Starting an Internet Business - Step by Step

Starting an Internet Business - Step by Step

Your internet business may be small - but the Internet lets you think big. Whatever product or service your internet business offers, the Internet levels the playing field and lets you compete with bigger businesses, reaching customers around the world who can conveniently buy from you 24 hours a day.

But in the competitive world of the Web, growing your business and increasing your profits online requires some careful planning. For every successful internet businesses, there are dozens that fail by not addressing basic risks and pitfalls along the way. So to take full advantage of the internet business opportunity, make sure you base your internet business on a solid foundation that covers every element of a successful internet business:

First Step - The Ideas and Startup Plans

This is the most important step! Without a good concept, a good product, good services or good content, anything else you do is a waste of time. So what should you look for here?

If you already have a business offline means in the real world, this is the logical place to start. So many businesses launching websites as just another place they need to advertise. They simply copy their print advertisements and brochures to the web sites. While these sites are not totally worthless, but they fail to take full advantage of the supreme opportunities afforded by the new technologies online.

The Internet is becoming the busiest business area the world has ever known. However, having a web site should be more than reproducing existing advertising. It should mean taking full advantage of the Internet's capability of interactive shopping and globally convenient access. Your web site can be the perfect showcase for people to obtain information about your company and products, an efficient way of communicating with your present clients, potential customers and an international marketplace to sell your products and services.

If you do not have an existing business, you should still look for ideas first in areas where you already have some expertise. If your current expertise does not seem to lend itself to an online business opportunity, your next plan should be to spend some significant time learning about the businesses already operating online. Once you have an understanding of what is available, look for ways to do the same things in a better way or look for a market niche that has not been serviced well. Keep in mind that there are almost always ways to improve upon existing services and products.

Clearly, converting your ideas, expertise and skills into an internet business is a big job, but it's too important to do it for a successful career and for financial independence. ApnaKarobar.Com can help. As the leading provider of internet business and internet marketing services for individuals and small-businesses. ApnaKarobar.Com offers a complete set of solutions that help you easily handle every step of the internet business process. If you have an idea you wish to discuss, email me for advise.

If you have not yet developed your Business Plan, I strongly recommend you do so before moving on to the next step. Even if you are starting a very small company with one or two people, you will benefit from going through this exercise. Business plans are much more than simply a homework assignment for MBA students or a project for large corporations. They are a critical first step as well as a continuing process for any business, which plans to succeed.

Second Step - Your own Domain Name (Web address)

The first step toward internet business is selecting the name of your site. Your Web address (also called a URL - Uniform Resource Locator - or "domain name"), tells customers who you are and how to find you on the Internet. It is the core of your Internet identity - your online brand. And because no two parties can have the same Web address, your online identity is totally unique.

Selecting a domain name is an important part of developing an Internet business. Even if your company already has an established business name, it may not be in your best interest to use that name exclusively on the Internet. You may even benefit by using two (or more) domain names, one with your actual business name for customers who would look for you online by typing your company name in their browser (like microsoft.com) and one for people who are looking for your product or services and would look in a search engine (like software.com). Many people have learned that an easy way to find a product or service they want is to type the name of the product into their browser. The chances are good that they will find something useful using that method. See what happens when you type in www.toys.com or www.flowers.com

Although it is true that virtually every word in the English language is already owned by someone else, there are many clever ways around the problem of finding a good domain name. For example, if you are a travel agency and can't get travel.com, you might be able to reserve something like JJ-travel.com. You can also reserve a name with a .net, .org, .biz, .us or many other extensions, but the "dot com" is still the most well-known and accepted extension for business domain names. If you would like to register a domain name for your internet business, I suggest using www.apnakarobar.com/services/domain-registration/, which is an excellent registration service for only $12.99 per year with many free services. Network Solutions at www.networksolutions.com is currently still charging $35 per year for the same service.

