. When it comes to the advertising part of "how to start internet business" you'll have many options. You've probably heard about running ads on Google, but there are many other search engines where you can advertise for as little as 1 cent per ad, and you only pay that penny when someone clicks on them.
Additionally, there are other effective forms of advertising, including blogging, article marketing, direct mail marketing, email marketing, using sequential autoresponders, pod casting, viral marketing and on and on. However, you'll find that the most cost effective form of advertising is your web site. If you build a good one that is search engine optimized you can generate lots of free traffic. Again, why pay for something when you can get it for free.
Counting Your Money. After you do all of the grunt work you can then look forward to the ultimate reward of getting your first sale, then many thereafter.
As I started out saying, "how start internet business" is not rocket science, but knowing a little about the tools and resources you need to be successful goes a long way towards determining whether you'll be still reading articles like this one a year from now, or counting money from one or more of web sites that you create between now and then.