The Real First Steps When You're Ready to Start Your Own Online Business

Starting an online business is all well and good until you have to do it. Suddenly, a million questions start to pop into your head.

What do you need to do first? How much do you really need?

And why does everyone keep telling you something different about what really matters?

The truth is that most people get stuck at the starting line because they do it in the wrong order.

They spend weeks getting distracted by finding the perfect logo or trying to come up with a cute name for the business instead of doing the things that will determine whether they are still in business three months later.

Get The Basics Down First

Before you do anything else, you have to decide what you are going to sell and to who.

I know this sounds simple but you would be surprised how many people skip this step because they get caught up in the idea of the business instead. They think that if they build it the people will come.

Yet the marketplace does not care about your idea. The marketplace only cares about whether or not you solved a problem for someone who has money.

So before you race off to build a website or even order business cards, you need to spend some time interviewing your ideal clients.

What do they struggle with? What have they tried? Would they pay for a solution and how much?

With this information, you can then move on to decide how you are going to sell and market your product or service online. This is another area where most business owners make a ton of mistakes when they embark upon their online business journey.

Most small business owners get distracted by all the options and they make the mistake of trying to do too much all at once. This wastes time, effort and money. They also make the mistake of only using one channel to market their business because it looks trendy.

Choose Your Marketing Channels Early

Most online businesses aren't thriving because they had a great initial idea. They're successful because they learned how to market and sell their offering to the right customers consistently.

And this is not something you want to leave until your business starts to pick up a little bit. You need to get it sorted out before you even start your business or you are going to waste your time and resources exploring options that were never going to work in the first place.

Things have changed a lot when it comes to advertising online and there are way more options than ever to consider. These days, many businesses benefit from so many ad networks. Some business owners have discovered that optimizing direct response advertising gives them the immediate sales they need while others have invested time in finding the best ad networks for advertisers that suit their businesses when it comes to scaling their businesses and reaching new clients instead of just worrying about the usual networks.

The point is that there is no single right answer.

Different methodologies work for different businesses. You need to ensure that your strategy for advertising matches your model and what truly drives conversions for paying customers.

If you have a high ticket consulting model, then you have a different approach to consider from ecommerce shop with impulse buyers.

The Financial Side No One Wants To Talk About

Getting your finances sorted early will save you from making costly mistakes in the future.

Even if you plan to bootstrap your venture, you cannot afford to ignore the financial realities of an online business because this will influence every decision you make in the future.

Many business owners fail to calculate what their true cost per acquisition will be. Many business owners don't think about what their profit margin will be per sale. They also don't consider how many sales they will need to break even every month.

These things all take precedence over everything else.

These numbers will guide every decision you make from your pricing model to every other model in the business including how much budget you can allocate to advertising your business.

And while we're on the topic, another area where most new business owners make a mistake is allocating too little budget for advertising.

It's easy to allocate no budget for advertising your offering. This is just as costly as wasting money on bad advertising campaigns.

New business owners fail to account for the fact that it takes time for any ad campaign to kick in and for new customers to start coming in. They do not recognize that they need multiple touch points with a brand before they make a purchasing decision.

If this is part of your budget from day one, then you won't panic when this really matters.

The Tech Stack You Actually Need

You don't need to buy every piece of software on the small business market, however there are some small investments you can make early on.

There are some things worth spending money on quite early on in your business:

A reasonable payment provider that won't keep your money hostage while waiting for an arbitrary release

Email list provider so you don't lose track of potential customers

A customer relationship management system can even be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet at the beginning

Remember that you don't need a fancy website early on, just one that's simple and works.

Trust me, a website that sells what you're offering and captures customer details correctly is always going to give you better results than some complex system that confuses people who visit it.

You are going to need a mobile friendly site because today's clients are probably spending a good chunk of their day on their phones.

Build Systems In Place Even If You Are The Only Person In Your Team

Businesses that succeed over time invest in systems early on.

This means that even though you are probably working alone, you will still need to have some kind of documentation of your processes.

How do you plan to deal with customer complaints? What is your refund system? How do you plan to fulfill customer orders?

These may seem like minutiae that can be dealt with later, but having a system in place will save you from having to scramble when things pick up. And they are going to pick up!

The businesses that succeed into year two have done all of these things, even if they didn't mean to. They understand the importance of making wise choices of marketing channels early on and getting their numbers right from day one. They've also learned that having systems in place can work magic and they put them in place before they become an issue.

All of this is far less exciting than winging it but if you follow these fairly simple steps, then you can embark upon starting an online business with the respect that it deserves.

Also in Office And Workplace Ideas