In this article I want to set out the basics of starting your very own business on the internet working from home, even if you don’t know the first thing about Internet Marketing. This article can be used as a check list and will help you stay focused and make it easier to set up and improve your very own business from the comfort of your own home.

To help you begin your internet marketing career, I have listed the ‘Must Haves’ you will need, and to know about if you are to stand any chance of success.

Find a Market - Find a market before you decide on a product. Also try to find an area that you are personally interested in. If you do find something, it will be easier to stay motivated. Use Google to search different keywords. Try researching with Yahoo to see what else is selling. Check eBay and Amazon for all their different categories. And use the big Internet Networks to look for interesting markets. After your first project is up and running, then you can start looking for your next one. Remember it is very easy to jump from one project to the next before the first one is finished. So try to find a project that you like and stay with it until its making you an income.

Find a Product - After finding a market you will need to find a product to sell. You could search the internet to see what other people are selling to get some ideas. Or maybe you can sell a product as an affiliate or another affiliate’s product. Remember try to be original. If you are an imaginative person you could find a product someone else is selling and make it a little better, or different, and cheaper. If you choose to sell digital products you will find many extra benefits such as: no shipping or handling fee, low start up costs, and your profit margin will be close to 100 percent and your customer will get the product right away.

Get a Domain Name – You will want to have your own domain name. Try to think of a few different names because your first choices may not be available. Choose a short name and it will be easier for people to remember. If possible get domain names ending with .com or .co or .org or .net or .info etc you should also try to get a name to match your product. And use keywords in your domain name to get a better listing on search engines.

Hosting - The purpose of a hosting company is to keep your website running properly. They will make sure everything is working properly so your customers can navigate through it and buy your product or service. This is a very important. If your website is not working properly then you are losing money. You may find some free hosting companies, but you really do get what you pay for. It is much better if you use a paid hosting company.

Personal Website – If you do not have one already, create a personal website so your customers can buy your products 24/7. You will be competing with lots of other website's so try to make yours stand out. If your site takes a long time to download your potential customers will go somewhere else. Remember its words that sell products not graphics. To get ideas for your website search the web and look for sites that you like.

Payment Processing - To collect money for your products you will need a payment processor. Make sure that you can accept all payment methods. You may also want to use PayPal. The more ways you can collect money the more sales you will make. And if you are selling a digital product you may want to use one of the big internet network companies.

Auto Responders - If you want to make your internet business easier, then you will want to automate as much as possible by using auto responders. You can automate a lot of your every day business tasks leaving you to concentrate on more important things. Here are a few examples: send out email ads to everyone on your list at regular intervals. Send out emails automatically whenever someone buys one of your products. Have all of your digital products sent out automatically. And with auto responders you can collect names and email addresses and add them to your list of customers.

Free Advertising - This may be a good place to start if your funds are limited. But this will be slower than paid advertising and will take a lot more time. If you are spending a lot of time with free advertising and not getting the results you like, then you may want to try something else. Keep in mind when using free advertising someone else may place their ad with yours and this is not very professional. Also when you join these free advertising sites it usually means everyone on that site can send free advertising to you. So you will receive lot of unwanted emails.

Paid Advertising – With paid advertising you should get better results. At first you may think posting your ad(s) to as many people as possible will make you the most money. But this is not a good idea for a couple of reasons. A lot of people will not have an interest in your product so they will probably not even read your ad. And you may be accused of spamming which is something you never want to do. So always try to place your ad(s) with specific targeted group(s).

Compile a List - This gets a big thumbs up. Start collecting a list of names and email addresses as soon as possible, add to your list often because it will make you money over and over again. Whenever you need extra money you can send an email promoting a product to your list. So you will want to collect names and emails addresses by offering free stuff and by having them join your newsletter and of course whenever they buy your product.

I mention a Newsletter above because it is a good idea to publish one to keep potential customers up-to-date with the product(s) you are selling or promoting.

I’ts important to promote yourself whenever and wherever you can. Invest part of your profits for good information that will help expand your business, and take the time to take that information on board and use it effectively.

Feel free to visit the web pages in my Resource/Bio to get some links to products that are marketed online and maybe one or two of them may help you to get started as an affiliate.

Author: Robert Allan