I know of a fellow who posted a question on yahoo answers. This particular question kept me staring at my monitor screen lost of words. This fellow had bought a domain name and registered it with one of the leading domain name registrar. His question was simple yet to those familiar with the art of online business, the question leaves a lot to be desired.

My friend was seeking advice on what to do with his domain name. He had no plans or ideas on what to do with it! Think of lack of planning and we don't need to go further than this example.

To avoid being on the same predicament, here are 5 factors to consider as you ponder on your next move. Before you build a website, think about the following:

Type of web site.

Identify the type of web site you will be building. Are you going to build a website whose primary purpose is to sell hard good or e-goods? Would your site be composed of affiliate links or are you going to sell your own service or product? Is your web site going to be primarily informative in nature with google ad sense and other form of advertisement or is it going to be purely visual with little or no content.

Identifying the type of web site you are going to create will make the next step easy to identify.

Niche based.

Gone are the days when all a web master needed to do was to stuff their web site with links leading to all type of product and services. In the current internet world you can not succeed in building a web site designed in the form of a shopping mall with all kinds of goods and services.

The internet is increasingly and exponentially becoming a specialized super highway. Only those web sites that are able to distinguish them selves as authorities in a given area are poised to reap the benefits of online business.

Start out by identifying a profitable niche that you will enjoy writing about, identify an area that you already have experience on, have passion or will be comfortable learning about.

Only build a website in an area or niche that you believe in.

Research you market.

It's not just enough to develop and build a website based on your strength and weakness. Care should be taken to do a little bit more research about the potential and profitability of that given field.

There are great tools out there on the net that would enable you to come up with a profitable niche, those tools will also enhance your research by shading light as to the exact phrases that your potential visitors would under normal circumstances type into the search engines in their quest for information.

Domain name and hosting.

Care should be taken while choosing the domain name and hosting company for your online business. A search in any of the leading search engines for the phrase "how to choose a domain name" or "web hosting" would return tones of articles that have been written advising us on the do and don't do as far as choosing a domain name or host provider is concerned.

Quality Content.

Have you ever typed the exact phrase of a given keyword while searching for information on any of the leading search engines only to end up frustrated with the displayed results after trying several times? Search engines and human traffic thirst for information, great quality information.

One sure ways to win the search engines wars and in the process please your targeted customers is to create quality content. A site owner who remains focused and persistent in doing just start will in the long run reap the benefit of having their pages rank up high if not at the top of the search query results.

And there are many more things to consider, but why not start with this 5 first!