How do I set up a small online business?

Answer 1

Create a home office. This is not as difficult as one would think. Every home office's needs are different, but there are some fundamental staples that all require. You will want to have a clean, noise-free environment that has good lighting and is free from distractions. This will help keep you more focused and productive.

You will need a desk and chair. The size of your desk will depend on what its function is.

You will want a place to store all your information about your customers such as a computer and/or a filing cabinet.

You will also want a phone, fax/scanner/copier, Internet connection, and any other communication tools you might need at hand. Since most home-based businesses focus on services or affiliate products, there will be no need for storage.

If you are planning to sell your own products and ship them yourself, then make sure you have room to store them all. If you plan on doing meetings outside of your home, there will be no need for a conference room either.

If you are going to be seeing clients in your home, and don’t have a conference room, then be sure to keep your place clean and neat at all times. First impressions say a lot.

Create a website.

Keep things simple. You don’t need to have tons of graphics and bright colors plastered all over. The clean, simple design is the best and attracts the most people. Too many things going on throughout a site can be overwhelming to the viewer and drive them away, not get them to stay and come back.

Stay away from playing annoying music of any kind on your site. This a sure fire way to drive away business.

You also want to stay away from things that require time to load. This slows down the viewer’s access to immediate information.

Just because you can put it on a site, it does not mean you have to or should. You want to have value to your site.

Include good content. This will make the viewer linger and become more interested in what you have. There are tons of ways to accomplish this and you will to use and decide what works for you.

Pick a few tools of the trade use them and apply them to your site and monitor the response and traffic. If you notice that some are not producing, remove them and try something else.

You will have to be diligent but remember that simple is better.

You don’t want to implement every tool at once, it can make your viewers feel uncomfortable, so use a few and ditch the rest.

Here are just a few possibilities.
Start an e-mail list. They're great to allow customers to talk about your products and services. Yahoo! groups offer this service free. Members can post comments and questions to you or each other and an e-mail is generated to all users. The group can be private, subject to approval, or public.

You will want to see daily traffic and post frequently in the beginning to get things going. Eventually your customers will start talking to each other. These lists are a great tool and keep people active and coming back.

Create some polls for viewers so they can vote on a specific issue related to the site’s content. You want to keep people interactive so they don’t get bored. Writing a poll from scratch can be tricky but they make great templates today that can be of great help. You would fill in the blanks and then copy and paste the code to your site.

Create a weblog or "blog". This is like an online journal that is frequently updated. You will add some good links into it to advertise your business, of course. It is also a form of communication that allows people to stay updated on what is going on with your business and what they can expect in the future. Today, blogs have taken on a life of their own and are sweeping through cyber land.

Tips:
******
Computers, printers, and software are a lot more inexpensive these days. You can also find great plans for telephone and internet service today that are very reasonable. These services will allow you to make long distance phone calls for free. If you shop around wisely, you can find some really good deals on computers and office supplies and furniture.
Computer: you can expect to pay anywhere from $500 to $1000 for a computer that has all the latest features. You will want to make sure that it has at least a Pentium 4 processor speed and 60 GB hard drive. You will also want a 17" monitor to make your life easier especially if you need to be on the computer often. Make sire that you have 256 MB of memory at least and a CD-ROM read and write drive. This is pretty standard for most computers today, but you will always want to double check.
Multifunctional Machine: you will want to invest in a fax, printer, copier, and scanning machine. Many places sell them for great prices. You are looking at about $100 an up. Make sure that if you do a lot of printing you check out the price of the ink cartridge refills. If they are very expensive you might want to consider paying a bit more for the machine itself to be able to get the more inexpensive refills.
Office Furniture: This can vary tremendously. If you want nice but affordable try office supply stores. They have the packages that are relatively inexpensive and easy to assemble. Get a good chair though. Never skimp on something you will be sitting for hours.
For better penetration, use ads to targeted groups. Take advantage of free online classified ads as well.
Write articles and submit to major article directories, with a link to your website.
Do a lot of linking, link your pages to the major directories and search engines - this will pay off in the medium and long term.
Use autoresponders to generate your own opt-in lists and email campaign.

