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Starting a Home Business
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How to Start a Home Business the Right Way
There is only one way to start your home business and selling products from home right and that will be explained to you on this page. But first, a big DON'T.

Don't get pulled into get rich schemes, because the only ones getting rich are the people offering the scheme. So if you see promises of riches and vacations on tropical islands, stay far away. These offers will HURT you, not HELP you.

Learning how to start a home business the RIGHT way is the only way to protect yourself from these schemes.

So what do you do when you want to sell products from home on your own website?

Steps to Start a Home Business
1. Get Legal
Getting your business legal is the first step to starting a legitimate home business. Online Retailers in the USA have to get a registered business name and a tax ID in your state. This isn't difficult or expensive to do. You get your registered business name from your local county clerk and your sales and use tax ID from your State's Department of Revenue. Most of the time you can find all of the necessary forms online and submit online. Just Google your County and go to their website and then Google your State's Department of Revenue. International Retailers - you will need a registered business name in your location and whatever else your country requires to show proof that you are a legitimate retailer.

Why do you have to get this information?

In order to work with genuine wholesale suppliers to fulfill products for your store, you must be a business yourself. They will ask you for your tax ID information for tax purposes, because the wholesale supplier doesn't charge you sales tax. You charge sales tax to the customers who buy things from your store in your state only.
2. Get a Business Bank Account
Once you have your business legal, you can now open a business bank account. In order for your merchant account provider (the company that charges credit cards for you) to deposit funds to you, is by way of a business bank account. They will not deposit funds into a regular ole' bank account. So you need your business information to set this up.
PayPal is an exception to this. If you use PayPal to charge credit cards or accept PayPal payments, they will deposit to whatever bank account you specify.
3. Get a Merchant Account
You will need the information above to open your merchant account. Online customers are expecting you to accept many different forms of payment. You can use PayPal for all of your needs, but that also requires another page for your customers to go to and fill out payment information. If you had a merchant account to accept credit cards on your site directly, then you can have them verify and order all on the same page. There are many providers for merchant accounts, from your local bank to an online company. Whatever eCommerce Hosting Provider that you choose for your online store may already have a built in solutions provider for this or suggest a provider to you that will work seamlessly with their shopping cart.
4. Get an eCommerce Hosting Provider
This is who you will host your online store and provide you with the tools you need to build it. There are many types of platforms out there. If you are an experienced coder, you can choose any hosting provider you want to. But if you are brand new at building and running an online store, then you need a provider that will give you the tools necessary to do this easily. We always recommend Yahoo! for this. They make it really easy to build your store and they also give you things to help promote your store. Which is really important if you want customers to find to you! Find more information about Yahoo!.
5. Get Legitimate Wholesale Suppliers
The last step to start your home business right is to find legitimate wholesale suppliers to provide products for your online store. You have to work with genuine wholesale suppliers, because if you don't, you can fail miserably. Genuine wholesale suppliers are committed to delivering products in a reasonable time frame and want to provide exceptional service to you. REAL wholesale suppliers are NOT middlemen, who only pretend to offer products to you, but in fact pass the order along to the real wholesale supplier and charge you higher wholesale prices to do this.

Aligning your home business with legitimate providers in each step above, and beyond, is essential to starting and running a REAL home business selling products online. One bad provider can ruin your business.

So do your homework and make sure to only work with legitimate services that will HELP you.


Finding REAL Wholesale Suppliers for Your Home Business
Who knows better how to find Drop Ship and Wholesale Suppliers for online store owners than the company that started it all? WE are The BEST place to find these suppliers, and you can find them in our Directory of WBI Certified® Wholesalers.

We have spent years visiting tradeshows, visiting wholesalers and finding genuine wholesale suppliers who will work with new and experienced online sellers. It's not easy, but after over a decade we have collected the internet's largest, most comprehensive Directory of Certified Wholesalers you can find anywhere.

If you want to try to find Certified Wholesalers on your own, be sure to visit our Scam Watch page for tips on how to identify the current online wholesale product scams.


You may also be interested in:

The Best Wholesale Products Come from WBI Certified® Wholesalers: Take a quick look at how we locate genuine certified wholesalers for online sellers who work from home.

Wholesale Tips Videos: These Free videos, hosted by our CEO Chris Malta, covers the top wholesale questions asked by new online sellers interested in working with wholesale distributors. Simply click the link if you would like to watch them now on our site.

Starting Your Internet Business Right: This free eBook, written by our Founder and CEO, Chris Malta, has been read by so many new online store owners and provides you with a lot of great, easy to read, education about starting and running an online business. Click the link to download it today!