When you are considering starting an online company, you want to make sure you find the right product.  What do you want to sell?  What is your passion?  What subject or topic do you have a lot of knowledge about? How can you deliver great value to potential customers? 

Let me start by telling you that selling an information product online is easier than selling a service.  But, selling a service online makes more money with monthly memberships. 

Before you spend all your time working on a website and writing up eBooks, you want to be sure that your customers are going to be interested in what you are selling.  Do your market research.  Start by seeing how many competitors you have – this is a good sign.  Read through newsgroups, discussion boards, and chat rooms and learn about your target market customer base.  If you already have an email list, send them a survey to see what they are most interested in.

Most internet marketers preach that there are three reasons why a customer will want to buy your product.  Your product has solved a problem for your customer.  Your product has made life easier or more comfortable for your customer.  You are very passionate about your product and it shows in everything you do.

When researching your niche, you may want to use Amazon and find the current top sellers.  Find out what people are reading about.  You will want to research keywords with keyword tools such as www.wordtracker.com and the excellent free Google Keyword Tool.  You need to discover which keywords are being searched for frequently. 

Doing a little poking around your competitors sites isn’t a bad idea.  This is one way to come up with ideas on what would make your company different or better.  Take a look at their traffic rankings and their related links.  By analyzing this information, you can see how many visitors they have each day and how profitable their company is.

Once you find your passion and niche, ask yourself does this serve my customers?  You want to provide an excellent service to each and every person that spends their money with you.  This cuts down on complaints, bad reputations, and, worse of all, chargeback’s.

Deliver excellent service and value to your customers and they’ll want to do repeat business with you.