From my experience, I have seen that there are two key ingredients to starting a successful business online:
1.    Promoting, marketing, promoting, and then when you’re done with that: more marketing.  The purpose of starting a business is to make money.  So you have to ask yourself, “self, where is your money going to come from?”  No matter what your industry is, your money is going to come from your customers.  Therefore, the main question you need to ask yourself is, “how am I going to get customers?”  The answer?  MARKETING!  Most of your start up money should go into advertising to get yourself some customers.  At least 80% of your budget should be dumped into marketing and advertising.  The other 20% should be put into outsourcing the time consuming tasks that are more mindless so you can handle the important aspect of managing of your business.  Notice that 0% should do back into your pocket.  Remember, this is just for when you start out.  Of course, through time as your business changes these ratios will also change.  When you make money, put it back into your business, not into a new car, so your business can grow bigger.
2.    Professional Presentation!  I am so sick of seeing “business” sites where the small business owner puts pictures of themselves and their families (and these are never attractive people) online.  Also, animated GIFs might have been cool in 1995, but so was a 56k modem.  Stay away from them, plain and simple.  I know you think this is grabbing people’s attention, but it’s really just distracting them and pissing off professionals like myself.  If you’re set on using a rotating e for people to click and email you, then quit reading my blog right now and go away.  You don’t deserve the knowledge one can gain form this information I’m providing for free.  One more thing that I hate seeing on small business websites, or any website for that matter, is a big stretched or tile image in the background.  Go to some big sites like Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc.  Do any of them have an image at all in the background?  Do they have pictures of the business owner’s dog?  Do you see any friggin’ animated GIFs?  NO!  I have no idea why newbie self-proclaimed web designers think this looks good.  Simplicity with good content is the way to go.  I will also show you how to organize your content.

A lot of people will say that having a business plan is a critical first step to starting a successful business.  It’s not a bad idea, but it’s also not a bad idea to be productive and just start your business already.  You can plan all you want, but there are going to be certain variables that are impossible to predict.  Just like anything in life, you will learn as you go and practice makes perfect.  Most people will fail at the first business they start, but as long as you learn something and try again, then you will be better off than when you started.  This is VERY important: LEARN FROM YOUR FAILURES AND MISTAKES so you don’t repeat them.

You will hear people tell you that it’s hard or that you won’t be able to accomplish your dreams.  I love hearing this because this is what drives me to succeed.  If everyone just told me I was doing a great job all the time I might actually believe them and get lazy.  When someone tells you it’s too risky or you shouldn’t spend your money and time on chasing dreams because you have kids or credit card debt, or anything else, that’s right when you should get back to work on your business.  My greatest pleasures in life are proving people wrong and helping others achieve their dreams (the whole reason I started this web site).