The idea of starting your own business on the Internet is hard to resist. Work your own hours from home, make a mint (even when you're sleeping). Seems like the ideal path to wealth creation. You'd be a chump not to jump in and build a website or start a blog!

OK, let’s take a reality check. There are more budding Internet entrepreneurs than you might think. Many have spent a number of years and many thousands of dollars in their efforts to start a profitable Internet business.

It may seem as if they are all making a success of it, but that's simply not true. Not many will admit their frustration because perception is everything online. You can’t afford to be perceived as a failure because no one will buy from you, and that will make sure that you fail. Fake it ‘til you make it is essential.

Does this mean that you shouldn’t even try? Of course not! The Internet is exploding. The potential is huge. In today’s economic climate thousands, if not millions, of people are looking at starting their own Internet business.

And so they should. It was a trend that was in place well before the recession came along and it’s a recession proof business.

So what are the difficulties to starting your own business online?

The first is the learning curve - it's steeper than you might think. There are several “how-to" processes online for you to follow. The trick is to know which ones you should follow. I sometimes think that letting the newbie loose to find her own way at the start is one of the best ways for her to learn. Might sound harsh, but it works. My advice would be not to spend too much at the start but at least try something. You will learn this way.

Succeeding at creating wealth with an online business requires mastery of several key tasks, not all of which have a direct correlation with an offline business.

Second, you need to build a really good website and/or a blog for those who understand social networking. Then you have to drive traffic to it, all without making any mistakes that cause you to lose credibility in your prospect's mind.

Not easy!

Although there are numerous experts, books, and how-to courses on how to start a business online, it's hard for a beginner to know who to believe. In addition, there are multiple online business models to choose from as well. However, as I said before, at some point you just have to jump in and test the water.

Thirdly, as mentioned previously, is the need to drive traffic to your website. Novice Internet marketers know they need their site to be ranked highly by the search engines, but often vastly underestimate the amount of competition they have for the keywords and search phrases they desire.

The reality is that a top-ten ranking for most popular keywords is extraordinarily difficult to achieve. This means that you will need to master the art of advertising online, which can become quite costly.

The final issue is that it's very easy to become overwhelmed when starting your own business online.

You might be advised to subscribe to Internet ezines or visit Internet discussion forums. These are recommended methods to build knowledge. However, you will be bombarded almost daily with new ways to make money, new advertising strategies to try, new top-secret, never-before-revealed-to-the-public ways to get more targeted website visitors than you've ever imagined. You can become paralyzed by analysis and end up doing nothing.

I suggest you read internet marketing articles. After a while, you can tell the experienced and genuine authors. That’s what you are doing here.

If you're looking at creating wealth with an Internet business, this article will serve as a reality check for you. However, you do need to start somewhere and you will need some start up capital. It's certainly possible to make a substantial income online; however, it's much more likely if you have a good grasp of the obstacles you'll encounter along the way.

Good luck!