Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life. You’ve decided to start your own business and, like most new businesses, you know the best step forward is online. How do you begin? Well, first you have to come up with a great idea. Ideally the concept for your business should be completely original, this way you’ll have no competition. But, even if you have a new spin on a current concept you can start your business off, already on the right foot. If you don’t have an original concept, but you do have a clever marketing strategy, you will still find success on the market.
Step 1: Create A Concept
Typically, you should start a business where you have knowledge, passion or both. Ideally, your business should be in an industry where you have already built up experience. Or, it might be something you have studied for a long time. You can start completely fresh, but you will be facing a steep uphill climb to find your footing. Whatever your concept, we recommend you start off your journey by setting up a blog.
Step 2: Blogging
You might already have a blog online. If you do, we still recommend that you start off fresh with a new page. You should use one of the free blog builders to get started and then expand from there once you become more successful. When setting up your blog, you need to make it stylish and attractive. Choose a catchy title that relates to what you are writing about. You will be writing articles on whatever your chosen industry is. As long as they are clear and easy to read, these articles can be about anything. You just need to fill up your blog with as many as you can. Once you have done this, you will start to attract more readers and advertisers. You will have a successful blogging space, and that can be a business in itself. But, you want to go further than that, so your next step is to utilize social media.
Step 3: Socializing
To try and gain a firm footing in the industry, you have to make a name for yourself before your company opens. By doing this, you’ll create a solid foundation of customers that you can depend on in the first couple of months. You can get this foundation by setting up an online business profile. You should use things such as Twitter to provide news for your chosen industry. Be sure to link these social profiles to your blog, establishing a connection to the information that you are providing. By doing this, you will become a resource for those who would be interested in using your future service or product. Remember, it’s important to use social profiles as much as you can now and maintain your commitment to these updates.
Step 4: Gaining Funding
Now, you should have a name for yourself online. You might then be in a position to begin the setup of your business. Depending on how elaborate your idea is, you may need to gain funding, or you might be able to pay for it out of your own pocket. However, if you can, it’s always more sensible to share the risk, no matter how small. You can gain funding in one of several ways. You could first attempt to gain funding from your local government. Governments are keen to fund start-up enterprises that they believe will succeed because it strengthens the economy. Failing this, you might want to try a crowd funding source. By doing this, you’ll be able to share out the risk amongst your followers. If you’ve successfully marketed yourself, you should have a big enough following to do this. Your last option is to take out a private loan. However, this is not typically recommended because of the risk involved and the interest you will have to pay.
Step 5: Setting Up Your Website
As we said, you are probably looking to set up an online business. If so, then the first thing you will need to do is set up your website. You can use some of your funding to do this. We recommend you host your site so that you do have rented space online that you can use. This will also make SEO easier. We also suggest that you use a web design expert. You need your website to look professional, modern and somewhere a customer will want to make a purchase. It needs to be trusted, and, therefore, it must look official.
Step 6: Setting Up Your Shop
Next, you want to link your web site to your online shop. Customers can then make purchases after viewing your site of either, your product or your service. It can be quite tricky to set up a shop online, but you can use an already built template. You can get a Shopify coupon online that will slash the cost of this service and give you an easy to use template to set up your online store. Remember, the easier your store is to use the more customers will make purchases.
Step 7: Making The Contacts
You will have to make different connections in your chosen industry. You can do this quite simply by using e-commerce services. You’ll be able to find and buy all the services you need online. Or, if you’d prefer a face to face approach, attend a trade show. By doing this, you’ll meet the important people in your industry as well as perhaps gaining the attention of investors.
Step 8: Market Your Business
To start marketing your business, you should be using the networks you have already set up. You can post links to your new website on networks like Twitter, gaining the interest of your already existing followers. You can also add links to your site into articles on your blog, gaining more potential customers. But, you also want users who have not heard your name yet. To claim these customers, you’ll need to set up an internet marketing campaign. You can do this using a marketing service that will use methods such as SEO and CRO to make your business boom.
Photo by Stokpic
Mia Guerra
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