The first step for you, the budding online biz entrepreneur, is to identify your strong suits and fields of interest. Many of the more inexpensive businesses can be done online where it is just a matter of a small investment in hosting and domain. Other businesses that are offering services and/or products can cost you more to start with. You will have to find the right balance between what you can provide and what people need. What works is good content. This will make the viewer linger and become more interested in your offerings. There are many ways to accomplish this and you will decide what works for you. Pick a few tools of the trade, use them and apply them to your site and monitor the response and traffic. If you notice that some are not producing remove them and try something else. You will have to be diligent but remember that simple is better. You do not want to implement every tool at once as it can make your viewers feel uncomfortable so use a few and hold the rest. Here are just a few possibilities.

1. E-mail lists are great to allow customers to talk about your products and services. Yahoo groups offer this service free. Members can post comments and questions to you or each other and an e-mail is generated to all users. The group can be private, subject to approval, or public. You will want to see daily traffic and post frequently in the beginning to get things going. Eventually your customers will start talking to each other. These lists are a great tool and keep people active and coming back.
2. Polls for viewers to vote on a specific issue related to the site’s content. You want to keep people interactive so they do not bored. Writing a poll from scratch can be tricky but they make great templates today that can be of great help. You would fill in the blanks and then copy and paste the code to your site.
3. Weblogs or blogs are like an online journal that is frequently updated. You will add some good links into it to help your business of course. It is also a form of communication that allows people to stay updated on what is going on with your business and what they can expect in the future. Today blogs have taken on a life of their own and are sweeping through cyber land.
4. Automation is the key to running your business and growing it at the same time. Automating necessary tasks can get these thing accomplished with you having to lift a finger. This gives you more time to focus on growth and increasing traffic and sales. It is the key to success for online business owners.