15 Important Steps Before You Start Your Online Business – Part 2

It is very exciting to build your own website or conduct an online business from home. Although it may seem easy but an internet business requires organization and management of time. If you know how to manage your time wisely and have organizational skill, you are halfway there.

If you are considering an online business and would like to build your own website, you have to perform these initial steps, before you proceed any further. These steps are based on the experience we have through our online business stainless chafing dishes.

1. Do your own research or get professional help regarding online business. So you understand the overall process of building a website and how using the internet is a viable way to make money.

2. Write down what are your business goals to reach specific milestones in your business

3. Set a time and find a quite place in your home from where you can conduct your business.

4. Start online business registration process with your state, the easiest way to do this is to register it online, using your state’s website http://www.irs.gov/businesses.

5. Need to apply a state sales tax ID number; Also known as a Federal Tax Identification Number, this number is used to identify a business entity and issued by the IRS. Generally, most businesses need an EIN. You can apply for an EIN from the IRS online. http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=102767,00.html

6. Set up a separate bank account for your business use.

7. Find a product in a niche that is high in demand, low in competition and profitable. Go to https://adwords.google.com for your product search.

8. Find a supplier (also manufacturer or wholesaler) to determine which supplier is best for your niche product.

9. Make sure to choose a right business model which is suitable to your financial goal and interest. There is five business model, Drop shipping, Traditional retailing, Joint Ventures, Marketing and existing business or Consulting.

10. I would recommend choosing a drop shipping method. In this method distributor or supplier ships product directly to your customer after the customer buys the product from your online store. So no inventory or upfront investment needed .You get the money first from the customer first and then you invest that money to order the product from the drop shipper. You can research for dropshipper on google: "stainlesschafingdish"+dropshipper, use your niche product instead stainlesschafingdish.

11. Find a right domain name for your website which should be relevant to your product and easy for your customer to remember. You can go with any of these companies:

http://www.godaddy.com

http://www.bluehost.com

http://purchaseyour.com

12. After you find niche product, supplier and domain name start building your website.

13. First you need to gather all the information including product name retail value, wholesale value, size, weight, colors features. Once you have collected all the information it`s time to put them in categories. This would be your home page and helps customers to find what they are looking for quickly. In order to build credibility your website needs several essential pages like About us, contact us, frequently asked questions, shipping& handling terms, privacy policy and site map pages.

14. Before you Publish your website you need to add shipping rules, state tax rules and payment method to make sure that everything works correctly.

15. Now publish your website. After the website is published, need to verify each page, product and all the links to make sure everything is working properly. This will allow you to experience your website as a customer and as a website owner to make any changes before you start sending traffic to it.