Starting An Online Business What Is First
Do you have business challenges? Are you trying to grow your online business or want to be your own boss, but haven’t yet found practical information?
It is my goal throughout this article to help you to overcome your obstacles and reach your dreams of successfully starting an online business the right way, that makes you money.
One of the first things you need to remember before starting an online business is that there is no magic pill out there for you to swallow and become an instant millionaire.
No matter what you do in life or what methods you choose in accomplishing your goals and visions it is going to take some serious work on your part. Many may tell you that starting and running an online business is easy, but as we shall see through this article, It is going to require you to take action everyday.
Questions to Ask Yourself Before Starting Your Internet Business
1. Why do I want my own online Marketing Business?
Before deciding to start a business, think about the qualities you possess, what makes you tick, and how that might help you be a more successful business owner.
2. What interests, talents, skills and strengths do I have that will assist me in running my new business?
Inventory the abilities you already possess. Then think about all the ways you can use them to grow your business and help others grow their business, and also working with partners that lack your abilities.
3. What are my strengths and weaknesses?
The ability to recognize your own strengths and weaknesses is invaluable for the business owner. Recognizing what you’re good at and what you’re not will help you decide how to use your time and when to outsource to the experts or outside professionals for help.
4. What skills do I need to learn or brush up on to run my online business effectively?
Recognize which skills you need to develop in order to run your business more effectively. Identify the ones that are worth investing time into learning, and which ones you might be better off finding outside sources to perform.
5. Do I enjoy challenges?
Businesses provide constant challenges. If you enjoy a good challenge, it will energize you. If you don’t, you may end up feeling as though you’re engaged in a constant uphill battle.
6. Will I be doing work that is meaningful and really interests and excites me?
When you’re engaged in doing something rewarding it helps to motivate you to keep going even when things get tough. Start by getting back in touch with your values and see if there is a synergy between them and the things you will be doing in your business. If not, see how you can spin things so that there is.
7. Do I really have a money making idea?
Not all great ideas make money. A good business idea addresses a problem, need or pain that a particular group of people or companies face. The problem must be significant enough to warrant spending money to solve or alleviate. Before bringing a new product or service to market, test your ideas and make sure they’re profitable. You can use our Startuptools to generate good business ideas
8. Who are my ideal target customers?
Every business needs customers. Successful businesses know exactly how to describe who their best customers are, what “pain” they’re feeling and what they need, want, desire and are willing to pay for.
9. Who is my competition?
Learn everything you can about the others in your field who provide similar products or services to the same ideal customer – direct and indirect competition.
10. What do I offer that the competition doesn’t?
What makes my services or product unique above my competitors? This is your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) – what you’ll use to make to your prospective customers buy your product or service instead of buying from your competition. Why should your customer make you their Marketer of Choice?
11. Have I established business goals?
Setting goals is an important part of any business plan. But setting a goal is only part of the picture. Achieving goals is even more important. Learn how to identify which goals are important enough to commit to, and systematically work towards them by breaking them down into steps, establishing timelines, identifying resources needed, and benchmarks for success
12. Am I a self-starter?
When you have your own business, there’s no boss or manager to tell you what to do and when to do it. To get your online business off and running you’ll have to motivate yourself to get things started
Thinking like a Marketer
Thinking like a marketer is crucial to your success. I have covered this slightly before, but want to re-visit this subject again as it is crucial to your success as a marketer.
You will find that everywhere you look that everyone teaches you the systems, or the how to “make money online”, but very seldom will you find anyone that teaches you that you also need to know how to think like a marketer. This is the missing piece.
Do you honestly want to be a successful online marketer? If so, then you need to be a marketer.
How can you possibly go about trying to build an online business without BEING a marketer? It is like trying to build a house with no foundation. What happens to the house not built upon a good solid foundation? No wonder so many people fail!
But being a marketer would mean you have to sell something and who wants to be a “sales person”? It doesn’t sound very exciting does it? Our minds think of the car salesman and who wants to be seen as the person following you around constantly pitching to you.
I have to tell you though that selling is part of the game and is very essential if you are going to be a marketer “NOBODY” makes money until they sell something.
I can teach people my systems of how I make money online and that very same information that means tens of thousands of dollars for me may be nothing more than confusion and frustration for you. Why do we see the same information in a different way?
I had a problem with selling to people. I had problems of seeing things as opportunities instead I looked at the things I was doing as something everyone else would criticize me for.
