How do you know what online business to start? The key is to research well before you start. What are the main areas you should research?

1. Yourself. Write down your skills and talents and your strengths and weaknesses.
2. Your market. It is usually best to target a market to which you belong or one of which you have intimate knowledge. This makes promoting your product or service among your existing networks very easy.
3. Your product. You will need to consider the sources and costs of a product and the training and other resources you may need to offer a service.
4. The trends. Is your potential product or service trending up or down? Is this a hot trend that is growing or one that is nearing it's apex?



In future posts on this topic, we will look at tools that you can use to complete your research in each of these areas so stay tuned.