brandice romancer: How to Start an Online Business

Learn how to get your business online.

More and more people are turning to the internet to start an online business. The following topics can guide you on how to start, manage and market a lucrative way to sell goods and services.

Business Savvy Basics

Prepare a business plan. Basic business rules apply to all businesses, and learn and follow the rules for complying with online federal, state and local business regulations, registering a domain name, the selection of web hosting, web designing and web marketing and understanding international trade laws. Use the following tools and resources on this page to guide you.

Register Your Domain Name

Choosing and registering a website domain name is the first step in establishing an online business. The domain name is your web address. The process is simple, inexpensive and vital to your business. After you selected your name(s) you would like to register, you may select from any number of individual businesses on the internet that handle web hosting and registrations. You may opt to register several names, to avoid competitors that will try to confuse browsers, and take away from your business. You need only use one domain as your web address, but by registering other names of variant spelling, and similarity, they are essentially off the market. Here are a few affiliate links to reputable companies that we have purchased from:

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is the non-profit corporation that has technical oversight of Internet protocol address space allocation, protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management, and root server system management functions. It provides current news on issues surrounding domain names.

Selecting a Web Host

The web hosting service may be selected at the same time as registering your domain name(s). A web host will provide you with space, support and maintenance of your website as well as creation help if you desire. You may use your own web designers. Again, there are many options and organizations that perform these services and it would be wise to do thorough due diligence in selecting one. You want one that is reliable and secure. This website is currently hosted with bluehost.com (affiliate link).

Design Your Website

You may design your own if you have the expertise, or hire the website designer of your choice. The website is your online store front and its ?curb appeal? is as important to your success as a physical location. The uniform resource locator (URL) of your website is now your business address. Be sure to comply with U.S. trademark and intellectual property laws. The same laws and regulations apply to online businesses as regular businesses. Search for trademarks currently in use to avoid infringing on another company's rights on your website.

There are many freelancers available that can design and develop a website for you. Freelancers can be found on freelancing websites such as elance.com and getafreelancer.com

Begin Advertising and Marketing

As with all businesses, it will not be successful with good advertising and marketing to bring in customers. For online businesses, these customers come in the form of site visitors or viewers, otherwise known as ?traffic.?

Generating the highest amount of traffic possible on your website will create the highest chance that those visitors will become customers.

One of the ways to help improve your website's visibility is by conducting SEO (Search Engine Optimization). A faster, but more costly method of acquiring traffic is with SEM (Search Engine Marketing). SEM, most commonly associated with Pay-Per-Click advertising, can be done with search engines such as google.com and bing.com

Get Started Now!

Starting an online business takes time, serious effort and dedication. Once you see your website live, you'll feel a great sense of accomplishment. Don't wait to get started. Start right now!

brandice romancer

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

How to Start an Online Business | Concepts News