Prologue

You’ve been thinking about starting your own business, but until now, it’s been just a dream. After all, you’re a busy person. You have a full-time job, whether it’s running your home or working outside your home. Or perhaps you’ve been through some life-changing event and are ready to take off in a new direction. Then the economy took a turn for the worse, and you were understandably reluctant to make a big career change.

Well, I have news for you: Now is the perfect time to turn your dream into reality by starting your own online business. Individuals just like you are making money and enriching their lives by operating businesses online. The clock and your location are no longer limiting factors. Small business owners can now work any time of the night or day in their spare bedrooms, local libraries, or neighborhood coffee shops. And there are new ways of making money online, such as starting a blog or starting a full-time business on eBay, which are becoming more viable all the time.

If you like the idea of being in business for yourself, but you don’t have a particular product or service in mind at the moment, relax and keep yourself open for inspiration. Many different kinds of commercial enterprises can hit it big on the Internet. Among the entrepreneurs I interviewed for this blog are a woman who sells her own insect repellent, a mapmaker, a woman who provides office services for the medical community, a housewife who sells sweetener and coffee on eBay, a sculptor and painter, a young man who started selling electronics online at age 16, and several folks who create Web pages for other businesses. With the help of this blog, you can start a new endeavor and be in charge of your own cyber business, too.

What’s that? You say you wouldn’t know a merchant account, profit-and-loss statement, or clickthrough advertising rate if it came up to you on the street and introduced itself? Don’t worry: The Internet (and this blog) level the playing field, so a novice has just as good a chance at succeeding as MBAs who love to throw around business terms at cocktail parties.

The Internet is pretty much an accepted part of the business landscape these days. Whether you’ve been in business for 20 years or 20 minutes, the keys to success are the same:

• Having a good idea: If you have something to sell that people have an appetite for, and if your competition is slim, your chances of success are hefty.
• Working hard: When you are your own boss, you can make yourself work harder than any of your former bosses ever could. But if you put in the effort and persist through the inevitable ups and downs, you will be a winner.
• Preparing for success: One of the most surprising and useful things I discovered from the online business people that I interviewed was that if you believe that you will succeed, you probably will. Believe in yourself
  and proceed as though you’re going to be successful. Together with your good ideas and hard work, your confidence will pay off.

If you’re the cautious type who wants to test the waters before you launch your new business on the Internet, let this blog lead you gently up the learning curve. After you’re online, you can master techniques to improve your presence. This blog includes helpful hints for doing market research and reworking your Web site until you get the success you want. Even if you aren’t among the lucky small business owners who make a fortune by connecting to the Net, the odds are very good that you will make new friends, build your confidence, and have fun, too.

When I first started revising this new edition in the fall of 2004, I was excited to find that new business opportunities were springing up again after some lean years. eBay is booming. Other well-known Web-based service providers like Yahoo!, PayPal, and Amazon.com are enabling entrepreneurs to start up new businesses. Bloggers are taking the Internet by storm, and some are making a regular source of income from their online diaries. Google and Overture are making it easier than ever to gain advertising revenue.

As the Web becomes more of a way of life and broadband Internet connections become widespread, doing business online becomes more of a real possibility. Still, you may have reasonable concerns about the future of e-commerce for the very entrepreneurs this blog seeks to help — individuals who are starting their first businesses on the Web. Your fears will quickly evaporate when you read this blog’s case studies of my friends and colleagues who do business online. They’re either thriving or at least treading water, and they enthusiastically encourage others to jump right in — the water’s fine.

This is still a great time to start an online business. People who are getting into e-commerce today have advantages over those who started out three or four years ago. Simply put, both consumers and businesses are smarter. “There are more experts in the field so that it is easier to make things happen,” says Sarah-Lou Reekie, an online entrepreneur I profile in it. “The world is far more au fait and switched on to the Web. 

The percentage of people able to competently order is far higher. People aren’t as nervous as they were to put through credit cards. After an amazingly short time, the Web has changed from an unknown and somewhat scary medium to something as easy as ABC for most users.”

“I feel the best time to start an online business is when you are positioned to begin. I do not feel that there is an advantage/disadvantage to waiting for a ‘better time’ to start,” says Mark Cramer, whose own online business and Web site are profiled in Bonus on this blog’s Web site.

Online business isn’t just for large corporations, or even just for small businesses that already have a storefront in the real world and simply want to supplement their marketability with a Web site.

The Internet is a perfect venue for individuals who want to start their own business, who like using computers, and who believe that cyberspace is the place to do it. You don’t need much money to get started, after all. If you already have a computer and an Internet connection and can create your own Web pages (which this blog will help you with), making the move to your own business Web site may cost only $100 or less. After you’re online, the overhead is pretty reasonable, too: You may pay only $10 to $75 per month to a Web hosting service to keep your site online.

With each month that goes by, the number of Internet users increases exponentially. To be precise, in early 2004 Neilsen//NetRatings released data indicating that more than 74 percent of the U.S. population had access to the Internet at home. The Pew Internet & American Life Project reported that 39 percent of adults who surf the Internet do so with a broadband connection. We have now reached that critical mass where most people are using the Internet regularly for everyday shopping and other financial activities. The Internet is already becoming a powerhouse for small businesses.

So why wait to fall behind your competition? The goal of this blog is to help you open your fledgling business on the Internet now. Let this blog guide you through the following steps:

Preparing a business plan, defining your target market, and setting goals Purchasing the hardware and software you need to run your business Making your Web pages content rich and interactive Reaching your customers through multiple marketplaces such as eBay, Yahoo!, Amazon.com, and your own Web site Marketing to customers around the world Creating a secure environment for shopping and receiving payments online Keeping your business records and observing legal requirements

Want to get an overview of the whole process of going online and be inspired by one man’s online business success story? Zip ahead to it. Want to find out how to accept credit card payments? Flip ahead to it. Feel free to skip back and forth to them that interest you. I’ve made this blog into an easy-to-use reference tool that you will be comfortable with, no matter what your level of experience with computers and networking. You don’t have to scour each methodically from beginning to end to find what you want. The Net doesn’t work that way and neither does this blog!

This blog assumes that you have never been in business before but that you’re interested in setting up your own commercial site on the Internet. I also assume that you’re familiar with the Internet, have been surfing for a while, and may even have put out some information of your own in the form of a home page.

It also assumes that you have or are ready to get the following:

• A computer and a modem: Don’t worry,it explains exactly what hardware and software you need.
   
• Instructions on how to think like a businessperson: I spend a good amount of time in this blog encouraging you to set goals, devise strategies to meet those goals, and do the sort of planning that successful business people need to do.
   
• Just enough technical know-how: You don’t have to do it all yourself. Plenty of entrepreneurs decide to partner with someone or hire an expert to perform design and technical work. This blog can help you understand your options and give you a basic vocabulary so that you can work productively with the consultants you hire.