Are you having trouble starting your online business? Perhaps you are confused by all the internet marketing theories and plans that are oput there. You need to get down to the basics. You can then build from a solid foundation.

Let's take a look at 5 simple ideas to help your business get off to a great start.

1. Don't put all of your effort into building someone else's business. Starting off you're going to be tempted to want to build everything for free. You can make money using only free sites like Squidoo, EzineArticles, Goarticles and many others. You need to have your own website or blog. It needs to be hosted on a good quality hosting service.

2. Sooner or later your going to want to create your own product. You can make great income selling affiliate products but you get a higher percentage of the profits and have more control with your own products. Plus,if you have created your own product you can recruit affiliates to help you market and this will make things so much easier. You will need to pay them a percentage of the income of course, but the leverage of having many people selling for you can rocket your sales and profits.

3. Never give away your visitors. One of the most common mistakes made by new internet money makers is to just send all their customers to an affiliate offer. They never try to capture their names and email addresses for later. You're doing a great job of building someone else's business, and letting your own business struggle. Having your own list of buying customers is one of the best ways to increase your profits , and to get additional sales in the future.

4. Give away information for free. You may think this is a bad idea but you will need to give people a reason to sign up for your list or service. You also want to give away some of your knowledge and ideas to your visitors to keep them coming back for more. If you sombine this with capturing their emails then you will have a huge lists of potiential customers in no time.

5. Use free services to gain trust, and to attract customers. This is where Blogger and other service can be used to your advantage. You can create quality content and links back to your main site. You'll be increasing the opportunity for people to discover your site, and increasing your rank with Google and other search engines.