If you’re in the verge of starting your own home based business only, you might be having troubles deciding whether you should leave your day job and pursue a life that you always dream of – such as achieving a debt-free life, complete financial freedom and a stable profitable business.  On the other hand, it can be a risky task since setting up an internet business requires some overhead cost and you would not necessary gain profit within a short period of time. In other words, you cannot guarantee that your business will start making lucrative profits after few weeks of opening.To be honest with you – there is nothing that guarantees the success of your business but if you’re willing to accept new challenges and deal with new problems persistently and that kind of positivity would attract success! Therefore, starting a successful new online business at home does not come overnight – it requires small baby steps to achieve it. In fact, you don’t have to spend much time on these steps below:Step 1: Find a niche that you’re really interested atFor some people, it would take hours or days to find a right niche for them and this could happen to you too. If you’re having difficulties of finding one – you can browse through the advertorial section in magazines and newspapers, to see others what they are currently promoting. Based on that, you can easily choose one niche that interests you. Other than that, if you have a hobby or any particular interest that you wish to pursue, you can actually turn them into a profitable online business as long as you’re fully dedicated to it.Step 2: Start researching on the selected nicheOnce you have selected a niche, you have to identify competitors of your niche and learn on what they have offer to their potential clients. It is similar to a famous quote from Sun Tzu’s Art of War:”Know your enemy and know yourself, find naught in fear for 100 battles.”Based on this quote, you can learn from your competitors (or “enemies”) about the products they sell, and contents they provide from their websites. From their website contents, you can figure out the keywords that help them rank top of the search engine results page (SERP).  Step 3: Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your businessSince you’ve identified your competitors of your selected niche, it becomes natural to proceed with distinguishing strengths and weakness of your own online home based business – your products or service. Here’s a tip on how those big companies identify their strengths and weaknesses – is performing a SWOT analysis. Therefore, it’s wise that you Google up “SWOT analysis” for more related resources.Step 4: Find solutions and work on it as soon as possibleWhen you’ve completed first few steps above, it’s time to take actions accordingly and work on it as quickly as possible. Set up a working schedule to get things at the right time. You need to maintain a high-productivity at work in order to complete all possible tasks on your own as you’re the boss and the worker of your own internet business. Now you have learned all the steps to start your own home based online – so let’s start it up!

The first thing to keep in mind is that the best home business to start is one based on the internet. It is no secret that more and more people are buying products and services online and, as the sales of online business transactions continues to increase, sales in the offline world continue to decrease.To begin an online business from home you do not need a lot of technical skills or a lot of money to get started out. There is no age barrier, or level of education required, it does not matter about your current internet practical experience or even that you do not have any products to sell.The best home based business simply starts with no stock. So, how can you have a business without any stock to sell? Basically, you sell products and services on behalf of other people and when you sell them the product owner pays you a commission. This home based business model is called online affiliate marketing.Unlike a traditional offline trading business, an online affiliate marketer does not have to buy the stock before he or she goes on to sell it. Firstly, you find products and services which are currently popular. This can either be physical products or digital products. Digital products are those which a buyer will download directly to their computer. This may be something like an education course.Once you have found a product, you promote it to a target audience who would be interested in it. When somebody buys it, you get paid a commission.For example, you can become an Amazon affiliate (which costs you nothing) and look for a product that interests you and that people are currently buying. Let’s say for example it is camping equipment. You insert an advertisement in an online camping magazine for the latest high-tech tent which you found on Amazon. When somebody clicks on your ad and buys the product, you will get paid a commission.This is why affiliate marketing is one of the best home based businesses to start. You do not have to worry about shipping the product, holding it in stock, sorting out any returns or any other customer queries.If you do not want to get involved with physical items and you prefer to have a home based business that sells digital products, you can find a huge selection at Clickbank. This is an online marketplace that deals in thousands of digital products for many different markets. Again, there is no cost to become a Clickbank member.Keep in mind that your home based business is a business and not a hobby. It will require work and some investment. Whilst the set up costs for the best home based business are a lot less than a traditional bricks and mortar business, it will need financial commitment for such items as a website, hosting, marketing, advertising, mentoring and education.An online home based business may not appeal to some individuals as they might believe that they do not have the technical skills required to get the best home based business possible. All of the reasons for not setting up a home based business on the internet can be readily overcome if you are prepared to learn and have the determination to build a sustainable and long term business.

Seeing what others miss
How many small business owners really have an accurate description of their web market?

The reason this question comes up is because the vast majority of business web sites do not even speak to their market. In fact, the only people the web site speaks to are company people such as owners and managers.

We can all see the company clearly in any business design, but our market is not interested in our company. They have their problems and they have no need, right now, to know what wonderful people make up this business web site.

If our market cannot see how the web site is trying to help them then help is not there. If our intention is to build a relationship with our market then the help we offer needs to be the first thing our market sees. They love this and they want this and it is the best part of our marketing.

How do small business designs block their own market?
A good analogy is found when we meet someone that only talks about themselves. We get bored instantly when we realize they have nothing of interest to offer us.

I remember growing up as a young kid and with friends we would sometimes run into this older character that bragged about his rich uncle that had a Cadillac a block long and he had to take it to the airport to turn it around.

We weren’t fooled but we got a good laugh. At least he was entertaining even if he wasn’t helpful. And after the second time there was nothing new and we got bored by his bragging because this guy didn’t care who he talked to as he just kept telling the same stories.

