In school, children are taught that in order to fully investigate something, there are five important questions you must answer. Those questions are “who”, “what”, “when”, “where”, “why”, and ‘how”. Researching online business ideas is no different, although we will begin here with the assumption that some of these questions are already answered. The “who” I would say is obviously you, and the “when” is now. I could speculate on the why, but I think that’s a question you probably should answer for yourself. That leaves us with three questions to answer, which is what I will try to do now.

The most difficult question to answer is “what”. What market do we want to target? In other words, what niche? This is such a big question that entire books could be written on just this subject alone. One common way to approach this is to do what you know. Sit down and make a list of everything you know. This includes hobbies, your job, and everything else. At first this will seem daunting, but keep at it for a while and you will be surprised by the length of the list you end up with.

After you have your list, you will need to narrow it down. Look for clues as to what might work. For the items on your list, are there any related magazines, or books on the subject? Are talking about it or if there are any groups for it online? When you find one or preferably more of these, you have found a good market. Now look for a smaller niche within that market. Your primary goal is to find a subsection of a market small enough to compete in, but large enough to make money. But don’t wast time here. You will get this wrong at first, but it is far better to move on and get to the action, and then correct as you move along, rather than get caught up in “analysis paralysis”.

The next question is “where”. Where can we set up our online business? I would say the simplest place to start is on an existing online platform designed for user content. In other words, something like a Blogger blog, or a Squidoo lens, or any of the hundreds of other places where you can go and sign up for an account, often for no charge, and upload your own content, and links and even advertisements.

If you want something you have more control over, and are willing to spend some money, you could get yourself a web hosting account and set up a web site, or even a blog on your own site. Even if you go this route, I would recommend starting with and utilizing the free content hosting sites because they provide a good testing platform, and they are already popular with the search engines so it is more likely your site will be found more quickly.

The final question to answer here is “how”. This question is best expressed as “how do I make money with this?” For a blog, the most common way in the beginning would probably be with AdSense or some other contextual advertising. Sign up with the advertising program after you have set up your first blog or other site because these programs usually ask for a URL before they will approve you.

Another popular method is affiliate programs. An affiliate program is a way that companies allow people like you and me to sell their products and get paid a commission. Do an online search for your niche topic and add the words “affiliate” or “affiliate program” to the search. You will probably find lots of products. Sign up and you will get an affiliate link that will allow you to make money on the stuff bought by people who follow your link to the merchant’s site.

Now you can see that by just answering a few simple questions which you probably learned years ago in school, you can find what you need to get started with your online business. Get started now. Print this article, and start brainstorming your “what” list on the back of the page. Then just follow the rest of these steps, and your in business.

Are you interested in learning some more detailed ideas for starting an online business? Check out this resource where you can learn about 20 online business ideas which are making at least $100 per day for each of the authors who contributed to the book.

And once you have your online business idea, check out the internet marketing project manager, where you will learn why small business owners are often just untrained project managers, and what you need to know to manage your business projects effectively.