Warnings:
************
Spend more time promoting your page than building it up; a good web page is useless if no one knows about it.
Do not send unsolicited sales email to those who do not ask for it, this is considered spam. Avoid sending email to so-called safelists that send to millions of email accounts.
Do not be stingy on advertisement. Use of all forms of ads is recomended, especially during startup of business.
Do not join too many affiliate programs early on, start slow and concentrate on building each program singly.
Do not be easily scammed, research each program and potential returns first before committing.
Do not burst your advertising budget. Continuous flow of advertising is better than a one off full blown ad campaign.

Good Luck ;-)

Answer 2

Starting an online business is not a greattttttt thing!!! But making it profitable is the real challenge.It involves a lot of market research, product development, marketing,advertisement campaign, customer support etc. that too you have to manage within a tight budget. So I think as a beginer one should start his online business career as a Affiliate marketer.The main advantage is that -suppose the product you are promoting is not selling well due to some reason, you can drop that product & sell something else.That means you can change your strategies at any time according to the demand in the market. In short as an affiliate you are essentially a free-lance marketer who is not bound by long-term contracts.

Answer 3

This Home Business System is simple and gets you started in 24 hours! Several of the top online marketers have used it as a starting point because it is so "newbie friendly". If you want to start an online business easily, this is the way to go.

http://tinyurl.com/u85sp

Answer 4

Get a good web hosting that you can make some income here http://come.get2.us or create a free blog at blogger.com

Have you heard of Google Adsense program? You can make some legitimate money if you have a blog at Blogger.com of a free website like Google pages which will allow you to publish Google Adsense. http://tashi.web.design.googlepages.com/website-sponsor

It's very personal and it depends on how you define a good career or business. First, set a goal for what? do you want in life. Plan what you will do to reach your goal.

I always tell people this, 'You can make money if you can create website or blogs'. by providing free and good information.

I'm 41 now, work from home in shorts and T-shirts and sometimes topless. I set my target as low as to make 1 dollar/page/day. I strive to create a new page for my websites everyday but I have all the freedom I need and making money 24/7 on the internet with Google Adsense and some affiliate programs. The only thing that tie me down is 'how much income I want or need'. Because the more websites and traffic I have will determine how much income I can much.

Anyone who can create websites or blogs to provide lots of good information can make money from Google Adsense. Blogger.com and Google pages lets you create blogs for free and allows you to make money too.

You can make money by joining me or Google as a publisher and publishing Google Adsense on your websites. If someone clicks on those ads, you will earn money.
I'll be working on this website http://tashi.web.design.googlepages.com soon after I'm done with my client's website.

Please help to forward this cell phone scam. This woman is old and jobless and I can see that she's trying her best. I'll help her a little when I'm done with my current project next week. Please check this Hot Alert if you don't want to burn your wallet: Latest Telecommunication scam http://lost-newbie.blogspot.com/2006/10/beware-of-such-callers.html

Answer 5

You need to go to this site:
https://ecommbiz.net

It helps you choose between several kinds of online businesses, without getting caught in the confusion of all the mindless hype involved with so much of the online promotions.

These are real online businesses that you can choose from, depending on what you want to do.

Good luck, I hope this helps!

Answer 6

WOW - how awesome that you want to do this. I know that online businesses are the most-productive and I think you need to have the right information and materials. I mean, you can't build a free website and expect results This one is the best I can find...

http://amedorable.hooda.hop.clickbank.net

Best wishes for great success

Answer 7

I started out on ebay for as low as 9 bux a month for a store. Then as business grew, I expanded to a webite with yahoo merchant solutions. Now it's all bursting with life!! Ebay's fees are a little higher now than they were, but it's a great place to start if you have tangible products.... Good Luck!!

Answer 8

1

Answer 9

Look up http://www.excelyourbiz.com
to learn how to build a personal, business, or merchant
website on your own without the high cost of paying for a
webmaster. We show you everything you need to know to build your own web site for the same cost as paying for dinner.

We don't ask for money here. We offer advice and guide you
through the steps to build your very own web site. Basic computer skills are needed and you don't need to be a computer whiz to build your own website.

Check us out at www.excelyourbiz.com and you should be a proud owner of a website you designed and built yourself without spending hundreds of dollars to have somebody else do it for you!

Answer 10

Start with affiliate marketing.
This involves promoting other people's products for a commission. For every successful sale that you refer, the merchant pays you a commission. It's probably the easiest to start, and the cheapest. If you can do it well, the income is very attractive.

Answer 11

First you should create a website and try advertising on popular websites that have people of the age you want to sell to. Then make sure you can have supply and demand.