Title: 8 Keys To Starting An Internet Business Word Count: 675 Summary: The world wide web is a great medium for home based businesses in the 21st century Keywords: internet, business plan, keys to starting business, search engine, research, website, promote Article Body: Here is a sound starting place for the would be internet entrepreneur. Eight (8) Keys for starting your own internet based business. The world wide web is a great medium for home based businesses in the 21st century. Like their counterparts, the brick and mortar businesses on main street, there are basics that should not be over looked. Nine basics that the Tennessee Mountain Man and the Computer Man website design team recommend are listed here. 1. You must have a basic idea of what you are going to do and why. A cursory review of sample business plans will quickly press the idea that you need to define your business desires as narrowly as possible. If your only desire is to make money and your attitude is everything and everyone else be damned, you have a hard road to hoe. And, if you manage to succeed, chances are your financial success will literally cost you everything that makes life worth living and will certainly steal all pleasure you might otherwise have enjoyed. If, however, you can grasp the idea of helping others achieve their dreams as your main objective all things are possible. Help enough people reach their goals and yours will follow along with an enjoyable life. 2. You must educate yourself. Using your favorite search engine or better yet a combination of search engines research your future. Learn all you can about the business and who is currently king of the mountain. How did they get there? How do they stay there? Can you compete? If not move on. 3. Write A Business Plan. Once armed with the information you need, again using a search engine to get business plan ideas examining the designs of others in your field if you need to, create a business plan. While the business plan is not written in stone, it should be sufficient to keep you going for awhile. It can always and will need to be amended from time to time. Choose a search engine and search for "business plan sample" or "internet business plan sample". You will find several... many free. Compare them. Select the business plan best aligned with your hopes and ideas and start designing your own. 4. Choosing suppliers, drop shippers, etc. Back to research which will become a part of your routine. You must always know where you can get the best deals and service (don't forget timeliness and shipping costs) with the least amount of warehousing. 5. Build your website. Do this on your computer then sign up for and move it to a free host for testing. Do not promote this testing site. In fact you should place a "robots.txt" file in the root stopping search engines from cataloguing it. Run every possible test and make sure there are no broken links and everything on the site functions properly. You will have enough problems and surprises as time goes by. Plan to succeed. Don't sabotage your own internet business before you get started. 6. Now you are ready to find someone to host your website. Do this last. Contracts for hosting are sometimes month to month, but more usually one or two year terms and the clock starts running as soon as you say "I do". So don't start the clock until you have a website designed and ready to go up on the web. 7. Submit to search engines. Once your site is on your new host and up (usually within 24 hours) test again. If all is well, hand submit your new site to the major search engines. Not sure which ones? Back to the search engine. You and search engines are going to become fast friends if you are to be all you can be. If you use a "robots.txt" file on your permanent web site make sure you have removed the block or reputable search engines will not index your site. 8. Now promote...promote...promote. Why? Just like on main street, location is everything and location in this case is determined by search engine ranking and directory indexing. Good Luck !!