Since I began working in this industry, I have come to the realization that starting a small niche website really isn't as difficult as I thought it was originally. The problem comes in how much time it takes to get to a point where a person is actually making money off of the site. In other words, beginning a website and running it can be a very time consuming task and should only be started if you intend to spend the time needed to finish the task. For example, some of my coworkers are currently working on setting up a website for a certain niche product. They've been at it for months and it's not because they don't know what they're doing. No, it's because setting up and launching a website that is going to be profitable takes time, and a lot of it.

First of all, you should look into suppliers. Find a supplier that can be trusted to ship the product to your customers in a timely and professional manor. This supplier should have a long history of success with other clients and should not ever want a “cut” of the profits. Any supplier that wants to take a cut should be labeled as a middleman and avoided at all costs. You see, what happens is that the middleman will purchase from the actual manufacturer and then boost the cost of the products before selling them to you. What you need to do is cut out the middleman, purchase from the manufacturer yourself, and keep your profit considerably higher than it would have been using the middleman.

Once you have a supplier, it's safe to begin building and marketing a website. See, you wouldn't want to start up a website for a product that doesn't have any suppliers that will work with you. As soon as you have started building your website, begin building links too so you can start trying to rank on search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

Make certain that the website is clear and easy for your customers to understand. You also need to make sure that the images on the page are images that your customers can relate to. If they can relate to the images, they will be more likely to actually purchase your product. For example, I once saw a webpage designed for women but it was selling mens clothing and other products. The owner of the website was finally convinced that having a floral print bead spread on her site was not very appealing to her target market. She needed to have something a little more rugged and manly in order to get her target customers to stay on the site for any prolonged period of time.

Finally, you have your supplier, you have your website. Now you need to set up a merchant account, and set up your account to receive payment from your customers. You also want to have some way of tracking what's going on with sales and other things on your website. For example, you may want to have someone who knows how to keep track of books. You also need to sign up for a program that will track the statistics of your website; I usually use Google Analytics but you can use anything you find that will work for you.

I would suggest doing your research; there are literally hundreds of ways that a business owner can go wrong if they don't first do the necessary paperwork, etc. Before you go live, consult a professional to make sure that you are ready to go and then, if everything checks out, go live.