When entering into the world of internet marketing you need to remember that you own a business. You must consider the following prior starting your internet business:



Finding Your Niche - Anyone internet for anytime soon realizes the importance of establishing a niche. I define a niche as a distinct segment of a market.

Let me give you an example: A person searches for weight loss on Google and it comes up with 75,200,000 references available. To help narrow down their search to his exact need he could type into the search engine the word "fat burning exercises" (34,100 references), "weight loss exercise programs", or "weight loss supplements"...

For a person to find exactly what he wants he needs to type in his desire outcome.

So to find or develop a niche you need to target your audiences desired outcome as close as possible to the product or service that you offer.

Those new to internet marketing will find it important to start in a niche that they find most interesting. Look around your house and see what you have amassed over the years. Check out your bookshelf or even your magazine subscriptions and you will zero in on what interest to you. Budget - At all cost try not to go broke just to get rich quick. Make sure to keep track of all your expense and how much you earn each month. Before you begin any business make sure that you can survive financially for a period of 6 to 18 months. Most businesses take about 18 months to truly get off the ground and begin returning a profit from their investment of time and money.

Keeping track of your expenses will save you many headaches when it comes to tax time. If you have expenses related to your business you can use these to lower the amount of tax expenses that you must pay at the end of the year.

Taxes and Legal Protection - OK, I want to give you fair warning, I am not a legal or tax professional nor do I play one on television. That was my disclaimer to cover myself legally. What I do know.

PROTECT YOUR ASSESTS!!! Please heed this call to protect yourself. If you do not, you will find yourself in a world of trouble when some unscrupulous individual decides that he does not like the fair way in which you practice your business.

Make your lawyer and account your best friends when it comes to development and protection of your business. Believe me this will save you from many late nights of worry.

In fact my friend Jose the Economist, says "You should tip your lawyer and accountant before your waiter because they save you the most money."

I agree your accountant will show you how to legally cut corners to keep your hard earned money and your attorney will show you how to protect it.

Developing your website(s) - I will keep this short and sweet because I will go into details about this important component of your internet business in a later article. When developing websites for your business you have several options.

Learn HTML - This is highly recommend because when you want to make a change you don't have to wait for your webmaster to do so.

There are several options to choose from when it comes to developing your own sites.

Community college class on HTML

Search You Tube for lessons on HTML

Purchase a webpage creation program

Hire a webmaster - By searching websites like Elance.com, you can hire a webmaster for little out of pocket expense.

Marketing Plan - How would you like to approach your marketing? With so many choices you can't go wrong? My recommendation is to pick one and get really good at it. The following list is by no means an exhaustive:

Affiliate Driven - Create a product that can be sold to others and allow them to also market the product giving them a commission for sells made.

Viral Marketing - You can create a product such as an ebook give it away to others to freely distribute. This particular ebook should have links driving traffic back to your website allowing for more opportunities to sell your product.

Membership Sites - If you have a passion for a particular topic you can open this site to people who are also interested in this particular topic as well. Imagine charging $10 and up per month for information or services that members can't get any where else.

These are the 5 things you should consider prior to leaping into your internet business. Remember the internet can be a huge forest and you can get lost if you not properly equipped.