Steps to starting an Online Business

So you have a product or service and you wish to sell these products or services online. Consider the steps you will need to start an online business. So assuming the you have done your due diligence as far as knowing whether or not your product or service will sell and have priced your product accordingly you will need to do several things.

1. Incorporate your company

2. Build a web site
Register your domain name
Purchase a web hosting account

3. Get a merchant account to accept credit cards online

4. Build an online marketing plan
Open a Google Adwords account
Open a Yahoo! Search Marketing Account
Consider search engine optimization (depending on your industry)

Incorporate your company
You will need to incorporate your company and there are some extremely affordable ways to do so. You may not think you will need to incorporate but it makes things such as accounting, getting a merchant account and limiting liability much easier. You can incorporate and have all your letters within a couple weeks time and for less than $500 so be sure to shop around online for the right company to do your incorporation. One of the main reasons you should incorporate is to get a merchant account so that you can accept credit card payments online. Most merchant companies deposit and withdraw money from your bank account and they like to see a proper business bank account so in order to expedite your approval process get incorporated.

Build a web site
Of course, what's an online business without a website. There are essentially three steps to building a website. You will need a domain name, a web hosting account and a web design with developed functionality. Register a domain name and set the name servers to those of the web hosting company you choose. You will need to ask the web hosting company what name servers to set your domain name to. There are hundreds of domain name registrars, I would strongly recommend going with an ICANN Accredited Registrar rather than an authorized reseller. Some domain name registrars are more affordable than others. There is no difference in the actual product you are buying as domain registrations are all the same therefore we recommend the more affordable options such as GoDaddy or Enom. Both of these companies have telephone support which is very important. When choosing a web hosting company you should find a web hosting company that offers a package that will accommodate your web development. If you need a SSL certificate to go along with your merchant account to accept credit cards you will need to find a hosting account that will allow for this. If your developers build your site in Php and MySQL you will need a web hosting account with MySQL. Talk with your developers and ask them what type of technologies you will need built into the web hosting account. Once again, do your research and ask other webmasters who they recommend. If you have a development team you work with then you will need to portray what you are trying to accomplish so that the team can build the right applications and implement the right design. If you don't have a development or design team you work with try eLance which is a free lance marketplace.

Get a merchant account to accept credit cards online
Definitely do your research when choosing a company to set up your merchant account. Ask the merchant account company for some testimonials and if you can find a webmaster forum and ask what company the majority of the webmasters use. Different companies offer different monthly rates and discount rates. Some companies do a great job of locking you into a lengthy term agreement with a hefty cancellation fee. I have heard of merchant account companies seizing funds for different reasons. I don't know about you but if I sold $10,000 in goods one month and my merchant account company decided they would only release $2000 I would reconsider the partner. Be sure to Google merchant account feedback and more importantly ask other webmasters who they use and what they think. We endorse Authorize.net as this company has provided better services than their competitors.

Build an online marketing plan
So you have a web site showcasing your products or services and customers can purchase these products or services online. The next step is to get people to your web site. This is the most important part of running an online business. You can have the greatest prices on the greatest products with the coolest design but if nobody can find it then your sales are likely going to suffer. There is essentially two ways to get visitors to your web site. You can pay per click, per lead, per sale or per impression on another web site or search engine or you can get free traffic from the indexed results in a major search engine. Of course everyone wants the free traffic therefore this option is quite competitive. You can set up an account free of charge with Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing. For those of you not familiar with Adwords or Search Marketing these are the sponsored results on the top of the search results on Google and Yahoo. This is an instant way to get to the top of the search results for any web site. You pay per click and according to the amount you agree to spend for a particular keyword will depend on how high your listing will show. Be careful, start out very slow as you can burn through a ton of money very quickly as Google and Yahoo tend do get some traffic volumes. If your industry is unique and not terribly saturated such as Web Hosting then you may be able to consider search engine optimization. You will need to do your own research on search engine optimization as good seo information is hard to come by. Try some of the different forums that discuss some techniques and you should be able to get some decent information.

So that's it, you should be well on your way to becoming a millionaire. Realistically, there are dozens of additional factors that go into starting a successful online business but this should give you a good start. You will learn as you go and don't be afraid to ask questions and read everything you can.