The term online business may sound somewhat scary, but anyone with a web presence that is making money online is running an online business. It does not matter if you have a personal blog with adsense or a thousand page commercial website. The term online business refers to any presence that is created for the purpose of building an income. If you want to start an online business then simply going over to blogger.com or squidoo.com can be a lucrative option. You will need some type of presence if you want to start making money online. The first step is deciding what you want to create a web presence about and checking to see if there is a large enough audience.

Picking the topic or "niche" of your online business should be done with great care and consideration. First and most importantly is picking something which you will not get bored of. This is one of the most common reasons for the failure of an online endeavor. Over and over again I have seen great blogs and websites created, but after a year or two when they are about to reach their prime earning potential the webmaster or blogger decides they do not want to create any new content on the niche. Pick a topic which you know you will be able to create content on for years to come. Something you are truly passionate about and willing to write on even if you are not making a ton of money.

The next step is making sure that the topic has a large enough audience to meet your online income goals. If you want to make millions then you will need to pick a topic that has millions of searches monthly. It will probably be in your best interest to pick a topic which is getting around 50,000 searches monthly. I have found that this high of a goal is reachable within a year and once you reach the top for the term you will make around a thousand dollars per month. If you would like to check out some terms and see what their monthly traffic is head over to adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.

Once you have chosen a suitable topic for your blog or website it is finally time to begin creating. For those new to the online business world I highly suggest you start out with a blog. I have personally found blogging to be one of the most profitable ways of making money online if you are willing to put in the necessary time writing content. Go to blogger.com or wordpress.com and set up your free blog. Before you begin marketing or trying to make money you will need good content. Write a few articles and post them to your blog.

After you have a few articles written on your chosen niche the next step is to go to Google Adsense which you can find by doing a quick Google Search for the term adsense. Set up a free account and create an add to place on your website. This is the most basic way to make money online and should be used. Do not expect to make much within your first year this will be the time to learn everything you can about running an online business. I highly recommend you join a forum if you have any questions the webmaster forum that I prefer most is v7n.com/forums/.