Outline of How to Start an Internet Business

1) Planning Your Business

• What kind of business are you interested in starting? Do you want to sell your own original product? What about becoming an affiliate marketer? Perhaps you want to open your own online store, or make money from online auctions? Choose carefully, because you'll be spending a lot of time with that choice.

• After you choose what kind of business to start, you have to think about the money it will cost to start and run your business. If you set up a website you need to pay for a domain name and web hosting. Are you going to create your own site or pay to have one made for you? Are you going to use paid advertising to promote your business? Be sure you are aware of your business's costs and how much it takes to break even.

• Make sure you you have an advertising plan. Will you use article marketing, pay per click advertising, or will you buy adspace on another site? How will you drive a steady stream of targeted visitors to your site? Getting high search engine rankings should be a high priority for you.

When you have your business all planned out, it's time to make it a reality. Get your own domain name, purchase web hosting and get your site set up.

2) Starting Your Business

• Once your business site is set up, it is time to start promoting your business. Contribute in forums related to the main topic of your site, with a link to your site in your signature (follow the forum’s TOS and don’t spam). Tell people you know who might be interested in it. Write articles on topics related to your business and submit them to article directories. Start building those links.

• You might want to learn a little HTML if you have your own site. While it may seem like an entirely new language to you, there are free tutorials all over the internet. A way I learned some HTML was from toying with the code of my site.

• If you have a sales letter for your product, it is to your advantage to learn how to appeal to people enough to make them want to buy your product. Learn to use words that will appeal to your visitors' minds. Or you could just hire a copywriter; it’s your call.

• Learning the basics, tips and tricks of internet marketing is an absolute necessity if you want your business to succeed. Read every free ebook you can get your hands on, read internet marketing articles and participate in forums about internet marketing. Internet marketing is a constant learning experience. A lot of what you will learn is from personal experience, making mistakes and learning from them.

So now that your business is started you can just sit back and rake the money in, right? Wrong. You have to maintain your business to ensure its success.

3) Maintaining Your Business

• Set up a schedule for yourself that balances your internet business and your life in the outside world. You must commit a reasonable amount of time for your business so that it does not falter. Keep building links, writing articles, exchanging links with other sites, or learning new things to help your business. Build up a good reputation for your business and earn other peoples' trust.

• It is good practice to update your site regularly with fresh, unique content. Not only will it keep your visitors interested in your site enough to come back, but the search engine spiders will come back to your site more often to find your new content. As they say, content is king. You can add new articles, reviews, etc. to your site, or upload a blog to your site and update that regularly.

• You might want to consider having an e-mail list for your business. Set up an autoresponder with messages to follow up on people who opt-in to your list, and be sure you do not spam. Ever hear the saying that "the money is in the list"? Most people won't buy something the first time they see it, so your list will keep your subscribers informed about your business.

From here on out, you will write the rest of your internet business outline. I can only tell you so much of what to do with your business. Once you start your business, it is entirely up to you to make money from it. You can make your own outline for your business, since it will be you who knows your business best. Do not stop planning for the future, and keep working and learning new things.