Internet Marketing-Where do I start?

Where do I start? What do I do? Where do I go?How much does it cost? How do I get help? Which business do I choose?

I have had the Entrepreneur bug since I was just getting out of school. I have operated a half dozen successful businesses over the years all offline. I became very interested in the Internet back in 2001 and decided to find a way to get into business online in 2005.

I will attempt to answer some of the above questions dealing with getting started in a business of your own on the Internet. Hopefully this will help you get started on the internet in your own business. This can be a very exciting time, however you must be careful or you will get bogged down in the getting ready to get ready made and you will suffer from analysis paralysis.

So to begin I started looking on the Internet for businesses on the big three search engines Google, MSN, Yahoo. I searched on terms such as Home Based Business, Work From Home, Make Money Online, Business Opportunity, Make Money Online etc. You can search on combinations of the terms and come up with a list of opportunities that may be the Internet business for you.

If you are really creative and have something that you are passionate about, you can test this as an Internet business too.

I then created a list of 100 possible Internet businesses from all of this research. It took me a couple of days to do this research. I listed them by their Internet Web address so that I could go right back to them. (here you could set them up in a favorites folder on your PC that links right to them).

The criteria that I used for this research was as follows.

1. Do people need the product or service being offered.

2. The cost of entry into the business.

3. Ease of set up.

4. The cost of marketing the business.

5. The time involved in getting the business started.

6. Access to good step by step instructions for operating the business.

7. Support system in place for the operation of the business. Training via the Internet.

8. Competition within the market.

9. Could the business be run on auto pilot at times?

10. Would I handle any product or service myself?

I checked each business against this list the best I could. I wanted a business that I could start on a shoestring as they say. One that was not complicated, low cost to start and run, work the hours that fit my schedule (yes, it still takes work to build any business, even Internet businesses), something I could see results with immediately however small they might be.

From this big list I narrowed it to the top ten, then the top five. I checked out all the aspects I could think of such as the parent company, the products, any positive or negative feedback from reviews. I checked out success stories and compared products from the differentcompanies.

Just by going through this process I learned so much about the online world. Once I started a business I learned even more. The Internet offers a huge business opportunity and should not be over looked.

If you have the entrepreneur bug, consider the Internet as a place to build a business. It may be a very exciting experience for you.