10 Creative Online Business Opportunities

Maintaining a steady flow of revenues as a web worker is a major challenge. Whether you’re freelancing for an ever-changing group of clients or selling products to consumers, it can be tough to know whether you’re going to make ends meet month to month. Business comes in waves, so anything you can do to make your earnings more dependable will help you sleep better at night.

We’ve already shared lists of ways you can grow your income with creative online business opportunity ideas (check our posts from April and last January), and we’re happy to present a new list of ideas to help you on your journey for scoring more online gigs.

So much of what’s touted around the web as opportunities to make money online ends up with the opposite effect. We’ve done the hard part for you and checked out the reputations of these sites and business models for you. (We still recommend keeping your guard up and watching out for scammers interacting with users on these platforms, though.) Whether you want to offer your services using a niche online marketplace or monetize your existing assets, there’s plenty you can try!

1. Sell Your Own Swag

Are you an artist, designer, illustrator or doodler? Are you working with a brand that has a strong visual identity? Got ideas for clever imagery or witty words?

All you need is an image file with decent resolution, and you can easily make it available for purchase on the internet as a tee shirt, tote bag, mug, iPhone case or whatever else you can think of. CafePress is the most famous of the sites that’ll handle the printing, processing and shipping on your behalf, but there are plenty of others that have good reputations too, including MySoti, Printfection and Zazzle.

You don’t need to pay any fees at all to the platform you choose, since they only print when there’s an order – and you’ll earn commissions on every sale. So you can get creative and promote your products on your website, with a dedicated microsite, with ads on other sites, on social media, or wherever else you think you can generate sales.

2. Menial Clicks During Spare Time

Do you enjoy mindlessly scrolling, finding images, clicking, evaluating data, dragging, writing five-word descriptions or copy-pasting in your spare time? Businesses often need help with these types of tasks, and sometimes it’s cheaper or easier to crowdsource than to write bits of code to do the work.

That’s where marketplaces like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and ShortTask come into play. Here you can take on nano-jobs that pay out a few cents each but are highly scalable and generally don’t require too much attention. Each marketplace has its own stipulations, culture and lingo, though, so be prepared for a bit of a learning curve.

3. Virtual Tutelage

Are you an expert in a niche area of knowledge? Can you teach someone to play baroque concertos on the ukulele? If someone has questions about how to store their power tools, can you give good advice on the fly?

There are dedicated web platforms where you can offer your services as an authoritative coach or tutor in exchange for money. Google’s relatively new Helpoutsis a full-on marketplace with video conferencing with customers, while Ether allows you to book paid appointments for phone consultations, with marketing handled by you offsite.

4. Drop Shipping for Risk-Free eCommerce

Drop shipping is a much-praised hybrid business model somewhere between eCommerce and affiliate marketing. Essentially, it allows you to sell other people’s products on websites that you manage, but with none of the risk. The vendor handles the billing, service and order fulfillment – all you need to do is drive the orders and you make commissions.

If you’ve built your website with Wix, you can easily add the 365 DropShip Product Catalog app to your website. There are zero costs involved, and you can earn commissions by hosting a full-on eCommerce-style shop on your site with products from several manufacturers and categories.

5. Leverage Your Social Influence

If you’ve got lots of Twitter followers who click on links you post, you can leverage this asset to make money by sending out sponsored tweets.

There are now several marketplaces where advertisers can post offers, includingTweetPeddler, ChurpChurp and SponsoredTweets. There’s a lot of volume in these directories, so you should be able to find offers to promote products that are relevant to your community of followers and won’t kill your social media credibility.

6. Niche Tourist Services

If you live somewhere that tourists flock to, you might be able to profit from the greater economic ecosystem that comes along with a robust tourism industry. While most travelers purchase solutions for lodging, transportation, eats and guided tours from mainstream, big companies, there are growing numbers of them who prefer to do business with independent locals – it’s often cheaper and more authentic.

If you don’t need your car every day you can rent it out with RelayRides. If you do regularly use your car, then you can offer people rides for money using Sidecar. You can also rent out your home, or part of it, using Airbnb, or offer quirky special interest tours of your locale on Vayable.

7. Cook and Host Dinners

Along similar lines, there are plenty of people who are interested in eating out but have grown tired with the anonymous, polished corporate flavors of restaurants. If you can cook up delicious and friendly dining experiences in your own home, it’s easier than ever to reach customers interested in joining you.

Marketplaces for home-hosted meals include EatWith, Cookening and HomeDine.

8. Sell Your Collectibles

Are your baseball cards from the 80′s collecting dust in your attic in a box next to your childhood Star Wars action figures? Are you unlikely to ever play that Santana album you have on vinyl ever again? You may have a hard time letting go of this stuff, but your life will feel lighter once you do. You can make decent money selling it, too.

