If you want to start and build a successful online home based business, you will need more than just a great idea and the desire to succeed, you will need all of the right tools in place that are proven to be necessary for a home-based business. Now a great thing about starting an online home based business is that you can do it for relatively cheap and you can run it month-to-month on very little money, so there is no excuse for not getting started if you have the desire to do it and become successful.Since there is no formal training for aspiring online business owners out there, let’s take a look at four of the most important steps you have to take in order to start and build your home-based business to be as successful as it can be.Step 1 – Start creating a list of potential customersFrom day one, you should get yourself an autoresponder email service and start building a list of potential customers. This ensures that anybody who visits your business and looks for more information will be exposed to the same email sequence that you design to be sent automatically in order to sell them your products.Step 2 – Start communicating with those on your listCreate an email campaign that is personal and makes each customer feel as if they are on the top of your list of priorities. Great ways to ensure each new subscriber feels special is to use their name in the email’s title and throughout the body of the email. This is a technique that is not used as often as it should be, but is extremely effective in building good customer relationships.Step 3 – Learn how to drive the most people to your listThere are many ways to advertise and drive targeted prospects to your online business, your goal should be to try out some techniques, see what works best for you, and then apply it on a much larger scale.Step 4 – Find out what your list wants and create the solutions for themOnce you start driving people to signup for your list, simply ask them what they need and/or want, then go out and create products to fulfill these needs. This is a great way to build business and over time people will be asking for a solution and you can send them directly to your product page.