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Starting a small business may seem like a good idea and in many cases it is. There are 1000s of small business that start up every year, all with some one that has some hopes of success driving them. The truth is that most businesses fail in the first and second year. Know that if you start a business you are statistically more likely to fail than succeed.

The main focus of this site is online business. It's true the Internet is a great way to do business and it is possible to do business with little or no upfront cost. It's also true that many thousands of people all across the world are making good income from online business ventures.

It is also very true that the online business world is very competitive and you are not likely to start up and make crazy amounts of cash to buy homes, cars and boats with. It is also important to note that by "signing up" to some online program is not going to cure all that ails you. You are not likely to become totally different thinner, younger and healthier just because you put "signed up".

The Internet business world is full of fraudulent businesses, maybe more so than in the offline world. It's easier and cheaper to scam people form the Internet than any other way. People can scam you from another country and often these are in countries that we can't prosecute in. You must be careful in verifying that anything you get involved in is completely legitimate.

So far we have said that most businesses fail, doing business online is cheaper and easier, that there is more competition for the online dollars and that the Internet possibly has more fraud and scams that any other part of society. Why would you still be reading this?

I think I can beat the odds.

Congratulations! There was an old saying about '…one born every minute.' That could be you and me or maybe we really can beat the odds, others do.

As long as you never stop thinking that you can beat the odds and you never stop trying then you are likely to beat the odds in a big way. How quickly you manage this is up to how quickly you learn and adapt.

If you have never done any kind of online business then you are in for a lot of changes in the way you think about business. This is good; doing business online is new compared to the traditional brick and mortar storefront. Because it's new there are opportunities to do things that no one else has done, call that Cha Ching.

Affiliate programs are a good place to learn.

Any that you can dream of either exist or you can make it exist. Doing business online has many similarities and counterparts to traditional business but also many differences. One of the great advantages of doing business on the Internet is that it cost so much less.

Some one can truly start making money online and not spend more than $100 to start off. Some actually start making money and never have any startup cost. While in traditional business you can work for the big name stores, in the e-commerce world you can make a business of promoting the big name stores as an affiliate.

You can come up with new and unique ideas to promote others as an affiliate. Often this type of program means that you "sign up" to a company like Amazon.com and then send traffic to their site. You send traffic to their site with special links that identify your affiliate account. If any of the "surfers" you send to your "sponsors" (company - sponsor, you - affiliate) sites spend some money then you get paid.

Payment amounts with any type of online program and can be a flat rate per sale, percent of sales, a few pennies per unique visitor you send and more. Often there is a certain amount you need to earn before you can receive your payments and the sponsor just keeps you money till it reaches that threshold.

The advantage of affiliate programs is that you don't have to stock inventory, manage sales, work with customers, deal with credit card processing and many other challenges of being the originator of that product or service. You just get paid for sending traffic.

With affiliate programs you are at a disadvantage in that you are competing with all the other affiliates for sales. If you are completely new to online marketing, using or making websites, chat rooms, search engines and you have no clue what SEO means then affiliate marketing is a good place to learn those skills.

To work with affiliate programs you need one or more domain names and a web hosting service. Domains are as cheap as $6 or $7 a year and hosting can be had for as little as $5 a month although a better host than just a cheap one is more to your advantage. This comes to less than $100 for about one year of doing business online. You can put up your wallet for a few months and focus on building skills.

The primary skills you will need to focus on are making a website, making sure a website is search engine friendly, develop traffic and many more skills. Any thing you don't know about you can search for in your favorite search engine. This site will offer many links to other sites and resources to help you with your education as well articles and primers like this one.

There is no fast track to riches.

Really there isn't. Well maybe there isn't. Ok there may be and you might be the one to find one. If you do you wont be the first or the last. Don't count on any fast money unless you have money to invest and know what you are doing. (Hint: The best way to quick money online is to do something unique or sell a unique product/service.)

Some one with skills and a great work ethic can make money by selling their skills. You can get paid to write articles, do graphic/web design, program, administer servers, optimize sites for search engines and so much more. There are website devoted to online work opportunities.

The disadvantage of doing freelance work is that it limits your income potential to what you can get people to pay you for. You have to spend the hours producing results that some one else is going to use to make long-term money from.

When you start to work with your own sites and marketing services and products of your own or as an affiliate to other companies then you are starting to build long term income potential.

No matter what you do online you should always do more. If you cant it all then invest in employees or partners that can help you get the work done. The idea is to develop multiple streams of income. In a traditional work environment you go to work, come home then spend you check. In the online business world you often want to develop a site, get traffic to it, maintain the site and collect income from it as you build another site.

With the traditional job, you can loose your income for whatever reason. If that was your only income of you were heavily dependant on that income then you are in trouble. You need to scramble and get new income and then play catch up to cover the loss of even a few weeks of income loss.

With multiple income streams you protect yourself. It is unlikely that your online ventures will fail you all at the same time. If one income stream dries up you have a few others to help carry you through as you develop more.

Final thoughts.

The primary focus of this article has been affiliate programs. The purpose is to offer an intro to online business for people that are new to working online. There are more opportunities to make "big money" online; affiliate programs offer a great introduction and often they an inspire you to come up with unique.

If you have not done so yet you should surf around this site more and read any information that seems unfamiliar to you. Follow some of the links from this site to see what is offered or what you can learn. Join a forum or two and search for answers to questions that come up and if you don't find any ask them yourself.