Starting an online business appeals to many budding business owners. At first glance an online business seems easier to start, lower risk and less costly compared to opening a physical business. These assumptions may be true for the most part, but building an online business has many pitfalls that most hopeful business owners are not aware of.

For example, many people who dream of starting an online business think about making a profit before anything else. They build a website that has several products and the ability to take customer orders. Then they sit back and wait for the customers and money to roll in.

The problem is that does not happen. The customers and the profits never materialize. This leads to frustration. Starting an online business suddenly becomes difficult. It suddenly becomes a money-sucking venture that leads to failure.

This does not have to be the outcome for you. With a small shift in thinking you can start and run a profitable online business on just about any subject imaginable. They trick is to work with the natural process of the Internet.

Start with your potential customers. They go to Google or Yahoo or type in a search query that will hopefully solve their problem or answer their question. They browse through the search results and click on the result that shows the most promise of solving their issue.

Your online business must please two groups. It must please the search engines and it must please your potential customer. The search engine will rank your online business well if it provides valuable information. Your online business must contain content that centers around one niche. You can create massive online businesses as well, but this article assumes you are working with a budget.

Once you have a site that provides excellent content and ranks well at the search engines, you will receive visitors to your business. Remember that these visitors are looking for answers. When they click on your site in the search results, they become highly targeted, hot prospects. They want your online business to solve their issue. They want your online business to help them. That's why they were searching in the first place!

Lets move one step further in this process. Now that you have a hot prospect browsing your online business for information that solves their problem or answers their questions, you must deliver. Here is where your content helps you score again. It first helped you rank well at the search engines and now it is going to develop a friendly and professional relationship with your potential visitor.

Your content will pre-sell your product or service. No cold sales needed. This is the Internet. If all you are doing is selling a product, the visitor will click the back arrow and return to the search engine.

Keep them on your site by providing informative and helpful content. You should also try to get their contact information so you can continue to build a friendly relationship with them even after they leave your site. This can be done by offering a free ebook or a free ezine subscription. Give your visitor something of value in return for their email address.

As you continue to supply friendly and informative information to them, you continue to build trust. You are also simultaneously positioning yourself as the expert in your field. This is the pivotal point that can make or break an online business.

Only after you create excellent content, receive free and targeted visitors, and create trust will you be able to make the money. Now that you have a fan base of loyal visitors who view you and your online business as an authority, you can suggest your service to them. You can let them know about your new product. They will be willing to buy from you because they like you and know that you will deliver a great service or product.

If they buy from anyone, it will be you. That is what online business owners must understand. Once you have that trust, you are golden. Continue providing excellent and helpful information to your visitors. Continue to build loyalty and your visitors will turn into customers.

This process is quite backwards to most people. Most online business owners would never dream of thinking about profit last. With all of the get rich quick schemes out there, a lot of hopeful online business owners will fall into the churn and burn trap. They will create a site that does not work because it does not rank well and it does not build trust.

Build content. Attract targeted visitors. Pre-sell each visitor. Develop trust and expert status. Turn visitors into lifelong loyal customers. Now you can sit back and watch the money roll in. Use this exact process to start a successful online business.