E-Business and E-commerce are different concepts although they are closely related. E-commerce refers to selling products online, whereas e-business refers to using Internet technology as an integral part of your business. Some examples of these Internet technologies include email, banking online and web-based customer relationships. In short, if you use the Internet to help you succeed in your business, then you are involved in e-business.



To get started in ebusiness, the first step is to establish a presence on the Internet. The way to do this is to set up a website. Although a lot of people hire a webmaster to do this for them, it is something that you can do yourself if you have the time. The first thing you have to do is find a host for your website and determine a name. You can use .com, .net, .info or one of many other forms of an address, but the main focus of the name has to be about your business. You may have to do a lot of searching to find one that isn't already taken. It should be short and to the point and be the major focus of your business idea.

Once you find a web hosting site with a reasonable price, then you can start getting the articles or catalog ready for the site. You should set up a folder on your computer and save all your material as .txt. If you do not know HTML, then there are software programs you can buy that will write the code for you. Some examples of this are Microsoft Frontpage and Dreamweaver. All you have to do is copy and paste your material into the page and save it to a web folder. Using an upload program, such as File Zilla, you can then upload the pages to your website.

You do have to submit your site to the search engines and it may take several months for your site to show up in the rankings. Being aware of keyword optimization techniques also makes it easy for the search engines to find you. Once you get started with e-business, you will be hooked and will starting to set up a lot more websites.