Are you wondering how to start a profitable business online? That was my main concern a few years ago. I had spent a year or two working primarily offline as a freelance writer - sending queries to publications and waiting for them to accept my story.

Although fun and satisfying in its own right, that kind of freelance writing didn’t provide me with the steady income that I desired. I knew that in order to make even more money, I needed to take my business online. So that’s what I did. And several years later, I haven’t looked back.

Would you like to do the same thing? Here are some tips that can help get you started.

Decide What You Want to Do

Although this may seem obvious to some people, your first step is to find out what you want to do. There are several different things that you can do to make money online. The methods I target are:

• Freelance Writing
• Blogging
• Internet Marketing

However, your path may be a little different than mine. For example, if you have a business selling candles but are currently only selling them at craft fairs, you can start a website as a way to find new business online.

Just spend some time giving this some serious thought. What do you think would be fun or enjoyable? Do you have any hobbies you can convert into a business? Or, you can become a writer, blogger, and or internet marketer and follow a similar path that I took.

Write the Business Plan

This is probably the most important step to starting a profitable internet business. Or any business for that matter. For me, this is something I procrastinated. As a result, it took much longer than I intended for my career to get going. Don’t make the same mistake I did!

The plan can be as simple or complex as you want. Just make sure that at the least you clearly outline your goals and create a step by step plan on how you will achieve them. What do you want to do for your business? How will you promote? Those are some of the questions you’ll need to answer. For more info, you can do a search online - there are plenty of sites that can help.

Basic Steps to Promoting Your Business

Starting the business is not enough. You need to tell people it exists! And promotion is an ongoing thing. You can’t just do it once and expect people to find your business. Here’s what I would do:

1. Start a website or a blog about your business and what you do. If you are selling things online you can start a site with a catalog or create an ebay store.
2. Write a press release to announce when your site launches.
3. Submit your blog or website to directories.
4. Work on building backlinks - do article marketing, exchange links with other web masters, create squidoo lenses and hub pages, etc.

This should be enough to get you started. The internet makes it easier than ever to start a business online. For me, my business really started to take off when I began blogging seriously, which came shortly after I purchased Blogging to the Bank and started implementing the tactics. However, your path may be much different than mine.