If you want an online business that will constantly rake in profits 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you will need to master the basics of automation. Automation will make your online business run in auto-pilot, with minimal supervision on your part (bear in mind, however, that "minimal" is very much different from "non-existent").

How do you establish such an automated online business? Here are some things you need to know:

- Your sales page is the heart of your automated online business. Your sales page will act as your digital salesman. It will try to convince your visitors to purchase your product. Your sales page is also the place where you can integrate your payment processing system. Your visitors can order your product through the order button that can be found on your sales page. Your marketing strategies should be focused on one thing: to drive visitors to your sales page.

- Most internet marketing strategies last for many, many years. All you need to do is to conduct initial seeding. Once the seeds are planted, you'll be able to reap their fruits for many, many years to come. Take for example article marketing, or the submission of articles to article directories, with such articles containing your byline and a link to your sales page. This strategy will give you back links that will stay in the pages of the article directories for a long, long time. Forum marketing also operates in a similar way. By including a link to your sales page in your posts as well as in your signature box, you can rest assured that you'll have back links that will stay in cyberspace for many, many years.

- You can set up your own affiliate program. This will require some special software and web hosting features. A simpler approach would be to join affiliate networks such as clickbank.com. These affiliate networks will take care of everything for you. All you have to do is to enroll, pay the requisite review fees (if applicable), provide the links to your sales page and your Thank You page, and you can leave it alone. The affiliate networks will carry out an affiliate marketing campaign through the powers of their own systems.

- Instant delivery can be arranged by providing a download link in your Thank You Page. If you're running your own sales system, your sales page should have an order button which will lead your would-be customers to your payment processor's page. Once they pay, the payment processor will lead them to your Thank You page, where you can express your appreciation for the trust your customers have given, and where you can provide a link to the item or items they have paid for. You can also use your Thank You page for some back selling tactics. If you have enrolled with an affiliate network, the affiliate network will be the one who'd lead the customers to your Thank You page.

- Establishing a mailing list will ensure that past visitors will be informed of your future offers. Since you can pre-arrange the messages you'll be sending, this aspect of your business is also vital for the purpose of automating your online enterprise.

Can you see how things should work?

The marketing seeds you will plant will guarantee that you'll be able to generate visitors on autopilot. Your sales page will try to convert some of them into successful sales. Your payment processor, or your affiliate network, will take care of accepting payment. Your Thank You page will take care of instant delivery. And your mailing list system will capture the details of those who decided not to purchase your product, so that they may be reminded of subsequent offers.

And this system will take care of everything by itself!

However, please always remember that you cannot establish such an automated system instantaneously. You have to test, test and TEST. You have to make sure that every aspect of the system is working well to guarantee optimal rewards for your online business.