This hub is all about how to start an online business. There are many different low cost or even free ways that anyone can start their own online internet business, and will go through all of the main ones here to help inspire you with ideas for a new business as well as to give you more information on the different ways that you can get your own website business up and running and how you can make money from it. There are 6 main strategies that I will feature on this page - they can all be great ways to make money, but you will probably find that some are better suited to your particular skills than others.

Private label websites, or white label as some people call them, are the best way to set up an internet business quickle, for free, and with the minumum work on your part. The basic concept is that an established website is 'cloned', and you are given an identical copy of the site, along with a control panel that you can use to easily change the text, add a logo, and do other basic customization. The private label website provider will then take a percentage of the money from every sale made from your site, and you will get the rest. Your site will usually be hosted by the company that provides it for you, meaning that you don't need to pay for hosting, and they will also maintain it for you. This means that after a few hours doing the basic customization you can dedicate all of your time and effort to promoting your online business and generating sales.

Tips:

1. Make sure that you can change some of the text on your site, or add some new text of your own, because without unique written content it will be very difficult to get any traffic from the search engines, which will seriously limit the money that you make
2. Many private label providers will give you the option of having your business on a subdomain of their website (eg www.yourname.theirsite.com). This is ok, but it isn't ideal. Getting your own domain name should cost you less than ten dollars per year, and is pretty much always worth doing.

 For my pick of the best opportunities out there take a look at this free private label hosting reseller website and this free private label mobile phone comparison website (UK)

If you want to have your own website making you money, but you don't have any stock to sell or any high enough quality content to put on your site to attract visitors, then the best way is to create a user generated content website. Hubpages is an example of one of these, because people sign up for an account and then create pages like this one themselves. You can make a good amount of money from putting advertising on this kind of site (from google adsense or an affiliate network usually), and once it is up and running it pretty much rins itself without you having to keep adding content to keep it fresh.

You don't have to be able to write programming code to do it either, or have any technical skills in fact, because you can use scripts and content management systems that will allow you to easily create an internet business using a simple control panel. If you

There are many different kinds of user generated content sites that you could set up, but here is my list of the best ones, based on a balance ease of use and potential revenue:

Free - The only costs to setting up on of these sites is for hosting and a domain name

1. Free social Bookmarking Website - Set up a niche social bookmarking website like Share A Bargain, or create a general one to rival the big players like digg!
2. Free Wiki Website Script - A free way to set up a 'wiki' website where users can write for and edit any page, like wikipedia

Paid

1. Article DIrectory Script - run your own article directory, just like this one: Spiritual Article Directory

Thanks to a new tool called My App Builder you can now make your own iphone apps without any programming knowledge whatsoever. All you need is a bit of creative flair and anyone can build shiny new professional looking apps for the iphone using their control panel. Ans the best bit is that once you have finnished working on your creations you can submit them to apple's app store, and if they are accepted then they will be sold for you and you will get a nice big fat share of the profits. This is a huge industry and can be very profitable, and you won't even have to do the sales and marketing - you just make the apps and then allow them to be sold on your behalf. You can also take a look at my other hub on how to make money from facebook apps

If you think that you have a flair for art and design then you can use someone like www.cafepress.com to set up your own e-commerce business. You just submit your own designs to be sold on a wide variety of products from t-shirts to bags to mouse mats and loads more. You can start off wityh a free site if you like, or you can pay a few dolloars a month for a more professional shop, and although you start off with it being on a subdomain of cafepress you can get your own domain name and create a more personalized shop.

If you want to set up your own auction website then there are loads of different options out there. For the low cost option take a look at this Free Auction Script

Another way to set up an online shop without having to spend loads of money on stock to sell is to use PLR (private label rights). This means that you pay a modest amount of money to have the right to resell an unlimited numer of ebooks, software downloads, or some other digital product. The only drawback to this is that there is usually a large amount of competition selling the exact same things.

You can also use free content management systems to set up a site that will highlight your own writing or other content. The classic example of this is the wordpress blog, but you can also get other such as Drupal and Joomla for creating more advanced websites. A good hosting account will allow you to set up one of these on your own domain name with a one click install

 If you have a little bit more money to spend to get yourself going then you could consider buying a ready to launch 'turnkey' website, or buying a small start up internet business from an auction site like www.sitepoint.com. Prices start at under $100, but if you want a good quality online business with the potential to make you good money then I would personally advise you to spend at least $200-300.