It is not easy or hard to start a small web-based business. It just takes a certain level of commitment and planning to do so successfully. Many people fail to treat a web biz like a real business, but rather treat it like a hobby. This is one of the biggest adjustments that you must make if you're thinking about starting a web biz. Aside from that, though, there are other things that you can do to give yourself a better chance at being successful with your web biz.

1. Do a little market research?

By doing market research, you find out if there's a need for your product, who your target market is, and how much competition there is.

The internet is an information gateway. Therefore when most people come online, they don't come to buy things. Rather, people come online to find solutions to their problems.With that said, your job is primarily concerning providing information, not blasting consumers with ads that they probably don't care about.Therefore, your success with a web biz is going to depend how well you're able to provide solutions to the consumer's problems. This piece is largely related to web SEO.

Keyword research tools: (Google's Keyword Tool & WordTracker)

Key things to consider

* Of the 5-7 keyword phrases you're choosing, are there at least 75,000 searches being done each month.

* How competitive are those keywords? As a newbie, try to go for less competitive keyword phrases.

* Is the market for your product heavily saturated? Again, this goes back to competition. The less experience you have, the more you want to avoid heavy competition.

In addition to keyword research, checking out forums and discussion boards in your particular market will give you a good idea of what products/services are already available and provide you with ways to measure the best ways to promote and market your product. In addition, you are able to ask your market directly what types of products/services they are in need of.

Market research is the most important factor to consider before starting a business, especially a web biz. After all, it's a business you're starting, not a hobby. You will be wasting your money and time if you make the mistake of taking miscalculated risks?

2. Launch the web biz.

One of the first things you'll need in order to launch your web biz is a domain. Since SEO has to do with keywords, it's wise to include words related to your main keyword phrase in the domain name you choose for your website. Therefore, if your web biz is about travel to europe, you way want to include either one or both of those words in your domain.

The next issue, is web hosting. I highly recommend host4profit to newbies, but if you know a little bit about web hosting and have a bigger budget, then find the service that meets your needs the best.

After you have your domain and web hosting in place, you're going to need content, and lots of it, might I add.

Your content will depend on two things, your target market and the product/service you're selling. Anything from a blog, adding podcasts, a chat room, videos, articles, etc... It doesn't matter what type it is, you will need to give yourself enough to time to plan what you're adding to the website.

In addition to content, you will need to monetize your web site. How else will you make money? Either place ads of your product/service or ads from affiliate products/services. Either way, visitors enough will not make you money. You need to sell something in order to do so.

3. Promote your web biz.

This last step is probably the most challenging for newbies to tackle, but it is probably the most crucial one to understand and apply effectively.

Here are some effective and free ways to promote your web biz.

* Social networking

* Blogging

* Your email signature

* Press Release

* Article marketing

* Social bookmarking

* Forum marketing

The point is to use as many ways as you can to let your target market know about your product/service.