If you plan to sell tangible goods, have them drop-shipped by a third-party provider - so you won't need to have a storefront or warehouse and employees (Ugh!). Re-think your business plan. Take your business off the street. Doing so will vastly improve your profit margins, better serve your customers, and free up a lot of cash.
Intangibles
Intangibles are an important category, the most common examples being insurance and travel reservations. Intangibles aren't "things" - you can't put them in a wheelbarrow - yet people buy them all the time. Intangibles are very profitable - so you should expect stiff competition.
E-Goods
The next category is electronically deliverable information. This category includes e-books, e-courses, software, subscriptions, etc. In this case, be sure they are good ones. Over-deliver on quality or your customers will come away feeling dissatisfied and angry. They will not return - but they can, and will, think of ways to hurt your business.
Services
When it comes to selling services online, think it through. Offer your prospective customers goods and services that can be delivered instantly, or that other people deliver. Instead of thinking of your business as one for which you are always trying to get more work, think in terms of having a business at which you do less and less work - until you have more cashflow than you need AND all the free time you could want.
Referrals
As for referrals, you will need to find service providers looking for more work. I know a man who used to sell his services sealing asphalt driveways. Now his website drop-ships asphalt-sealing tools and supplies and he is paid for referrals for such services that others provide. He made a small fortune in this way and now lives in a beach house on the Caribbean island of Anguilla.
Advertising
Still another very profitable category to sell online is advertising space on your website. There are several ways to do this - some highly desirable - some less so. Google Adsense might be profitable options for you.
Website Structure
Sales messages, generally referred to as "landing" pages, should always be on Tier 3 - two clicks away from your home page (Tier 1) and one click away from your hub pages (Tier 2). Search engines prefer this structure, and your human visitors will appreciate it. This methodology works vastly better than any of the alternatives. Use Text Links To get your site visitors from your pre-selling (Tier 2) pages to your Tier 3 sales messages, use "contextual links" - text links embedded in your pre-selling informative content.
If you are (as you should) providing relevant high quality information on your Tier 2 pages, then those visitors who actually want what you sell will be almost compelled to follow your text link - if only to get that extra tidbit of valuable information that the link might provide. Selling online is very profitable. I wish you the best.
