There are several steps to starting a small business but the hardest one is simply starting. Once you are started you will gain momentum and you are well on your way. Advantages of building a business online include you can quite easily sell someone else’s product, service or business opportunity and do extremely well.

One rule of thumb in choosing something to do is find something you love and are passionate about. Your service could simply be educating other like minded people about a particular subject. There are more ways to make money online than just providing a product or service.

Next, you will need to register a domain name. Godaddy.com is as good as any. Try to choose a dot com as your customers are more familiar with them. Try to have the name of your business in your domain if possible. For example if you want to sell mason jar candles then try to find a domain name like.masonjarcandles.com or ilikemasonjarcandles.com or masonjarcandlesforyou.com. You may have to enter different domain names until you find one you like that is not taken.

This next step is critical to your success and the sooner you do it the faster you will begin to make money. Create a website. You can follow the link at the end of this article to see an example of a website I created using Yahoo’s free website builder software at web.com. This is a very important step for the ongoing success of your business.

Now that your website is created you need to drive traffic to it. The very best way is writing articles. I have spent countless hours trying to find quicker better ways to generate traffic but the best is article marketing.

After you write your first article you need to submit it so it gets out on the net. The best service I have found for this is Unique Article Wizard. You can find a link to their site by going to my website. With this service you will be able to submit an unlimited amount of articles each month to up to 9,000 different article directories and websites. A truly incredible service.

The last step I am going to cover in this article is to keep writing articles and adding content to your website 2 or 3 times a week. Search engines and your customers will love your content rich website.

To summarize the steps to starting a small business online you need to first decide what you are going to do. Next register a domain name and then build a website. After that it is just a matter of driving traffic to your website and the best way I have found is by writing articles and submitting them with Unique Article Wizard. Doing this 2 or three times a week consistently will provide a steady stream of traffic to your website for years to come.