How do I start an internet business?

I have a product I would like to sell with my own site. I don't want others making money off of my ideas. I need to be able to take credit cards.

How do you start a net business that accepts credit cards?

I would suggest that you hire someone to assist you with the initial setup and while doing that, show you how to manage the site. For instance, how to do uploads of edited pages and to maintain site security for credit card information.

Once way to accept credit cards without the need to do your own security is by using a system like Amazon.Com's pay system. Answerpool uses that to accept donations and I use it on my Web site, too.
Example
It doesn't cost much and is so much easier that trying to do it yourself. There are of course lots of different similar system available.

I'm not trying to solicit business here, but wanted to mention that I can help you set up your site. If you want to discuss it, visit my site at http://dwightblackburn.com/ and email me for particulars.

Dwight

Good site Dwight! You are hired, if you want the business. You may not.

Keep in mind, this really is small market, but I think can be profitable. You can't sell anything over the net without a credit card. I'm having a problem setting that up!

I haven't seen an email from you. Please write me so that we can begin this page development.
Dwight

I don't have it all together to market. I want to know how I can do this before investing too much cash.

I need a hit with Google search. I need to organize merchandice that suits a web site I have no idea how to design. I need the ability to take a credit card order.

Can you help me?

Here are some factors to consider when going into e-commerce:

1. Know what kind of business you will have. There are 5 general types of online businesses.

• A portal site that sells digital products
  
• A content web site that is monetized with advertising
  
• An e-commerce business that sells a digital product
  
• An e-commerce business that sells tangibles to people
  
• A business to business selling web site.

I would assume your type of business will be an e-commerce site that ships tangibles. That being the case...

2. You will need reliable web site hosting and your own domain name. You can get a domain name for $10 a year (if you shop around) and your web site hosting provider will be about $10 a month. Do not use free hosting for an internet business.

3. You will also need a "shopping cart" for your site or some other way to process orders. You can set up an account with Clickbank and for a setup fee and a percentage of your sales they will take and process your orders. They will also advertise and promote your product for a commission rate.

If you don't want to use an affiliate sales portal like Clickbank you can have integrated order processing on your site and run your own affiliate program. This is more expensive than Clickbank.

You can also have your own shopping cart service via bestbizcart.com but you will have to set up a merchant account. It costs $16.00 a month to have a merchant account and allows you to accept payment via PayPay and/or 50 online credit card processing gateways.

4. You will probably also want some method of keeping track of your online traffic. There are free counters and traffic analysis programs available if you are interested.

5. And you will definately want search engine optimization. You will need to learn how search engines work and will have to create meta tags (part of the HTML code and contains key words and descriptions). This is critical to getting optimal search engine results. You need to structure your site to attract search engine spiders and also they need to consider your site as being relevant to the keywords you have chosen.

These are just a few pointers for you - starting your own e-commerce is not as easy and simple as some would like to believe. There is a lot that is involved with it. But I hope this has given you enough information to help you decide if indeed this is the route you want to go.