Registering your own domain name is a must for your business. This will give your business an internet established presence. Too many businesspeople skip this crucial step. The US$13 or Rs 800/- yearly fee is a small price to pay for professionalism. If you’re serious about your business, don’t skip this step.

When registering a domain name, please keep this point in mind: Don’t use unusual words, phrases or ellipsis in domain name. Choose an easy-to-remember name that also describers your products, services or expertise.

Never use free domain and free hosting (with a lot of banner-ads or popup-window ads) for your business. They don’t leave good impression on your web site visitors about your business and professionalism.

Click on the link below to see if the name you want is available:
http://www.apnakarobar.com/services/domain-registration-services.htm

If you have questions about domain names, please write to me at najam@apnakarobar.com

Third Step - Selecting a Web Host

There are some basics you need to consider when selecting a web hosting company:

Reliability - This refers to the percentage of time the hosting server is working and displaying your website. Unfortunately, these percentages are often reported only by the host company, so their accuracy should not be taken at face value. A good rule to verify their reliability is to check existing web sites hosted on their servers or ask their existing web hosting clients about their hosting services.

Access to support staff - All hosting companies probably have support staff. The important question is how easily can you get in contact with them and how soon can you get help with your problems.

Server hard drive space - An average web page is 10K to 50k. Pictures and other graphics usually range on size from about 1K to 100K. This means that if you have a 10 to 15 page website with 2-5 graphics on each page, you will need 500K to about 3MB (3,000K or 3,000,000 bytes) to save your website on a server. Even if you have a much large website with many more graphics, your website should be able to fit comfortably onto about 10MB of hard disk space. When web hosts offer you 100MB of hard disk space, they do so knowing that the vast majority of users will not come close to using all of that space. Therefore, in most cases, offers of more than 10-25MB of space are made mostly to impress prospective customers who really do not understand how much they need. It just sounds good.

Allowable data transfer - When someone visits your web page, they cause data (web page code and images) to be transferred from the server hosting your web page down to their individual computer. If you have many visitors who look at everything on your web site, this transfer puts a strain on the resources of your host server. For this reason, limits are generally placed on the amount of "traffic" your site may receive before you are charged extra. In the example above, assuming the maximum web site size (about 3MB), and assuming 1,000 visitors per day viewed everything on your website once, you would need to transfer 30MB per day or about 1GB per month.

Secure server - Many web hosts have this option available for an additional monthly fee. Secure (or encrypted) server space is needed if you plan to accept credit card information or other sensitive data on your website. If this data is not encrypted (coded so it cannot be read except by the intended recipient), then it can be viewed by others and potentially stolen.

FTP or other access - There are many ways for you to upload your web pages to your server. However, the quickest and easiest is by using an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program.

POP accounts - These allow you password-protected access to mail sent though your website email address. You may want to set up separate POP accounts for each major department in your company. Ask how many POP accounts your host allows you to have without paying extra.

Included software - Some web hosts include no software; others include a large number of software tools to help you run your site more easily. Examples of programs, which you might expect to have available are: Auto-responders (to send automatic replies to your customers), site statistics (to monitor your visitors), webmail (check your emails using web browser) etc.

CGI-bin access - If you want to run your own programs on your website, you must have CGI access. Your CGI capabilities must allow you to read, write and execute on your server. Many hosts do not allow such access. This may not seem important when you first set up your website. However, as your site develops and interactive capabilities are needed (like quizzes, contests and surveys), you will find your company needing this ability.

Domain name hosting - At a minimum you need your host server to allow you to have your own domain name. Since you can now register a domain name for only $13 per year, every company should have their own. Some hosts will allow you to have more than one domain name on your site; others will not.

I use and highly recommend ApnaKarobar Hosting Services. I have been using these hosting services for last 2 years to host my 30 clients' web sites and www.apnakarobar.com is hosted there, too.



To read more steps, please follow this link:
http://apnakarobar.com/najam-articles/Start-Internet-Business.htm