Doing business online seems for most of the people willing to start a business just an easy way to make money.

They know that an offline business requires a lot of knowledge, skills and abilities for someone to be able to run it, while an online business is simpler. You don’t need to have an important capital to get started – by contrary you can begin with just a few bucks.

All you have to do is to spot a nice niche and find a good method to exploit it. If you are lucky, money will only have to start pouring in.

A lot of people are struggling to figure out what this method might be. They also jump from one niche to another to find the magic place where money might be hidden.

In this way, they are just losing their time while letting money on the table for other people who understand how to make business.

Why should online business be different from a traditional offline business? Does business basics changed so dramatically in this information age?

No way. Business continues to operate in the same way it have worked in the offline environment from years.

Business principles and laws haven’t changed at all. What has changed is the way people can communicate and deliver their customers the value (products and services) they create.

Now it is cheaper and easier to communicate what you have to offer and, thanks to the advance of technology, entrepreneurs can reach more people and can target better and more effectively their products and services.

Any business, being it offline or online, has one single purpose: to effectively communicate and deliver value to a specific group of customers. In this context, profit becomes the measure of how effective the business is in reaching this ultimate goal.

Most online business starters are focusing on internet marketing tools without putting these tools into a much larger perspective. They believe that learning how to use information technology is the way of making money online.

But, this is not true. Information technology is just a means, a tool that helps entrepreneurs to reach better their business goals.

Without having specific business goals, internet marketing tools are useless. And without having a value to deliver, there is no business.

In order to benefit from the technology, the entrepreneurs must lay a solid foundation for their business.

That means, they need first of all to decide WHAT business they are in and for what purpose.

Then, they have to establish HOW they will communicate and deliver the value they create to their customers (their business strategy).

And then, in a third stage they will finally choose the suitable tools to be used to reach their targets: the right methods of getting traffic, communication supports, and means of communication.

Following these steps, they will select only the appropriate tools for their business and not tools which helped other people to make money.