The first step to starting a profitable online business of your own is developing a topic for your website.

You want to select from a list of topics that interest you since you are going to have to write original content for your website.

Too many "green" webmasters make the mistake of choosing a website topic that they think will make them a lot of money instead of one that interests them.

They spend their time thinking about how to monetize their site before they actually have any visitors.

What is the end result?

A website that feels like a commercial. You have to remember that people are not using the internet to find your sales pitch they are using it to find information.

What does this tell you?

If you want to be a successful web business owner then your website should provide your users with valuable information resources related to your target keywords.

Ask yourself, am I more likely to buy a product from a trusted information source whose website I find useful and visit frequently or a website loaded up with banners and links to every way man has invented to make money?

Build your user's trust by providing valuable original content on your website. If you choose a topic that interest's you and that you are passionate about, the content will be much easier to develop.

When developing your site concept choose 4-5 broad topics at first until you identify which one has the most profit potential through keyword analysis techniques.

The top benefit of writing your own website content is that the search engines love it! If you want to get free targeted traffic to your website (of course you do, right?) having original, information filled website content makes the search engines very happy.

As you continue to add valuable original content to your website you will start to notice other websites linking back to you. This will bring both free targeted traffic and higher link popularity with the search engines depending on the quality of the sites that are linking to your site.

Search engine's see backlinks to a site as an indicator of how "popular" a site is. If you have a large number of websites linking back to your content you must be important, right? There is a lot to learn on this subject that goes beyond the scope of this article.

Visitors to your website will already be pre-sold since the backlinks you will receive should be from "related websites", or from "internet searches" performed on keywords related to your website content.

Incorporate links to the products and services you are promoting within your website content and you have a powerful sales tool.

This strategy will not "explode" your income overnight but will provide you a steady stream of pre-sold, targeted visitors from the search engines within 3-6 months.

About the Author
Michael Lawrenceis the webmaster for http://www.cobrasurf.com providing free website traffic and free website advertising.

He also publishes a blog which can be found at http://cobrasurf.blogspot.com