Just take some photos, determine fair asking prices, post on Craigslist or eBay, and the inquiries from interested shoppers ought to come pouring in.

9. Offline Tasks via Online Marketplaces

People are posting one-off jobs in droves on platforms like Redbeacon andTaskRabbit, which means you can make extra money by running errands or performing handyman tasks for people in your spare time.

To pick up these gigs, you’ll need to pass a background check, so get started with building your profile with plenty of notice.

10. Review People’s Apps

If you’re a gadget junkie, gamer, tech tool lover or an early adopter, you’re likely to get a kick out of SoftwareJudge. Here you can get paid to try out recently launched apps and write what you think of them.

Social proof is a powerful force when it comes to app marketing, so publishers are willing to pay top dollar for your opinions – a quality review can earn you up to $50.

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Things you need to know about marketing (before starting a marketing campaign)

One of the core values I have is that I give the same advice to my clients as I would my best friend. So, here is some of my best advice.

1. You should only allocate a small amount of your budget on a web designer.

Let’s say you have allocated £2,500 for a new website build. You go to a web designer and tell them your budget and they build you a website for £2,500. What now? You expect orders to come in but that won’t happen. I have seen it hundreds of times.

A better option would be. Spend £1000 on getting your sales copy, web structure and architecture right first by a marketing specialist. Then, get the website built by a web designer for £300 (you can even get this bit outsourced offshore). Then spend the remaining £1200 on marketing and getting traffic to your website.

Once you start getting the traffic to your website you can gain traction and increase your revenue. You can start to split test your website to find out what appeals to your market best (all the most sophisticated companies test – you should be no different as I almost guarantee your competitors won’t be testing).

2. Concentrate on your point of difference

What is it the Dragons always ask on Dragons Den? Why are you different? Why should I invest in you? Why you?

What happens on X-factor when a woman dressed like Amy Winehouse comes onto the stage and sings Back to Black just as Amy would have done? She gets voted off even if she had an equal voice to Amy Winehouse.

One of the golden rules of business is that you need to be different. You don’t always need to be better – you just need a point of difference. This gives people the option of choosing (or not choosing) your services easier.

The worst mistake I see businesses make is getting a generic looking website with bland, uninspiring copy. Unfortunately, this is the case with most web design companies. Go to a web designer and they will try to please you with a design. They will ask you want you want and what you like. They will give you what you want NOT what you need.

Firstly, work on your point of difference and why people should use you. Then build your website built around that message. What you say is much more important than how you say it. What you say is much more important than how you say it (I said it twice because this is really, really important).

3. Your copy is king

A big mistake I see people make with their website is that they create their own content. This has become more of a problem now it is very easy to update your own website.

If your web designer gave you the job of ‘creating the copy’ then it can be a danger sign. After all, I wouldn’t feel confident in a car mechanic fixing my car and then telling me to perform the MOT test myself.

Copywriting will make or break your website. Your website should be a reflection of your best salesperson. Don’t do this yourself as you are too close to your services to be purely objective and copy writing is a skill. It is a very, very under valued skill and something most web designers leave out (getting you to do the copy increases profit margins).

4. If you want cheap – you will get cheap.

If you want a cheap website then go here (http://99designs.co.uk/web-design). It won’t generate you a return on investment and it will look like every other website out there but it will be cheap.

Don’t get me wrong. If you are a ‘run of the mill’ company then there are hundreds of ‘run of the mill’ web designers in every town in the UK. They will produce you a website you are happy with so you can tick the ‘get a website built’ box off your list. That is fine if that is what you are looking for.

If you are looking to grow your business then you need a more professional approach to your website. A better option is to get the experts in first to craft your sales message, website structure and point of difference and then use out sourced web designers (who are often better qualified but half the price of a UK designer).

5. Grab your visitors attention.

Do you remember the first time you saw a Volkswagen Beetle? How about a Concorde? How about an Ipad? All these things have one thing in common. They stood out and you remember them.

You need to stand out. You engage people through a website with copy, headlines and an easy to use website. These things don’t come about by accident. They are well thought and well crafted.

A well known marketing principle is the AIDA principle. This goes along the lines (in an over simplified way) of grabbing your visitors Attention, then engage their Interest and  buildingDesire through to finally asking them to take an Action (AIDA). This simple marketing principle can be applied with devastating effect on your website.

Use a marketing expert to consult and guide your web designer. Just like you would use an architect to consult builders on a building project.

