Just one-week later I had visitors on site and have made sufficient sales to give me a good margin of profit over my cost of goods as well as repaying a portion of web business set-up costs.

So how did I achieve this in such a short space of time? Has it been just luck, good judgement or maybe I’ve just discovered secrets to setting up a successful small web based business that I can pass on to you.

In truth I’ve just following a few simple common sense rules: keep start-up costs to a minimum, design site so its very easy for people to buy and be prepared to spend some money on promoting site.

Mark Hockings of DesignerMark kindly designed basic template for site at very low cost. I’ve set to and learnt how to use Dreamweaver so I’ve been able to build all of rest of site around this template thus saving me at least a thousand pounds on what cost could have been.

The most difficult thing has been to find a low cost ecommerce system that works effectively in processing sales and offering you support you need in after-sales. In end I opted for a shopping cart from Mal’s e-commerce and payment gateway services from 2checkout.com.

I’ve always believed that you need to have full control over buying process to be able to make changes needed to get best possible sales conversion ratio. Mal’s e-commerce offers simple buy-now button that you can add anywhere on site and link it to shopping cart customised to look like you own site. The whole process is so simple.

Well, if you're really serious about starting your own home based internet business, next step really doesn't have to be that difficult at all. There are 3 relatively simple ways to start making an online income and one of them is sure to fit your particular idea of what it is you would like to do. So, just relax, take a deep breath, and peruse following list until you find something that strikes right cord.

1-Join One or Several Affiliate Programs

This is probably one of easiest and quickest ways to get started making money online. The internet is full of products that have affiliate programs you can join and most of them pay generous commissions. When you join an affiliate program, you are simply making an agreement with owner of a product that you will receive a commision in exchange for referring a prospect to that person's product (usually a sales page that you have sent prospect to via your affiliate link) if that prospect ends up making a purchase.

Start by choosing a product or service that you're interested in and then visit some of websites which have achieved top rankings for keywords which describe that topic. You're sure to find top affiliate programs for that industry relatively quickly. Or, try visiting one of many affiliate program directories (you can find them quickly enough in Google) and scan their listings and recommendations until you find something that appeals to you.

This is a good one for newbies since you don't even need your own website to get started. You will, however, need to learn how to use pay per clicks so you can get some targeted traffic to your affiliate link. Once you start generating some income from pay per clicks, you can then start reinvesting some of your profits and get yourself set up with your own website. By that time prospect of getting set up with your own website won't seem so daunting.

2-Join a Residual Income Program

Residual income programs are somewhat similiar to affiliate programs in that you typically get paid for referring a prospect to program's website if that prospect decides to make a purchase. However, difference lies in fact that with these programs you also have opportunity to earn a monthly recurring income if prospect you refer becomes a paying member of residual income opportunity program. For example, I belong to one of these programs myself. If a prospect comes to my website and clicks on a link which takes them to sales page for product and they buy, then I get a commission. However, if that prospect also decides to become a member of residual income opportunity program, then I get a check every month as long as that prospect remains a member of that program.