Geez, time flies so fast. We are already in 2006. What have you achieved last year so far? Have you started an internet business, have you promoted your existing business to new levels or have you just sit back? If you are at all serious about building a real internet business which can pay your bills every month, can pay your vacations while allowing you to make money even while you are sleeping or sipping a margherita on the beach, you need to read this now. This article is in no way an exhaustive list of everything you should do to run a successful business but it outlines the important things you should do so that you'll be able to start, build and run a profitable online business.

If you are not working on your internet business regularly, you are not going to progress. If you are still procrastinating about starting an online business but always hesitant, you are never going to make it online. Remember how times flies so fast and if you consider 1 year has already gone by and you haven't done anything, just think about how many things you would have achieved if you have started this business 1 year ago. I can tell you, lots and lots and you probably could be enjoying an incoming success right now no matter how small it is.

If you are among the very few to get an income online, it's already a big thing because 90-99% of people who start venturing online in the hope of earning a revenue fail. There are many factors that could be the reason for failure like not working hard enough on your business, not motivated enough, discouraged on the first obstacle, not automating, targeting the wrong market, low quality products, not enough web traffic, poor sales copy, unprofessional website, lack of knowledge etc... the list goes on and on.

You don't just need knowlegde but you need to take action as well either when you are starting an internet business or promoting an existing one. To make it simpler for you, here is a list of things you might consider to do regularly to get your business running successfully or to get you started on the right track:

(1) Publish A Newsletter

It has been said again and again in many articles that having your own newsletter or ezine is a lucrative way to run an Internet business. Why? Simply because people who are in your list regularly receive your emails and valuable information and have known to trust you with time. As a result, when you have a valuable product offer for them, do you think they will listen to your advice or from someone they haven't heard before. You guess it. Because you're the one who cares for them by providing them value, special offers, you have a loyal readership who are eager to know what you have for them and who will buy from you again and again. Your business might be completely destroyed but if you still have your valuable opt in email list, your business is still alive.

This is why it's fundamental that you keep building your list no matter what. After many years, you'll be surprised how your newsletter will grow if you are getting traffic to your website of course. But what counts is not really the size of the list but rather the quality of your subscribers. You can have only 1000 high quality subscribers on your list and just one product recommendation can be worth thousands of dollars in your pocket. On the other hand, you can have 100,000 subscribers but what if the majority are not of high quality for eg you haven't provided them with much value and always bombard them with offers, your sales might suffer.

(2) Get high quality inbound links on an ongoing basis

The Internet is a network of websites and links and the more links you have, the more traffic you'll get in general. This is why it's imperative that you set your time everyday to get a few valuable links. By doing this regularly, you'll build a large quantity of them and you will reap the rewards in many ways you can imagine. First of all, you will get traffic from these links alone and the more prominent these links are, the more traffic you'll get. Secondly, your search engine rankings will soar.

You can request reciprocal links from websites who share the same theme as yours or more or less related, this is still good to have because the traffic will be targeted. You can also advertise on other websites via text advertising. Writing articles is also a very profitable method to get incoming links, just one quality article can be worth 100 links and more, it's really possible if you consider many websites publishing your article. After you write your article, be sure to submit it to high traffic article directories or make special requests to popular websites to use your article which is related to their theme. Here is a small list of good article banks or article directories.

http://www.ezinearticles.com

http://www.site-reference.com

http://www.articlesfactory.com

http://www.articlecity.com

http://www.articlebiz.com

http://www.searchwarp.com

http://www.articlealley.com

http://www.articleheaven.com

http://www.a1articles.com

(3) Automate your business

If you aren't automating your business, you will get discouraged in the long run and won't be motivated to continue. Save time, money and hassles with automation. If you are selling your own products, you might want to get a third party payment processor like ClickBank(For digital products like ebooks and software) at http://www.clickbank.com, 2checkout at http://www.2checkout.com, iBill at http://www.ibill.com amongst others.

If you are publishing your own newsletter, use an autoresponder service like GetResponse at http://www.getresponse.com or Aweber at http://www.aweber.com to automatically add and remove subscribers, broadcasting emails and many more.

(4) Update your website with new articles or content regularly

Having an updated site will get you repeat visitors and search engines love fresh content, hence they will visit your website on a regular basis and index your pages which can be the source of future traffic. Be sure to have at least some unique content on your website. You can create a page with a list of articles and you should regularly update this page with new articles or content. By adding articles on a regular basis, you are building more routes to your website.

Articles are rich in keywords and they will generate small loads of traffic to your website from the search engines. Every article has the potential to drive traffic and imagine you have lots of them, you can have a nice and constant flow of targeted traffic.

(5) Add adsense code on your website

If you are not using adsense yet, you still have time to use it. Adsense is not outdated yet and is still a major source of income for many marketers. Just blend the adsense ad format between your content and generate some revenue which can easily cover your web hosting fees and much more. Get a free account at http://www.google.com/adsense. Build a useful site with about 20-30 pages and get approved.

(6) Advertise your site on the pay per click search engines

Not many people like to pay for traffic but it might get you started much faster if you are just beginning. Drive traffic to your website according to your budget and don't spend too much than you can afford. Bid on many related keywords that do not cost too much. Go to Yahoo! Search Marketing at http://www.overture.com or Google AdWords at http://www.google.com/adwords to open an account.

(7) Add and promote affiliate products on your website

If you have some space on your website, why not capitalize on this by promoting an affiliate product. You might get some sales just by placing a link to someone else product. And you can always change to see which works best and which ones are selling.

(8) Create your own products

If you have the skills to develop your own products be it a real book, an ebook, a software etc... it's a wise decision to get started. All the knowledge you have in your brain right now can be worth a fortune to some people. There are no shortage of newbies online and these people won't mind to pay for information that they can get in a single place rather than having to search everywhere on the web to collect tidbits of information here and there. Having your own product usually means more success for you because you keep 100% of the profits and you can recruit affiliates to sell for you as well. The major inconvenience is customer service but who cares if your business is running successfully. You can hire someone later on to do this for you as well and teach him/her about your business.

(9) Sell advertising on your website

If you have a successful website running, why not capitalize on the extra space on your website to sell some advertising be it banner or text. Many people want to gain more exposure for their websites and if you provide some advertising services, there might be some who will be interested. Some of the advertising plans you can consider are monthly, quarterly and yearly. You can even give discounted prices for long periods.

Well here is a brief list about your resolutions for this year. Implement it and I guarantee you will see some difference in your internet business. The key to success is to be persistent if you know what you're doing is right. If you are planning to stay in your online business on a long term basis, you should treat it seriously, a business that can even enabled you to earn a living online.