The internet has made independant business on realistic budgets achievable. There are four basic stages to starting an online business:

Research

• Product Research:
  
  • Identify market
    
    • What market can you find to sell to?
    • Find a need in the market to capitalise on
    • Source or develop a product to sell
  • Type of product:
    
    • Information product
    • Resale rights product
    • Affiliate marketing
    • Drop shipping
    • Stock and deliver
    • Services
• Market research:
  
  • Will the market buy your product
  • Pay per click competition
  • Identify the competitors

Implementation

• Selling a single product?
  
  • Single page html site
• Range of products?
  
  • Platform:
    
    • OSCommerce
    • Digistore
    • EBay/Amazon store
  • Payment Gateway:
    
    • Google checkout - Subsidises adwords
    • PayPal - Rich functionality
      
      • Adding paypal buy now buttons
    • Worldpay - Low transaction fees
• Online service?
  
  • Platform:
    
    • Drupal
    • Joomla
  • Payment plan:
    
    • Subscription fee
    • Charge per use
    • Multi tiered service

Marketing

• Online marketing
  
  • Pay per click marketing
    
    • Adwords
      
      • Search marketing
      • Content network
    • Microsoft AdCenter
    • Yahoo Ad Network
  • Online directories:
    
    • DMoz
    • Yahoo directory
  • Viral marketing
  • Paid links
  • Link exchanges
  • Social network optimisation
• Offline marketing
  
  • Leafleting
  • Cold calling
  • Newspaper, radio and TV
  • Word of mouth
• Customer Conversion
  
  • Effective selling
    
    • Offer value for money
    • Have a unique selling point
    • Know who your selling to
  • Effective pricing
    
    • What is is the function of your product worth
    • Market research
    • Split testing
  • Customer support
    
    • Provide clear channels of communication
    • Respond to customer queries quickly
    • Always ask for feedback

Optimization

• Sales optimization
  
  • Improvements to sales letter
  • Improvements to product
• Site optimization
  
  • Ensure ongoing cross browser compatibility
  • Correcting HTML and logical errors
  • Minimizing load time
  • Improving graphics
• Search engine optimization (On Page SEO, Off Page SEO)
  
  • Submitting site to the search engines
  • Acquiring inbound links
  • Adding text content to site
  • Improving keyword density
  • Researching new popular keywords