Online Business; Start From Scratch.

Hello beautiful people!

Who wants to start an online business? Did you finally decide to save money and opt for a business? You? That’s great.

I’m sure you’ve seen a whole lot of online-based businesses around. I mean A LOT. It’s really no surprise, especially with the growing technology and social media platforms. It’s like everywhere you look, you come across an online store. Cool hey?

I, for one, have a lot of people that I know who do online businesses. Some of them have really made their stores successful, popular and get a very good profit from them. If you want to start one, you can too. Just keep reading this post.

Starting an online business might seem really simple. Even reading the steps might seem like a walk in the park. And it is… if you don’t want to maximize your profits and be successful. But for anyone who knows how this is, it most definitely isn’t. Especially if you don’t know where to start or what to do.

Do you really think that you can just wake up one morning, decide to open an online store, and start selling random stuff to people? Of course not! Nothing is ever done that way. Everything needs planning and steps to follow in order to reach a certain level. If it’s really what you want to do.

That’s why, your ooh-so-good friend here (that’s yours truly here), has done the work for you. If you want to start a successful online business that will generate you absolutely amazing income and profits, this is for you. You need to read this.

COME UP WITH A BUSINESS IDEA.

Everything starts as an idea, right? Get an idea of the business that you want to do first before anything else. Please don’t say you want to start a business and when someone asks you what you want to do, you say “anything” or “whatever brings me the money”. You’ll be in for a loss. Both of resources and time. Value your time. Time lost can never come back and it’s pretty valuable too

• What you love to do and buy can be a great idea to start.
• Analyze the pros and cons of your generated idea.
• Is it something that you really want to do?
• Will you manage
• the challenges that come with your idea?
• Is it in demand?

PS: Avoid starting a business based on trends. When the trend ends, then what will you do? Wait for some other trend? It should never be like that.

DO A MARKET RESEARCH.

Market research is so important when you want to start a business. Because then, you’d be able to know and understand how to go about your idea. You’d be able to know if the product or service you want to offer is in demand and needed. When you conduct this market research, chances are you’ll be well informed about the online business you want to start, and that’s the most important thing regarding the whole market analysis.

• Is there a demand for your product or service?
• Does it solve a certain problem in your community?
• If yes, how will you ensure customer satisfaction?
• Does your idea need much work and attention?
• Understand what people are saying about products and problems they’re trying to solve.

IDENTIFY YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE/CUSTOMERS.

Get to know who your target audience is. That is who your business is intended for. The group of people that is most likely to buy from you. This group should be your priority in anything that you do because the people in this group will be your core customers and buy all that you have to offer.

• How will they benefit from your business?
• What do they like?
• Who are they?
• How will they respond to what you have to offer?

COME UP THE BEST PRODUCT/SERVICE.

Coming up with the right product or service mainly comes after identifying your target customers. Once you know who you’re aiming for, you’ll know the right product or service to provide to them. Considering you already did your market analysis, then it won’t be hard to find exactly what they need or want. So depending on these two factors, it’s time for you to figure out what will attract customers to you and why they should.

• Figure out what you mostly need to focus on.
• Do the quality vs. quantity analysis.
• Will it solve a certain need or problem?
• If you were the customer, would you buy it (repeatedly)?

HAVE A SNEAK FROM YOUR TO-BE COMPETITORS.

Take a sneak peek from the people doing the same business like the one you want to do. Get to know how they started doing it, how they got potential customers, and how they’ve succeeded in doing the business. You should not do everything they have done, everyone does things differently but what you should do is get some important insights from them so that it would be easy to understand and get a glimpse of what you should do and start.

• How they treat customers (customer support).
• Why they sell.
• What they do right and wrong.
• What they lack.
• How you can be better than them.

KNOW THE LAWS REGARDING YOUR BUSINESS.

I know most people never consider this when they start online businesses even though they should. It’s really important to understand how the laws work because they could affect you in the future. You do not need to go to school for this rather, you just need to understand the basics. These things are different depending on the country that you’re in. Some countries have no laws regarding online businesses and others do. It’s not the same everywhere. So get to know what works in your country beforehand.

• How does shipping work?
• Are there tariffs needed to be paid when sending products in your locale?
• Learn about copyrights and trademarks.
• How to get licenses and permits.

ROUNDUP START UP COSTS.

Finally! You’ve done all the necessary and you’ve finally decided you want to get your business into action. What you need to do now is make a cost sheet and list down everything you need from scratch. This will make it easy for you to start your online business. In a simple language, I mean capital. When you figure out how much you’d be needing.

• Will your business require funding?
• How long will it take for you to get all the costs needed?
• Ways you will manage your capital?
• The amount of time it will take for you to return your input?

WHAT WILL YOUR PLATFORM BE?

In other words, where do you plan to sell from? With the growth of social media and other related platforms, there are so many places for you to decide where you want to put up your business. Most people prefer to use platforms like Instagram to set up their online businesses because it’s a growing social network with millions of users per day. Without forgetting that it’s totally free. Many other people who want to get a more professional look and feel, opt for Shopify (E-commerce) or create their own landing pages (websites) for selling their products. I would recommend visiting swahilify to learn more about hosting plans and how to choose the right name for your business before deciding on what to do.

• Is your platform be user friendly?
• Will it be easy to navigate?
• Would you be able to manage it?
• How well are you familiar with the platform?

Generally, with everything regarding online businesses, the most important thing to consider is being consistent with what you want to do. Don’t start selling women clothing’s today, switch to food tomorrow just because you see people making a profit from it and start something totally different in the coming week.

As much as “diversifying” this might sound, it could be really confusing to your customers especially if you’re just starting out. The businesses you see making it were consistent with what they were doing no matter how small and little they got.  

Fall in love with what you do, and without a doubt, it will fall in love with you too. Nothing is as easy as it seems.

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