Isn’t this just like a typical small business web site?
Not once on the page is there any recognition of who the web market is. Not once does the web site mention a problem their market experiences and the causes for the problem. Not once is there a sense that the web site cares about the market and wants to serve that market.

No, all that the web site shows is that the only interest is in selling us something whether we need it or not. That’s their story being told over and over.

The bottom line about customer relations
As small business owners we get in our own way and totally block any communication with our own market when we focus on our product or service. Nobody is interested in us talking about ourselves and what we have to sell.

Read any business home page and it tells you about the company and why you should be impressed with the company, but you cannot find a clue as to the market. Not even with X-ray vision can you find who the market is.

Our market wants to know how we can solve their problems and we totally ignore the issue while we talk about product features and benefits. We actually think that a product description is real content – but no one cares about our product description, in fact, no one even cares about our product until they know it really has a solution to their biggest problem.

How does it feel?
How does it feel when someone ignores you?
How does it feel when someone asks you to buy?
How does it feel when someone asks us how they can help?

The last of those 3 questions is what attracts us the most. It captures our interest and our curiosity. It is just like getting a free gift because that is what it is, and we are going to benefit by learning something we never knew before.

How did we get here in the first place?
How did we come to build such poor marketing web sites? We got here by listening to web designers instead of thinking with a business mind. Web designers paid a lot of attention to us and our business and it all felt good and so we thought we were on the right track. The end result is that our web site pays a lot of attention to our business and zero to our web market.

Lesson learned
We cannot let our web designer be the one to design our web site. All we want our designer for is to do the technical aspects of building a web site. It is our job as small business owners to figure out what our web market wants and how to serve them best.

Okay, so you want ideas on how to display your helpful information and a web designer could help if they forgot all about their trendy design packages. It is going to take something different in web design to put your helpful information first, but in bite size chunks.

Navigation for information is going to take some thinking. Hypertext lists may work. Paragraph intro with hide and click drop down information may work. Hover text with slide in info may work. The real job of a web designer is to help you find and use the best means of providing information to your market.

Seeing your market
I challenge you to go look at your home page, or any other business, and see if you can figure out who the market is. Almost all small business web sites fail to identify their market and you can’t build a relationship by saying, “Hey you, look at what we have!” But you might sell if your web site said, “Hey farmer Jones, would you like a fence post that lasts 100 years?”

How do you get X-Ray eyes?
To acquire x-ray eyes you just need to look inward, that’s where you find all your insight. It’s not difficult at all and if you’ve ever been caught daydreaming then you are using insight.

We need to pretend that we are the market. We are the homeowner with a leaky pipe, or the guy with a hole in his shoe. Whatever we sell we need to be that market and wrap ourselves up in the problem that this market has. If we don’t feel the pain then we can’t talk about it, and we want to talk about that pain and how we are going to solve the problem that creates the pain.

When we then put our eyes back on our own web site we can see through the filler we thought was real web content. We can see as our market sees and we will find lots of things in need of change.

Using logic and foresight
Analysis and logic can confirm, or it can contradict the feelings and insight you have about your market. I recommend using insight and if logic doesn’t back it up then toss out the logic.

Why toss out the logic?
The web does not work with factual data like demographics. Instead, web marketing works best with psycho-graphics where beliefs, habits, Likes & dislikes, and shared values play a big role in defining a market. These are intangible and emotional values that are difficult to back up with logic.

We need to go with our emotions and intuition because they are the same tools we use when developing social skills, and our web site is sorely lacking in social skills.

Before we even think about connecting with social networks we need our web site to express its own social attitudes.

If you are looking for different ways to promote your online business and attract more customers to your web site, banner advertising may be an option worth considering. Search engine advertising, or “pay per click advertising” as it is called, still remains the most popular website advertising solution. However, an alternative option to consider is to promote your website by utilising internet banner advertising. It is easier, cost effective and much cheaper than you think.

This type of advertising has the capability to provide more than just basic text based advertisements. With internet banner advertising you can have your logo displayed along with animation or even eye catching video. A well designed web banner advertising campaign will attract more attention and draw more customers to your website. When you choose this style of advertising, you are able to produce a media rich display that is more pleasing to the eye.

Banner advertising can be cheaper than pay per click advertising

Advertisers using the search engine advertising (pay per click) method, will only incur a cost when the potential customer clicks onto their advertisement and goes into their actual website. With internet banner advertising it works in exactly the same way. Depending on your industry and the products or services you wish to promote, it may actually be cheaper for you to choose this type of campaign over the more traditional search engine advertising option. Of course, you will have to consider the banner design cost for your web banner, but the benefits of improved brand awareness tend to outweigh the cost.

Use a mix of different size banners for your advertising campaign.

With this style of advertising campaign there are many banner sizes to choose from. These range from leader boards to sky scraper sizes. Another great feature is that there is no limit to the amount of text that you can use within your banner display. Unlike pay per click advertising, where your words and characters are limited to a certain number. This in turn only allows you to promote a reduced number of products or services and limits your advertising capabilities.

With banner advertising, your website will come alive with vibrant colors and exciting advertisements. Attracting new customers and building a solid database of existing customers is very important.

By using this form of advertising, you can successfully reach your advertising potential by drawing in thousands of customers to your website. It can really be worth your time and effort to consider this type of internet advertising for your business. Developing your online business using web banner advertising is a smart choice for any website owner to make.

Robert Smith has over 5 years experience in search engine optimisation and internet banner advertising. He is the owner of Get On Fast, a specialist internet marketing agency, based in Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom.