There are many ways to start a business. Why do I recommend you make money online - rather than off? Because it's easy money compared to the alternative - a traditional off-line business. The main reason is because it is vastly less expensive to get started. Consider the expenses involved in a traditional business:

* You are going to sell something - so you will need to buy inventory, and

* Rent or buy a place to keep it - which involves either a lease or a purchase of suitable real estate,

* And heat, light, phone lines, water, and other utilities,

* And insurance for your building and merchandise, * And licensing fees paid to the city, county, and state governments,

* Unless you see yourself as a one-man-show, you will have to pay to hire, train, and support employees - the biggest single headache of traditional business owners.

* Then you will have to pay for expensive advertising to bring customers to your door. And besides these direct expenses you will have additional expenses associated with:

* Inventory control - to keep your employees from stealing you blind, and * Collection expenses for receivables that constitute the traditional business person's second biggest headache.

And on top of all that you won't know if you are succeeding or not for weeks or months after you begin - because the requisite feedback takes that much time to appear - and all the while your overhead expenses go on and on.

A typical small storefront in a strip mall has to gross $25,000 a month just to break even. Can you afford that kind of risk? Would you want to if you could?

By contrast, most of the expenses listed above are simply absent if you work from home and make money online - and the ones that don't disappear altogether are far lower than is the case for a traditional "brick and mortar" business.

In addition, the feedback with an online business is quite rapid. You will find out very quickly, and with much less risk, whether your business is succeeding - in some cases within hours. This let's you make course corrections very quickly, thereby avoiding costly mistakes and delays.

Heed My Advice - Or Don't

From this point on I'm going to assume that you have made the wise choice to position your business online, rather than going the traditional route. Good choice!

There is still a lot to learn - starting with some basic background on how to make money online with online marketing.