A true marketer will see opportunities to make money all around him or her.
Do you see opportunities to make money all around you?
What about all of the email messages that come into your inbox on a daily basis. Do you look at them and try and see the marketer’s side of the messages that was just sent to you? Do you try and see the methods he is using so that you can possibly use them as an opportunity for you to get results as well? It is quite probable that you see them as an ordinary consumer would see them. You see them as clutter. You see them as ways to take your money. Maybe you see them as nothing more than a bunch of scammers out to get you.
The economy is not all that great right now. In fact, for many it just plain sucks! But if you are a true marketer, you will become recession proof. You will understand that you will always have the opportunity to make money.
The same thing applies to the way you think about money. Even if you get lucky and actually make some money, I have to tell you that it is not enough to just make money.
You can make money and even a lot of money and still end up right back in the same place you began. Broke! Unless you understand it, have confidence in it and confidence in yourself, and the same ways of thinking as all successful marketers have, you will never win.
You must first understand how the Marketer thinks about the opportunities and money and how it differs from the way you may be thinking.
Regardless of how much money you make, you will end up right back where you started if you don’t change your thoughts about the opportunities that face you every day and about the money you will make.
Do yourself a favor and stop and think about the last time you seen a marketing message from one of the marketers that you follow.
What were your thoughts when you read the message?
Was it the thoughts of a true Marketer or the thoughts of a consumer?
Creating a Vision for Your Online Business
Many people who search for success lack a couple things that are very important. I want to cover them, over them before we move own.
The first one is your lack of vision. The Bible says that with the lack of vision the people perish!’ Proverbs 29:18. This is so true. Of course we are not going to be talking about getting your glasses checked or check to see if you need glasses.
Well In a way maybe that is not such a bad analogy to use either. I remember when I first needed glasses I didn’t even realize how bad my vision really was until after I put my new glasses on and went outside. Everything starts looking clearer detail than I had in a long time.
While driving home, I noticed individual rocks in the gravel along the side of the road instead of just noticing the gravel. Instead of just noticing the trees had leaves I noticed the patterns of the leaves and even the birds that were in the trees.
I was now seeing things I didn’t even notice I was missing before my new glasses.
Maybe that is part of your problem. You really have no vision or your vision is not focused or as clear as it should be.
Without vision, your online business won’t succeed.
I think our description of the word vision shall be, “Being able to “see” a “clear picture” of your fulfilled goals in your mind. Not just seeing the gravel or the trees, but able to see the finer details that make up the gravel and the trees.
Once I get started on a puzzle with my friend I tend to enjoy putting them together and having a clear vision is kind of like starting a puzzle. If all you had was a bunch of pieces and you did not ever know what the picture was supposed to look like after you completed it, how difficult would it be in putting the puzzle together?
I know I would quit before I got very far due to frustration of not knowing what I was working towards and what it was supposed to look like when it was finished.
Our vision is like the box cover of the puzzle. It helps us begin with the end in mind.
Almost every success in my life has come AFTER having a vision for it. For example, when I first began working towards the launch of Lay Off Your Boss I really had no clear vision in mind. I just knew I wanted money.
We set a goal of just making a few thousand dollars to help me out of the troubles I was in at the moment. I did have a vision, but it was targeted way too low. I could just see a few bills getting caught up at the time when I started. Any successful business owners that I’ve known ALL have vision.
Many people have had a vision that they could focus on and then lost sight of that vision. If you lose sight of your vision, you begin to lose hope that you once had.
I have lost hope before and let me tell you from experience that when you lose the hope that you once had it is game over.
I look around at the lives of others I see and it sure is not a pretty picture. Seems like everyone I see is sitting around thinking poor, poor me. I remember those thoughts as well, so I know how easy it is to get to that place in life. One of the biggest problems I see that is holding people back in life is a, “victim mentality”.
We have helped many people make it easy to blame us for their lack of success.
But more often than not it really has to do with just the lost or lack of vision for your own life.
We have let any vision of success just seem to fade away and now all we have left is this crazy victim mentality of poor lost me. Look what the world has done to me. We do have a choice to make at this point. Sure, it may not have been our fault that we are in the position we are in right now, but it is our choice to remain there.
Here is what needs to happen. We need to work on getting our visions back. Formulate and brand indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself succeeding in life.
What does this picture look like? Go ahead and dare to dream again. Once you get that picture in your mind you keep it there and do not under any circumstances permit it to fade. Your mind will seek ways to begin to develop this picture.
