Countless individuals have dreamed of quitting the day job to develop a new business online.

And why not? Working from the comfort of your own home, with low costs and being the master of your own time, must be better than slaving away in a 9-5 job, mustn’t it?

How about the complications? The technical problems, long lead-ins to a sustainable income, and, of course, the intense competition for a large, but limited pot of money on the internet.

John Evans, who founded Syntagma Media — an internet content provider — has given an interview about the trials of creating an online business to Gerry Reynolds, business consultant and retail analyst.

Here’s a preview :

Gerry : What are the economics of an online income stream? […]

John : If you set no upper limits, you’re really at the mercy of events. It’s no good having a $10m business if your costs are $11m. Mr Micawber defined that problem 150 years ago.

The trick is to set an upper boundary that gives you the best split between receipts and obligations, building in the vagaries of the tax system, of course, and depending on the amount of effort you can comfortably provide. Everyone will reach a different conclusion, but it has to be within your comfort zone. You are, after all, in this for the long haul.

Read both posts here : #

Pundits are still concerned that the worldwide credit crunch will not abate until the full extent of the U.S. sub-prime housing crisis is fully known.

Justin Urquart Stewart, at Seven Invesment Management said, “The market cannot start to get any composure until we can find out how much damage has been done.”

The prospect of millions of borrowers — mostly poor, black Americans — defaulting on payments they could never afford, has fueled concerns of a credit crunch, making it difficult for almost anyone to borrow money. The interbank lending market has been particularly badly hit.

In the three months to the end of June, Standard & Poor calculated that U.S. house prices fell by 3.2 percent, the steepest decline since 1987 when its records began.