To overcome this skepticism I realized to be successful you should begin by asking yourself what you think your website should offer and then find out what other websites are offering. Some factors to consider will include small things like does your site need a security certificate like Equifax or Verisign which helps differentiate and authenticate website security. You can generate decent income without having certificates so it may be overkill if you’re still coming up with money making ideas. You also need to decide if you can get away with using Paypal to process your orders ;if your main objective to sell products. Other factors to consider is if your website needs to be updated regularly and if you will be the person updating the website. If not, it will cost you money to have someone update your website.

If your starting out and trying to make some fast money you will want a website or platform like a hosted wordpress site or look into free platforms like blogger where you test money making ideas to see what works. Using free hosted or free blogger platforms you wont need to know a great deal about Html and you are  able to try different things with the only cost to you is your time.

Offline business vs. Online business

Thinking in terms of running a business offline, you want to set up a nice office so your clients would not be offended when visiting your office.  In thinking along the terms of an offline business  and online business you need to decide if your business is a referral business or if you rely on people to see ads in a paper or hear about it on the radio and visit my store whether online of offline.  

I decided it still boils back down to location.  So, as an example to begin my point is; do I open a clothing store near a manufacturing plant or do I open a clothing store in some strip mall where there will be more shoppers? Yes, the same rules still apply online as they do offline. However, you have other factors involved that could play for or against you which I will discuss in another post.

What do you need for your website? I am not talking about the software portion or the hosting portion of your account I am talking about what will make your website a success after you buy the domain and build the site. In laymen’s terms your first success other than a launch will be to have people visit your website.  If you don’t have traffic you don’t have anything worthwhile. No visitors = No buyers.  It’s like having a brand new car in your driveway that is broke down. Yes, it is shiny and new but it still does not perform its major function which is to allow you to get from point A to point B.  If you have an ecommerce website your goal needs to be  get targeted visitors from search engines using your keyword.  Hence, if your website deals with vacuum cleaners or fireplace screens or hand tools you better be able to be found using any of those search terms. You also better be on the first page of the major search engines because when you pick up a telephone book to find a plumber or HVAC repair you like most people are  going to call maybe 3 or 4 before you settle on someone with the right price. Did you look at the front of the phone book or did you start from the back of the yellow pages?

The same rules apply for marketing your website online as it does to the telephone directory. People are going to look at the first 4 to 5 search results for vacuum cleaners and if you’re lucky they will scroll down the whole page of returned results from the search engine to find your website. Good Luck on getting visitors to your website if you are on page 5 or 6 of the SERPS

In the spirit of starting an online business most people think they need to spend a few thousand dollars on a website that has streaming media and amaze people when they are actually able to find the website. Yes, that is what people would think. However, what’s the point if you have beautiful office space or a great website and people can’t find you online or can’t see your business from the road or the internet. Online business still boils down to products and location. Your product still has to fulfill a need and people need to find you online to purchase your product and you better rank higher than your competitor on the search engines. Yes, to make money online you better know something about internet marketing and you better know how to make your website search engine friendly as well as somewhat appealing to the person visiting your website. It also wouldn’t hurt to learn something about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to be successful at making money online, since using proper SEO or internet marketing is what helps internet searchers find your website on the internet.