Finding or creating a product Finding a web host Creating a web site Finding a domain name, plus much more.

More than 70% of time that you use to run your business should be spent marketing. In beginning you will have to keep your regular job and run your online business part-time. You have to set up a strict schedule and you must follow it.

Education is another important aspect of running an online business. You want to stay up to date with your competition and new marketing techniques. During first few months of your business you may not see any profits. Any profit that is earned during early stages of your business should be reinvested in business.

Working when you are tired is another obstacle that you must bypass. There will be many occasions that you will feel like sleeping after working a full eight hours on your regular job. Friends and family can be another obstacle. You have to include your friends and family in your schedule and at same time reserve time exclusively for your business.

All of factors that we just mentioned must be taken into consideration when starting an online business. It takes tremendous amount of energy to build a successful online business. Will you do it? Only if you start with one thing. Pick a passion. Pick a business that you feel an outburst of strong feelings towards and you will fuel yourself with intensity and power that only passion can supply.

Michael: "How's business going?" Anon: "Yeah, good. Quite good, we're doing okay."

What?! Have these people lost their minds?! Let us consider some better responses:

Michael: "How's business going?" Anon: "Brilliant - we are now operating at twice level of profitability of last year"

or

Anon: "Last month we made more profit than we made whole of first quarter!"

Start to do this with your website - I dare you. Forget statistics. Bin hit counters. Throw out mailing list numbers.

How much profit has your website made you this year? Scared to answer? Don't know answer? Then surely you're just throwing money away by having one aren't you? You're steering your ship blind-folded.

In fact - you are running on guesswork - world's most ineffective business fuel.

No Matter How Old You Are You Need To Wear Glasses

Have I finally lost my marbles on this one? No siree. It's true. You need to wear glasses whole time you conduct business and when you make any decision relating to your website.

You need to wear PROFIT-TINTED spectacles that enable you to focus constantly on whether what you are doing will generate profit for your business.

Wearing your profit-tinted spectacles means that playing little animated game an associate sent you when you're supposed to be completing that marketing project will be impossible.

Your profit-tinted spectacles work just like X-Ray specs - only difference is that it's your daily To Do List that gets stripped down to bare essentials and not person you look at whilst wearing them.

Pick a number, any number? No, pick profit - it's best number there is.

Michael Cheney Author of The Website Marketing BibleTM