There are 3 main things you need to do in order to be successful with an online business.

Prepare, Obtain & Promote

Prepare You need to prepare and establish a website. This includes a domain name, hosting account, website pages , a shopping cart and a merchant account. When you sign up with Small Hosting Plans, you receive a domain name for 2 years, website template, and a shopping cart that is already enabled to accept PayPal as your merchant account and Checks. You are also able to upgrade cart if you would like to use any one of over 100 other merchant accounts that are available.

Obtain You need to obtain products to sell on your site. There are 5 main ways that people and businesses acquire products that are sold on their websites. On my own websites, I do a mixture of all of below. Buy items in bulk at wholesale prices and then resell for a profit.

Cons: Usually setbacks for this method are that a) people with small home-based businesses do not have capital required to make large enough purchases to make a high profit and b) there is not space enough to store these large purchases in a person's home or small office.

Solution: The solution to this can be found in "Light Bulk Wholesale Directory" found at http://www.successfulwahm.com/lbd/light-bulk.asp This directory is filled with companies who will sell you smaller bulk, still at a wholesale price. This allows for you to make a profit and have room for items in your home or office before they sell.

Also, this same company offers Market Research Wizard which is simply an amazing tool to use when deciding if a particular product will sell or not online. They offer a free trail version, so I urge you to test it out. Market Research Wizard can be found here: http://www.successfulwahm.com/lbd/marketwizard.asp

Use Dropshippers to fill their website with products.   Dropshippers are companies who will allow you to sell their products on your site and when a product sells, customer pays you and you in turn place order with dropshipper and they ship items directly to your customer. You can read more about dropshippers on Dropshipping 101 website here: http://www.dropshipping101.com

Cons: People claiming to be dropshippers saturate Internet offering to make you rich. These people are actually middlemen who will take your order and place it with real dropshipper, keeping a portion of money for themselves. These middlemen cut into your profits. One of easiest ways to determine if they are a middleman is if they do not ask you for your Sales Tax Certificate. True wholesalers are required to obtain a resell permit from you before they can sell to you.

Solution:  The solution to this can be found in "Dropship Source Directory" found here: http://www.successfulwahm.com/lbd/dropshipping.asp This directory is filled with companies that will dropship, they require a tax certificate and will not charge you a fee for joining. The company that created this directory is very reputable, backed by BBB Reliability Program and run by an honest group located in Orlando, Florida. Also, be sure to get your Sales Tax Certificate. You can have research for your business licenses completed for you here (http://www.newonlinebusiness.com/newonlinebusiness/business_licenses.asp) or do it all yourself with a little help in right direction here (http://www.newonlinebusiness.com/newonlinebusiness/BusinessLicenses/General_Info.htm)

Join Affiliate Programs and place their products on your site

You can join Affiliate Program of just about any company you can find online and promote sales of their products. When you join affiliate program, you are given a special link to their website that you place on your own site. When your website visitors click on these links, they are transported to other companies website where they are free to purchase products. You make a commission on all sales. The difference between affiliate programs and using dropshippers is that with affiliate programs, you do not make sale, collect money, pack or ship anything. The main company handles everything. All you do is put affiliate link on your site. With dropshippers, you sell item, collect money from customer, put order in with dropshipper and then track to make sure customer receives item.

Cons: The only downside I've found to affiliate programs is that you need to occasionally check links to make sure they still work. Sometimes a company will discontinue their program without informing affiliates and you are left with dead links on your website. However, this is so few and far between that it shouldn't even be listed as a con.

Solution: Here is a nifty tool that will check for dead links in any web page you enter. http://www.stickysauce.com/cgi-local/linkcheck/linkcheck.pl

Create and Sell your own physical products

The Internet has made it easy for anyone to create and sell their own products. Are you a woodsman who loves to make birdhouses? Can you make Barbie clothes? I believe everyone has something creative inside of them.

Cons:  You are one person. You will be limited to your physical capabilities and time-constraints of each day.

Solution: Well, I think they are close to successful human cloning =)

Create and Sell your own digital products

Everyone and their brother is selling eBooks with resell rights on Internet these days.

There is one eBook that they are NOT selling and NEVER will sell?

Which one?? The one that YOU create.

People selling 10,000 eBooks for $9.95 on eBay are not striking it rich. The ones with their own website, creating products themselves are. Marlon Sanders, Yanik Silver, Rosalind Gardner to name a few. These people discovered early on right way to own a business. The next time you see a digital product and you think about buying it, think instead how you could create it yourself. (Or one darn close to it). If you are like most people, you think you have nothing to write about or don't have skills for creating. Wrong! I know a woman who was a DJ for her young adult life, but then relied on her wealthy husband to take care of her for many years. She has NO business experience. The time came when suddenly she had to make it on her own. She thought 'What am I going to do with no other skills but DJ'ing?". She wrote an eBook about DJ'ing, setting up for parties, best lists of music to play at certain gigs, etc. She's not a millionaire, but she's done very well for herself.

Cons: You probably still don't believe you can do it so you will brush this topic off.