Your mind always tries to complete what it pictures so never think of yourself as failing; never doubt the reality of that mental image you can see. You need to be always picturing ’success’ no matter how badly things seem to be going on in your current state of your life.
If your vision is small the outcome will be small. The size of your vision will have a tremendous effect on the size of the result.
I want to leave you with this one more Question. Do you realize your potential or value? Many of the students I have worked with come to me thinking they have no value to offer at all. Can I just tell you that indeed “YOU” are valuable. Don’t sell yourself short. Many times you will see me sign my emails with the line, “Continue to stand in your greatness!”
It does not take very long to realize the value that others have to give when I begin to talk to them. But it is one thing for me to see it and another thing for you to see and realize your Greatness.
Begin right now at this very moment to formulate that vision in your mind. With everything going on in your life, it may be a little cloudy at first but do your very best to see the life you want to live and then make it happen.
You’re Business Plan
After you have a clear vision in your mind it is time to make that vision come to life. You need to know how you are going to get things started while having a long term goal as well in place.
You need to have step one in place and how and who will be responsible for accomplishing this goal, then step 2 and so forth.
Each one of these steps needs to be led to the final goal or destination of your business voyage. So how do you do this? First, let’s see what a business goal really is.
Setting Goals
What is a Business Goal?
- Clearly describes actions to be taken or tasks to be accomplished.
- Describes a desired future condition toward which efforts are directed.
- Without a goal you will find yourself accomplishing very little.
- They are your goals and you need to design them to fit you and your business.
Goal setting has two basic purposes:
1. The first purpose is to establish a measure or a way to evaluate the success of your business. You must be able to track it and see that it is aligned with your success.
2. The second purpose is to set different priorities for all involved. You need to decide who will be accountable for the accomplishments of each goal you set.
For example, let’s say you are setting your goals for your next project. You have partnered up to do a Joint Venture project.
You will need to decide who will be responsible for each aspect of the project. Who will write the e-book, who will do the videos, who is going to make sure the copy gets done and so forth?
As the owner and manager of your online business, you need to set goals to help keep you focused on the success of your online business.
There are so many things that will keep you distracted. You need to have a system set in place to help keep you away from all of the destructive activities that will do nothing except keep you from doing the things you need to do.
Without a goal you will find yourself accomplishing very little.
Naming Your Online Business
I know it doesn’t sound like it should take much to just slap a name to our Business and go with it. Well, there is a lot more to this than just slapping a name on a business card and going with it.
You’re Business Name
Why should you have a business name?
If for nothing else it will give you self-gratification. Have you ever dreamed of owning your own online business and thinking of what it would be called? Now is your opportunity to make that dream come true.
Secure your domain name
Once you come up with a name you may go through the disappointment of discovering that someone else has already beat you to it.
This is especially true in the .com market today. There are over 50 million .com names registered and it is getting hard to get that special name you desire. But don’t let it get you down. Keep going and you will find that special name.
To find out if your name is available you can use our free domain name tool that will help you to generate similar domain names and show you the available with their different extensions. Or you can search in places like Network Solutions, namecheap, hostinger.
Finding Hosting For Your Online Business
Now what you need is a web hosting company. Web hosting means that you are finding space on a server. A server meanwhile, is a large and very fast computer that stays constantly connected to the web and that lives in a big server room somewhere where it is looked after by a whole lot of people.
This server has space on it like any other computer and you are effectively buying some of that space so that your files can be uploaded and take advantage of that constant connection to the web. Simple!
There are lots of different providers and packages, but I recommend checking out something like namecheap or hostinger. With them You should be able to find hosting – including a domain name, (your online business name) for around $3 per month or even a little less.
Choose the most basic package for now (you can always scale up if need-be).
Willingness To Invest Time And Effort To Grow You Online business
If you are already reaching a point of frustration, let me tell you right now that one quality one must possess or develop is the willingness to invest time and effort even if direct results do not seem at all apparent.
What if the next promotion I do doesn’t do any better? I guess it must be time to quit then, right? No, although several months may pass without good news; it is important for one, who wants success to hold on and continue to move forward.
You must have this quality for success. It is this quality which will save you from giving up after investing a lot of yourself in the business. I have to be willing to invest the same quality time into the next promotion or project that I did the one that didn’t do well for me.
Good luck starting and running your online business.