A lot of people know that they want to start an online company.  One of the easiest ways is to become a reseller.  The reason is that another company has done all of the hard work in the development, testing, branding, and creating the product.  The main challenge in this scenario  is to find a product that will make you money.

Your first step, obviously, is to find a source.  You can search the Internet for products, attend trade shows or find niche magazines.  If a company doesn’t have a reseller program, you can contact them to make your pitch.  Often, you may find that they would be more than happy to have another salesperson working on their behalf.

Once you have located a product to resell, you should understand how wide your audience is. Is this a product that can bring in a large volume of business?  Researching the competition, also,  is important during this stage.  Find out if there is something that you can do better than the rest - whether it’s with the price, the features, better service or some other area.

In finding a product, don’t get too caught up in the fact that you may not be a subject matter expert in the field.  Most companies will help get you trained and can give you the right tools so that you’re a success.  Additionally, you don’t need to have a great amount of passion for the product itself.  Instead, you should have a passion for the business and sales that it can possibly bring.

The ultimate attributes that you should seek when becoming a reseller are if the product is in demand; how high are the start-up costs and if the company can support you in becoming successful.

When creating your website, you should take into account what is going on today.  You may not have noticed that there are very distinct things that web designers do in order to make the web pages look modern, appealing and easy to use.  What is the key for today?  Simplicity.

Fortunately, web design evolves as everything else does and today web sites are better than ever.  More designers have more experience and finally understand how to create something better than they did even a few years ago.

Even if you don’t have the experience, you should make sure that you pay attention to the features that all great designs have.  They are:

• A Clean Layout
• A Site That Goes Below the Fold (people know how to scroll)
• A Reduction of Three Dimensional Effects.
• The Use of a Plain Background or Soft Colors Such as Grey
• No Strong Colors
• Clean Spaces and No Crowding the Site With Design
• Big Easy to Read Text
• An Orientation Towards the Center
• The Content is Designed vs. a Designed Page
• Few Icons – It is Clutter and Confuses People

These are easy things to keep in mind even if you’re not an expert.  One of the best books that I’ve read and continue to use as a guide include:  Don’t Make Me Think:  A Common Sense Approach to Web Usablity by Steve Krug.   His book points out that too many small businesses, unnecessarily, create cluttered sites and, thereby, force people to think.

When you have an online business, it is critical for you to remember that people came to your site because they have a problem to solve.  If they don’t think that they have landed a possible solution within a few seconds, they will hit the back button quickly.   Make sure that your site doesn’t cause needless headaches by following the guidelines listed above and you stand a shot at increasing sales!