Here's a little help to get you started.

First, what are you going to offer? Do you have a product you want to sell, do you offer a service? Is there a demand for what you have to offer? How much competition is there? Everything starts with research. You need to make sure there is even a market for what you have and can you compete. Realize if it is a very crowded field, you are going up against websites that are much more established and it may be harder to draw the traffic you need.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't still do it, you might just need to look at step two.

Second in our steps to start an online business, can what you offer satisfy a niche. A niche is nothing more than a subset of a much broader category. Say you are in the work from home with a home business online category. That is a very broad and very competitive category. It would be hard to compete in that broad of an arena just starting out. But if you found a niche within that category, say something like "stay at home mom's" who want to make money online. That is more targeted and maybe less competitive. And that is where step three is important.

The third step is keyword research. Google and Wordtracker both have keyword research tools that can help you greatly with the first two steps to start an online business. Research the words that people would type into a search engine if they were looking for what you had to offer. This will give you other suggestions as well of other phrases. The longer the keyword phrase, the better, as long as there is enough search for that phrase. Using one word is going to be too broad. A phrase such as "how to make money online" is going to be less crowded than "make money."

Good keyword research is the most essential of all the steps to start a business online. Where you place in the search engine results, what your niche might be, how many people are going to potentially find you, all are a result of this all important step. Before you spend any money, before you work on anything else, know what keyword phrase or phrases you are going to target.

Fourth, now that your research is done, you can now work on setting up. You will need a website and a website needs a domain name and hosting. If at all possible, use one of your keyword phrases as part of your domain name. Use your keywords throughout the website. If you need help getting a website, there are sites that have already done all the work for you or you can go to places such as Elance or any internet marketing forum and ask around for someone who designs websites.

Fifth, determine a budget. Any business, especially an internet business, needs to promote itself. What are you willing and able to spend each month to get your name out, or do you prefer to generate all of your traffic free through article marketing and the like? Here is where you will want to do some research as well on the ways to generate traffic. Be careful, though. There are a lot of scams out there when it comes to people who will take your money and guarantee you traffic to your website, or get you listed on search engines, etc. Ask around again in internet marketing forums to see what works for people.

What you do and what you offer will determine where you go from here. But follow these steps to start an online business and you will have a good foundation.