what do I need to do to start to biz?

[as_is]

I have been thinking and preparing for my small online biz for some time. But I am not familiar with this kind of biz at all..

what I want to do is to sell some information to my clients.
I would build a site and then people who interested could register and recieve my html letter.(I found a thread tell me how to make html letter here, thanks) .

I was thinking,
what kind of web hosting did I need to perform this kind of ebiz? any special features? or any web hosting you suggest?

and, how can I handle the money? How could people pay me?
pay directly to my visa?(to international clients)

This is my first time to start biz online, I am really sorry to ask such newbie questions.

Thank you very much for you input!

[mack]

"I am really sorry to ask such newbie questions"

The only stupid question is the one that doesn’t get asked:) welcome to the boards as_is

When it comes to running an online business you still need to have an understanding of business in general. There are of course big differences when running an online business but the basics are still very much related. What you need to do is find out, what is your market and how are you going to attract them. find out what your html newsletter will offer them that no other will. When you have figured out this you are on your way. As for hosting, I really cant speculate on this to much because I don’t fully know your requirements, but hosting need not cost an arm and a leg, shop around until you find a package that you are happy with. When you have your site online try and offer as much content as possible from the website. This will make other sites want to link to you. You may even have a section of your site called "link to us" with a selection of banners and logos as well as text links that people can use to link to you. Do not be to strict about making people use certain types of linking techniques, any link is better than no link, if it has good anchor text and is from an on-content site then all the better. As you receive more and more inbound links your page rank will rise, and you will also see your site getting more exposure from the main search engines. Your promotion should be on-going promoting a site is not simply a matter of doing it once and forgetting about it, spend as much time as possible building link pop etc. You where also asking about payment. For most sites payment will be taken using a merchant account. These are very varied and have different costs. I am hoping someone else will be able to offer you more information on this because I have very little experience with them. One of the more common methods for taking payments could be using Pay Pal. When you use this you copy a piece of HTML into your pages and it creates a "buy now" link. When your user clicks on the link they are transferred to the Pay Pal server where the payment is taken. Pay pal in exchange take a percentage of the payment for providing the service. I hope this info was of some use to you and all the best with your venture.

[as_is]

mack, thank you very much! You help me a lot by providing
me the information.

I am a little bit familiar with search engine promotion, that's why I planed to start ebiz. I was very interested in search engine,so, I want to have a site to try out all I learned about search engine, and at same time , make money :)

I understand that you could not suggest on web hosting without requirements . This is the predicament,as I don't have any experiences, I don't really know what I want.

I was thinking is here anyone make money from html letter as me, or similar? what you use? and how do you pay?

Thank you very much!

[mack]

For your html mailing list you could maybe try installing a mailing list manager script. You should be able to find something suitable at hotscripts.com At the start you will probably find your volume of uptake to be pretty slow. In the beginning I would recommend using a merchant to accept payment they manually inserting the email addresses into your database. If I was running a mailing list site I think I would probably allow non-members to read old editions on the site. This could give you some pretty cool content. Using this kind of content will also lead to you receiving pretty targeted visitors from the search engines. They search for the content you offer so are there fore pretty likely to want to sign up to receive the content when it is fresh. When you are designing your site I would avoid targeting the site as a mailing list. try and let visitors find your site as an informative resource site, and almost portray that mailing list as just being there. If you can get targeted traffic it could be just the sort of user who would sign up.

Another thing you could so is publishing the email you send on the site 2 weeks after it has been sent to users. Then on your site you could have a link. "Free edition" and allow then to receive the 1 week old version for free. They don’t really get the newest edition but they do get a version that is younger than the one on the site. On the free version you could also have a “receive more” link and this will take then to your sign up page.

[martinibuster]

Oh brother. (I want to be a rock star because rock stars get the babes and don't have to wake up until the sun goes down. Is there a RockMaster World Forum I can lurk in?)

Anyway:
Be sure to get an accountant.

Be prepared to lose money for one to five years.

Be sure you have the b--ls to put up with an irs audit if you take a lot of deductions and you're not making money. Otherwise, be careful and do as your accountant says.

[as_is]

Thanks very much mack .
I won't forget your suggestions :)

And martinibuster,I understand that's a little bit funny to talk about making money as such a newbie . But that's my plan and where I would like to start.

Thank you very much! :)

plus, if I finally begin I would come to contine this thread.

[NeedScripts]

You can miss many things, but dont' miss Networking

As with good Networking you can make much more ($$$$, relations, partners, friends) then you think you will be able to ;)

[Crazy_Fool]

hi as_is

first thing i want to mention is your business model and whether you actually need to set up as a business. setting up a business to sell something can be a pretty big task with a lot of responsibility. there might be better ways.

selling information like this might not work. the internet is the world's biggest library and there is plenty of information on almost any subject you can imagine - people will often go elsewhere to get information for free. your information would have to be fairly specialised to get lots of buyers. also, anything that isn't on the internet now certainly will be in a few years time. will your information be sufficiently unique to sell in 3 or 4 or 10 years time?

it might be better to give the information away free of charge and make money from affiliate links to other sites and advertising. you might not need to set up as a business to do this - you will need to check the laws in your own country.

for example, you could have a site about switzerland with with information about every town, village, city etc - you could have hundreds of pages. you would join affiliate programs and put the links on your site. by optimising pages, you can get pages to the top of search engine listings and get lots of visitors. when they click the affiliate links on your pages, you earn $0.01 or $0.02 per clickthrough. that doesn't sound much, but if you have hundreds of pages bringing in thousands of visitors per week, then you could earn a small fortune without selling anything and without the responsibility of running a business.

ask in the advertising and affiliates forums here for more advice and suggestions.

[VictorE]

Interesting comments Crazy_Fool.

Is there anyone out there running a site that sells information that would be willing to share a success story?

Seems like I have seen quite a few people on Webmasterworld testify to making good money as affiliates, but I really haven't seen anyone say they've made much from selling information.

[as_is]

Crazy_Fool, your idea is really very interesting.
I 've never thought about to join affiliate grograms,
because I've always thought that only big and successful
website could make money from that and niche biz would
fail.
But I think your idea is very reasonable and I would
sure come to dvertising and affiliates forums to see
how people talked about that before,and to know more about
it.
And thanks a bouch for telling me that before I start,that
make me think more about my little biz. :)
Thank you.

[martinibuster]

Regarding selling information,
There's an interesting article in last month's New Architect [newarchitectmag.com] about LockerGnome that might be of interest.

New Architect is an interesting magazine. Their web site looks cool, too.

I think they're in the business of selling information as well.