Day 1: Set up your new business

Firstly, you need to take care of the finances and accounts, this will require you to choose an accounting system and open a separate bank account for your business. This allows you to differentiate your personal resources from your business resources and simplify any issues of business accountability. As for the accounting system, you can choose between single entry or double entry programs. If you wish to operate from the US, a single entry program would be preferable.

Day 2: Choose your product or service

The products and/or services that you choose to market online will have to be carefully determined by you depending on your interests, how well funded you are, and how well defined and extensive your intended market is.

At this level you have the option of choosing amongst the following: coming up with your own unique product/ service, joining an affiliate program, or promoting a range of similar and related products/ services.

Day 3: Prepare your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

The success of your business depends on how well differentiated your products/ services are from those of your competitors. For this you have to devise your USP, on the basis of what you could hook your customers with.

So, while preparing your USP, you need to identify the profile of your ideal customer, and highlight the specific manner in which the customer will profit from your product, and further, the features that make your product better than that of your competitors.

Drawing up a clear and precise USP will ensure that you have a strongly focused business plan, and it is a powerful safeguard that minimizes the dissipation and wastage of your resources.

Day 4: Build a Website

When building your website it is imperative that you do your keyword research. Try and allocate keywords that are popular but may have been overlooked or missed your competition.

Here you have two options. You can either choose to build a direct response site, or you can decide to build a content website.

Day 5: Devise your marketing plan

After you have built your website, you will have to decide how you want to market your site. This means that you shall have to select your marketing tools and policies and adopt the methods best suited to your marketing requirements.

Day 6: Advertise your new business

Next you will have to design your promotional and advertisement materials and disseminate these strategically. Here, testing and tracking the prospective market is essential to your business. This allows you to evaluate and fine-tune the efficacy of your adopted marketing practices as also to make due adjustments to counter market variations. Another key element involved here is insistence: the more regularly you market your product, the better your chances.

Day 7: Maintain your new business

When you've implemented these first six steps, you are in a position to apply the 60/30/10 rule of business maintenance.

This rule means that you should allocate 60% of your time to marketing, 30% to product development, and 10% to administrative work like email and accounts.

It is important to bear in mind that irrespective of whether you sell products or services, marketing forms a crucial component of your success. Keep these simple steps in mind, and you'll have no problems when you decide to start an online business.