Setting up a business, any business, normally has costs involved. Some more than others.

Everyone knows that setting up a business on the Internet is normally less expensive than any other business, for various reasons:

• no physical premisses
• no physical shop and office fittings
• no brochures and leaflets
• no newspaper adverts,
• etc

Apart from your web design and web hosting your costs are generally directly related to your sales and your major "expense" is your time. And if you do the design yourself, even that is free.

One of the main issues of setting up a business on the Internet is normally getting products to sell. This can be a problem in a number of ways:

• Finding products at the right prices
• Carrying stock. Unless you make the products yourself or are very close to your supplier you would normall have to carry some stock. It isn't cost effective to drive back and forth for single products, especially if they are low value items.
• The point above also relates to availability. You do not want to be in a position of having to refund customers because your supplier is out of stock.
• Shipping. Shipping your customers orders can be a major issue both in time and in money. If you customers are not near you or are in another country the cost and time of delivery can be prohibitive.

So, how can you eliminate all these issues and still have a business?

Let's take them one at a time.

Web hosting:
There are many service providers on the Net that will host your web site free. Do a search on your favorite search engine for "free web hosting" and investigate some of those that come up. Alternatively, if you have a bit of money to spend, get one of the inexpensive hosting services (normally from under $4 per month).

Options: Host2Sell, GoDaddy

Domain Names:
With the free hosting services you would normally not use your own domain name and would operate under a sub-domain. If you want to use your own domain name (recommended) it could cost you as little as $2 to register

Options: Host2Sell, GoDaddy

Web design:
To get this free you will need to do your own web design.

This can be done with one of the many free HTML editors available on the Net.

Alternatively, a number of your free and paid hosting services, including GoDaddy and Yahoo Small Business that I mentioned, offer you free web site builders with your hosting.

Another option would be to download and install one of the free content management systems available. But this would require some knowledge to intstall and you may need to use a paid hosting service as you normally will need a database. A great one is Joomla! from http://www.joomla.org

Finding products:

Finding products to sell is simple.

1. Affiliate programs

You can either use affiliate programs where you earn commissions of every sale but do not have to worry about anything further. The suppliers take the orders, does the delivery and looks after customer service.

One of the disadvantages of affiliate programs is that your customers are never yours, they are the supplier's. Another disadvantage is that, especially with physical products, the commissions can be very low. Digital products can generate substantially higher commissions.

2. Drop shippers

Drop shippers are companies that will supply you at a wholesale price and do the delivery to you customers for you. All you have to do is sell, collect the money and then pay them for the products and delivery. But you do not have to carry any physical stock.

Particularly in the USA there are dropshippers for virtually any type of product. Do a search for your intended product and add "dropship" or "dropshipper" to the search term, e.g "body jewelry dropshipper".

If you do not find any you like, consider contacting suppliers of your intended products and find out whether they would dropship orders for you

For more about drop shipping visit >>About Dropshipping<<

Advertising:

So you have a web site and you have products to sell. Now you need customers.

The next step is to list your web site on search engines, advert sites and some specialist directories.

1. Search Engines and Directories:

Most search engines will pick up your web sites from other web sites where you are listed. Registering with Google or Yahoo is a waste as it takes ages to get on that way.  The best way is to get your site listed on other web sites and let the robots do their work.

Find directories and free listing services for the market that you are targeting. e.g. fishing sites can list at Top 100 Fishing Sites.My new site Directories Pro lists a number of niche market directories where you can list your business.

Another option would be to download WebCEO 's free SEO tool and use their article submission service. This tool helps you design your web site to be optimised for search engines.

2. Advert Sites:

Free advertising web sites can also help you get into the system.

Other free advert sites include MySpace (members only bur membership is free) and Craig's Lists at http://www.craigslists.org

3. Membership Sites and Forums:

Membership communities like MySpace , DirectMatches and AdlandPro are great places to build contacts and promote your business, provided that you stay within the rules.

Also, get involved in appropriate forums and groups. Do not advertise in forums that are unrelated to your business or where they do not allow advertising. And do not spam forums! Make sure that you follow the forum rules.

Membership sites and forums often have specific advertising sections - make use of that.

Build a mailing list:

In the long run building your own mailing list is important as these are people who are specifically interested in your products or services. And it is free advertising!

Well, what are you waiting for?