Thinking of starting your very own online business, then you're in good hands. As you embark on taking the steps to be an entrepreneur and eventually your own boss, make sure you are ready to take the journey and understand that being an entrepreneur will require taking high-risk for the opportunity to rake-in high rewards for your efforts.
It's a process that can be challenging for the average person, but if you've learned to discipline yourself - you can go through all the stressful outcomes and also celebrate the great rewards that will follow based on your smart approach and execution. Start by building your mental state and then focus on a good idea that you've researched. When starting out, be patience, persistent, and due diligence. Things happen very quickly and time flies by in a flash, so be ready to be your own boss.
I've compiled some intriguing points that have taking me through this road and will like to share my insights on how to get you moving in the right direction.
1. Who Are You?
Before you embark on this journey as an online entrepreneur. Find who you are, create a questionnaire about your personality and see how you can answer your own mental capabilities.
- How do you feel when you set goals and accomplish them?
- How long does a project take for you to complete?
- What do you have to lose?
- Can you work late night with no salary?
- Do you need extensive help, due to lack of knowledge in a specific field?
- Why are you starting a business?
- Can you work under pressure and produce clear results?
- How do you connect with people you don't know?
- Do you understand the importance of having a strong customer service?
- Are you willing to accept failure and volatile situations that will often arise?
- What are your problem-solving techniques?
2. What Are Your Strengths
This is very important and will justify what the future will hold for you. As an entrepreneur, you'll need to be completely honest with yourself as pertained to your skills, weaknesses and strengths. This will help you connect best with your potential customer or client that might want to know more about how you can help.
You have to be determined to rein in success with energy through all the obstacles that will come your way as an online entrepreneur. The key here, is to believe in your vision, stay creative and be as practical as possible about your realities - then adjust accordingly.
3. Making Moves On Your Idea
In all reality, an idea is just that....an idea. If you don't take actions and make the right moves, forget it. Most business develop and start with on idea mostly to help others solve problems or fill a void that couldn't be accomplished without an expert solution or simply both options.
The best way to get going, is to find that perfect niche. A niche where you are more comfortable with and you understand the problems and can provide a solid solution to this problems.
How to move in the right direction:
- Don't spend time trying to be the best at this, or create a whole new industry on your own. All you have to focus on is, being better at doing something or solving a problem better than the next guy in your industry.
- Make notes on all your ideas and take action accordingly.
- Stick with what you know best and grow your knowledge base from the ground up.
- Don't get bothered by all the noise in your space.
- Have your target audience in mind and build from there.
- Passion and love for what you do will get you the results.
4. Market Research And Analysis
You'll have to research the market for your products and see what the demand are for specific products and services before you get started on marketing. See what the price points are per you competitors (yes you will have them, no matter how innovative or new you idea might be). Remember, it's never about your services or products, it's really about what others are willing to pay for and what they will gain if they choose you as the solution to their problems.
Will there be space to fit-in and grab a market share in your niche?
- Research census databases and resources from industry insiders about your specific niche market.
- Conduct surveys about your niche market and analyze the results.
- Talk to potential customers about your products and the services you plan on providing.
5. The Risk And Reward Factor
As an entrepreneur, taking risk is inevitable as this is much higher at the beginning of your entrepreneurship journey. What will you be investing to see positive results that will yield high rewards?
- Your time to complete projects and reach deadlines.
- Money to keep your business afloat as you build your customer base.
- Your willingness and ability to run an online business without being profitable for long stretch.
These will all determine your risk and reward factor as an entrepreneur.
6. Knowing How To Accept Your Losses
In most cases, you won't have enough finances to get the proper marketing needed to scale. In order to combat this, you'll need to know what you're willing to lose at the beginning. You will need to understand "acceptable loss" and know how to navigate through in order to keep growing your business over time. Acceptable loss is simply what you are willing to loss in order to keep your business moving forward.
7. Create Effective Goals And Follow Through
If planning is all you do, think again. The best way to get started, will be to create attainable goals that can be accomplish in the short and long term plan. You'll need to be flexible with your planning by setting goals that you can adapt to when things are not great. If you pledge allegiance to a plan and are not willing to change it based on reality, then you should as well be prepared to fail.
8. Finding The Right Online Platform
Be it eCommerce or a simple informative site for your potential customers to learn about your products and services, you'll need to find a platform that can fully accommodate your business.
For an eCommerce site, you can choose from a variety of platforms based on your need. These are the top rated platforms to consider:
- Shopify - It is one of the biggest and most famous online shopping platforms today. You will be joining over 400,000 entrepreneurs who use Shopify to sell products every day.
- BigCommerce - This platform offers many features to help small store owners grow their sales than almost any other shopping cart solution you'll find today.
- Big Cartel - You can easily create your own t-shirt store, picture painting and many more creatives you'll like to sell to a targeted niche.
- Squarespace - One of the cleanest design platforms you'll find online. Simple drag-and-drop website builder, and has grown to over 1 million users.
For informative sites, you can use templates or a fresh design from sites like;
Template monster - You can find thousands of premium templates for websites that perfectly fit your business.
ThemeForest - You can find CMS templates compatible with WordPress and Joomla, e-commerce templates for WooCommerce, Shopify and many more options.
Divine Tumenta is an entrepreneur and professional digital marketing expert based in Los Angeles. He has worked in digital marketing for more than 8 years. He is currently founder and CEO of Backlinkfy.com and a go to consultant for startups and small businesses in the USA.