Step One:
Decide on one product or service to sell.
Before you can go into business for yourself, you must have a product or service to sell. The people who have tried to make money on the Internet and failed have made at least one critical mistake – they started spending money on web sites, web hosts, software, etc. BEFORE they had a real product or service to sell.

The temptation of the Internet is that there is so much to choose from that you get confused and try too many things at once. I know because I went into business on the Internet with only a general idea of what I wanted to sell. I did not do my homework before investing any money; in about six weeks I had spent over $4,000 and thought I would be "raking in the cash". Boy was I wrong! What happened? I did not make a wise decision of what to sell.

So, how do you decide what is the best product or service for you to sell? (Notice I said "for you to sell"?) Not every person can do well selling any product they choose. If you want to get off to a good start, you need to apply the following rules.

Rule #1 – Choose a product or service that you already have some knowledge of. You don’t have to be an expert, but if you know something about your product or service, you can save yourself a lot of trouble. If you are knowledgeable about a product or service, you’re off to a good start because it enables you to make informed decisions about what software you need, methods of payment you should accept, how to design your web site, who is your target market, etc.

Rule #2 – Don’t choose your product or service because someone else tells you how great it is. Some people will tell you anything to get your money. I’m still waiting on a $49 refund for the book I ordered in April of 1998. Do your homework - check out the company. Do they give references? Do they have a guarantee? Do they really sell an actual product or service, or do they sell the idea of selling? Save your money by choosing a product based on your research, not a stranger’s claim.

Rule #3 – Choose your product because people want or need it, not because you like it. If you sell something that meets a need or solves a problem for people, you are well on your way to making money and realizing your dream! Marketing is a whole lot easier when people want what you have to sell. There are a lot of free and "low cost" opportunities out there, but very few of them meet a need or solve a problem. Always fit a product to a market; do not try to make a market for a product.

Rule #4 – Do the money math. You should have a markup of 3 to 5 times the actual cost of the product. You’ll have expenses to cover --such as web hosting, Internet access fees, credit card processing fees, phone bills, and more-- so you need to know if your sales will earn you enough to pay your bills and make a profit. Also included in the math is figuring your "break even" point. That is how many sales you need to make just to pay your expenses. If your monthly expenses are $300 and you make $30 profit per sale, then you need to make ten sales in a month just to pay your expenses or "break even". Every sale after that is money for you. (Here’s a tip – do not waste your time trying to make money selling a product for $5 - $10. You would have to make 15 to 20 sales A DAY just to make a living. That means you would have to have around 30,000 visitors a month to your web site!)

If you apply those four rules when choosing your product or service, you will be well on your way to being successful on the Internet.