The best starting point is to look at the main alternatives -- the types of online business that are proving successful for other people. The chances are, with a little work, you too can succeed at one of these. Typically each one has pros and cons, and having this information should help you to choose what is right for you. So here they are, probably the most popular types of business on the internet:

SELLING ON EBAY

This is easy to set up, and Ebay virtually does the marketing for you. You need to know your products and watch out for Ebay's fees, but if you're careful it can be good for a small income. To make a bigger business of it requires finding a very reliable supplier for goods you want to sell -- and that can be a problem: your reputation, and your success, can be out of your hands and down to your supplier.

MLM (Multi-Level Marketing)

This can be profitable if you have a list of people likely to be interested in your product, and if so then this could be quite an easy business. But otherwise it can be time consuming trying to get targeted traffic, or expensive buying 'guaranteed visitors'. MLM programs have monthly fees/costs built in, and it can be a long and expensive road before you break even.

AFFILIATE MARKETING (selling other people's product for a commission)

There are different ways to do this, including from your own website, but the most popular means of promotion is 'Pay Per Click' with Google Adwords. But that method is not as straightforward as it seems -- indeed it is a financial graveyard for many marketers, losing money before they've hardly realised it, or falling foul of Google's rules that change from time to time. It can be successful if you are determined, and willing to test your adverts constantly, but it can take a lot of time and money to actually make cash rather than lose it.

SELLING YOUR OWN DIGITAL PRODUCTS (e-books, software, audios, videos)

Out of all the alternatives, I believe that this last option -- selling your own digital products, and particularly e-books -- offers the most. This for me is the top home internet business, and perhaps it could be the right one for you: Big profit margins, long term returns for relatively little one-time effort, and sales on autopilot for years to come. But also you have complete control -- not dependant on suppliers as with Ebay, or on building and maintaining a downline as with MLM, or on another product owner as in affiliate marketing. And also, you will truly be building your own long term business.

So what sort of e-books are the easiest and most profitable to produce and sell? The answer, I believe, is short, low priced 'How-to' guides based on your own hobby or interest or specialist knowledge. There is a ready market for short, informative guides on almost any subject, and by selling them cheaply at $5, $10 or $15 each you can sell in volume.

Longer e-books can take a lot of research and a long time to put together, but these short how-to guides can be produced quickly and very easily once you know how. For one thing, writing for a 'how-to' guide is so much easier. And once you know the system it is easy to produce a whole series of short guides -- each one focused on one particular aspect of the subject, one technique or one solution to a problem.

And people love them -- rather than wading through a more expensive, longer e-book to find what they need, they will happily buy a short, low priced guide giving them just the information they are looking for.

It is a great home business to build and develop, and possibly the most worthwhile of all.