subject: Seven Things You Need To Know Before Starting An Online Business [print this page] We all know that business online is quite different from business in a normal store. The whole philosophy is reversed. Customers flock to online stores and force money on their proprietors.
Making money is as easy as sleeping, all you need to know is how to build a website and some stuff about keywords. It's technical, but the family next door has a son who's always on his computer, so he can probably get you going. What are you waiting for?
Nothing could be further that the truth. There are technical aspects to selling online, but selling is selling and many of the things you need to know before starting an online business are just the same as for a brick and mortar store.
1. Your product. Every business owner needs to know their own product. Why? Because unless you know the product and what it can do, you don't know what problem is solves and can't sell it.
2. Your goals. If your goal is to make a million before you're forty you need to approach your online business in a slightly different way to someone who is really looking for a low, but regular extra income to help them out in retirement. While it's reasonable to work all hours to achieve the former (at least to begin with) it may not be in the latter case. Being clear about your goals, and what you expect from your online endeavours, will help you make faster decisions and better choices. If your aim is high income, a low volume product bringing in a profit of $10 per sale is unlikely to be what you need. Be sure to define your goal before you decide what you want to sell.
3. Your competition. As you open your business, your competition has been around for longer, dealing with your customers and your product. You can learn a lot by looking at what they do and when they do it. Many new business owners believe it is best to have no competition, but usually no competition means no market.
4. Your customer. You must understand your customer's motivation in order to sell to that customer. Everyone has a reason to buy - it may be a logical reason or it may be an emotional one. Understand why people want you product. What problem does it solve for them? Once you know this, you know how to position it.
5. Your market. It is a mistake to decide on a store design, for example, without knowing this. A web store designed to appeal to teenage girls (for example) is likely to have a very different appearance to one designed to appeal to middle aged men.
6. Your Business Model. As you progress in your online business you will receive advice. The web if full of people who will tell you how to improve this, that and the other.
Understand your sales platform - blog, Amazon, eBay, or a web store and what is appropriate to each one. For example - eBay is not the first place you would go to look for luxury clothes, but it is the first place you might look for good imitations. Understanding your business model means understanding where and how you business makes money.
An e-tailer of physical goods who sells on eBay and uses a drop shipping supplier, for example, has a different model to someone who has their own web store, buys wholesale in bulk and keeps inventory.
7. Your niche. What niche does your product fall into? Many products fit several. By knowing your niche you can learn even m ore about your customer and their reasons for buying. Then you can decide on other products to sell which, because they are in the same niche, will appeal to the same customer.
By covering all these points carefully, before you jump into online business, you make it far more likely that you'll soon be celebrating success.
