Starting an Online Business All-in-One For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Chapter 1: Starting from Scratch

In This Chapter

• Recognizing when the time is right
• Understanding the different types of online businesses
• Gathering your thoughts and getting started

Once upon a time, start-up businesses that operated over the Internet were considered risky ventures with uncertain futures. No longer is that the case! Consider how many ways you interact with businesses over the Internet every day: You probably buy gifts for friends and family members, look up health-related information, make vacation travel arrangements, and even buy music or pay bills online using everything from a laptop, a tablet, or a Web-enabled mobile phone. And not only individuals, like yourself, spend more on online transactions. Increasingly, businesses of all sizes are also buying products and services. Those same companies are even spending money to advertise on the Internet and reach their customers through traditional Web sites and social media sites. All these interactions represent a business opportunity by which people earn a living on the Internet.

Even following a significant downturn in the economy, U.S. online retail sales are still expected to reach $250 billion by 2014 for e-commerce goods sold, according to studies done by Forrester Research. The same research indicates that e-commerce sales are anticipated to make up 8 percent of all retail sales by 2014. Although that number may seem small, it represents a substantial opportunity for continued online growth of retail ...