1) Web Site

This is for sure the most important part of your online business, this is how you create your presence on the Internet. Being in business online and not having a web site means you have no place where your customers can find you. After getting your web site up, you also need to make sure that it's as easy to navigate as possible and that the information provided is well written so the visitor won't lose time trying to figure it out. If your web site is hard to understand it's a fact that you will lose customers. In order to establish a web site you need to get your own domain name, http://www.godaddy.com is a very good registrar and at an affordable price. The second step is getting the hosting for your web site, http://www.hostexcellence.com/ is a good choice.

2) Business Plan

The second most important need is a business plan. The business plan will help give a direction to your business and will help you plan your strategies. If the business plan is missing, losing sight of where your business is going or you want it to go. Once the business plan has been established do your best to stick to it. There is software that helps you create a plan for your business, you just need to search for it.

3) Advertising/Marketing

In order to have customers, people first need to know that you exist. So, even if it's the third need, the marketing is one of the most important. No marketing usually means nobody knows about your product/service. Even if you have an online business it doesn't mean that you should advertise only online, you can do offline advertising as well. A good low cost offline advertising method is using flyers. You can create them on your computer, and print at you local print shop. There are many online advertising methods too, some are very cheap and some are more expensive, a lot of research should be made in order to chose the best.

Keep these three needs in mind and you will have the base to start you online business and make it a very profitable one.