You may be sitting back and be thinking about how you can earn a better income, or how you can earn a few extra dollars a week to make life a little more comfortable so that you can go out and treat yourself to the occasional good meal at a restaurant, buy those nice pair of shoes that you saw in the shop window, buy the kids the latest electronic gadget, earn a passive income or even retire a few years early. I know because I was in the same position. I remember one day having a conversation with a friend as they told me how their friend had a retail business and things were starting to get tough. Their sales were declining, the phone wasn’t ringing as often, they weren’t seeing as many people in the local shopping centre. They were convinced that online businesses were starting to erode some of their customers. This wasn’t news to me, because every time I turned on the TV or read the papers, this seemed to be a common theme. The boom in technology, devices, the way information is delivered and stored, the way that services are now offered can only mean that this will continue to grow. I didn’t think much more of it until I ran into my friend again and I asked him whether things had improved for his friend. He explained how his friend couldn’t sit back and do nothing anymore so they decided to add online shopping as part of their business. His fortunes had started to change and the business started to improve again, their internet business was growing by the day. This situation made me evaluate what I was currently doing, and also consider what was currently going on around us in terms of technology and how this was impacting on our lives now and what this meant that the future was going to be like. I could see that if I wanted a change in my lifestyle, then I would need to consider doing things differently particularly when it came to work and earning an income. I had come to the decision that I would start an online business . Although I had shopped on the internet, I didn’t really know anything about online businesses. I started my research. I read articles, listened to podcasts, bought books, spoke with people that had online businesses. Things started to fall into place and my knowledge and confidence began to grow, I was now at the point that I was ready to start an online business. I started developing the website by spending a couple of hours a night after work and some time on my weekends. I also worked on establishing the business side of things including the legal structure, accounting structure, trading terms, developing a distribution network, opening up bank accounts, establishing electronic payment gateways. I also had to do extensive testing to ensure that the website performed the way that it was meant to. I remember turning the switch on for the site to go live, it was a sheer sense of relieve and achievement. Within a couple of days of going live, I remember my first sale. This justified the hours of research and development that I had put into the business. As any online retailer will tell you, the work only begins once the site is up and running. Although product, price and promotion are important aspects of any business, including online businesses, the biggest key is building traffic to your site.