Key takeaway point

Your prospective clients will judge you on your website whether you like it or not. They will determine what type of business you are, where you are positioned in the market and whether you are worth considering or not before they actually speak to you. Scary that isn’t it? But let’s be honest, we have all done it. You go to a website and you make a judgement call before you have even spoken to anybody in the company from the website.

Do not underestimate the power your website can have and chose your web team carefully.

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4 Ways To Build Your Email List Today (Without Spending Time Learning New Tactics)

When I first started out in the online business and blogging world, I tried every tactic I could get my hands on to try to gain more traffic and build my email list. I felt like I was throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what would stick, and what I ended up with was a splotchy wall and very little traffic to show for it.

Today, things are different, and I have a much better “big picture” view of how to generate traffic and conversions, and what works best for different people. You see, I realized all of the information out there about traffic was valid, and it was just a matter of combining the right tactics into a bigger strategy based on the outcomes I wanted.

Let me walk you through the 4 strategic ways to apply common list building tactics, no matter what kind of business or blog you run. The trick is knowing which one to use and when to use it, but don’t worry I’ll go over that too!

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(Note from Caleb: When we talked a couple weeks ago about what we wish we’d known before starting our businesses, many of our friends mentioned not focusing more on their email list was their biggest mistake. In today’s post by Nathalie Lussier, she discusses four ways to build your email list faster than you are now. Take it away Nathalie.)

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4 Strategies – Which Is Right For You?

Most of the how-to articles you read about list building strategies are actually talking about specific list building tactics. You know, like how to use SEO to drive traffic, how to use a specific type of squeeze page, or how to guest post. These are all specific actions you can take to get more traffic and subscribers, but they don’t constitute an overarching strategy.

If you’ve tried to apply all the list building advice out there with less than ideal results, it’s probably because you didn’t have the strategy in place to make these actions work together.

1. Build Your List The Slow & Steady Way

When I was first starting out online, the slow and steady way is how I built my list. It’s the default way to build up an audience, and it’s not bad but it does take time. This is a perfect strategy to help you build your traffic and list over time, because it’s consistent: you create content, blog, guest post, apply SEO techniques, get word of mouth, and repeat on a regular basis.

This is ideal if you’ve got an actual business to run, or maybe you have a day job and this is your side project. It’s simple enough to dedicate a few hours per week to showing up and creating content. Over time your site’s authority will increase in the search engines, you’ll develop word of mouth from your fans, and things will slowly pick up the pace.

The problem? It’s slow, so if you want to results fast, it’s not going to happen for you.

Many bigger sites started out with the slow and steady path, like Digital Photography School, and my first business Raw Foods Witch. These sites weren’t overnight successes, but now they get steady traffic from the search engines and when people think of the topics for these sites they can point people to them, generating word of mouth.

2. Use Short Focused Bursts To Build Your List

For this strategy, you set aside a month or two dedicated to traffic and list building. During these few months, you put everything you’ve got into building your list. Because it’s timed, it has more of an immediacy factor, and it feels more urgent and fresh.

The types of tactics you’d use for a short focused burst are putting on a live webinar or livestream, running a contest, doing a joint venture, or running ads to your opt-in (since you might not want to run ads 365 days a year but you might do it for a short period of time).

All of these things have an end point, so you can set aside time in your yearly calendar to focus on traffic and list building. If you run a seasonal business, this might be the type of activity you do during your off season.

Here’s an example from Amy Porterfield running a joint webinar with Melanie Duncan about Pinterest. This works great because it’s a specific point in time, and the nature of joint webinars is both parties build their lists.

Another example is the 30 Day List Building Challenge I hosted, which is a contest that runs for a short period of time. It’s also got social sharing built into it, which is also something that works best in short focused bursts.

3. Make a Big Splash With a Launch

You’ve definitely seen the big splash model, it’s usually attached to a product launch and it seems to take over a corner of the internet for awhile. You know someone is doing a launch when suddenly you see their name everywhere at once, they’re being interviewed, guest posting, showing up left and right on social media.

The big splash works wonders because you capture the attention of the market. It’s the be everywhere at once advantage. But to understand how to pull off a launch, you need to know exactly how much time goes into it. The reason a big splash is different from a short burst is because there are usually months of time dedicated to the launch leading up to it. And by months, I mean upwards of 4 months for really big launches.

Securing all the guest spots, interviews, affiliates, and making sure all the buzz goes live at the same time is no easy feat. But when a launch comes together, it really has the potential to drive so much traffic and grow your list like nothing else.

You’ve no doubt seen big launches, but a few notable ones you keep an eye out for are Only72, and Marie Forleo’s B-school. There are entire courses on how to pull together a killer launch, and if you’re offering a new product or service you’ll want to spend some time figuring out your positioning and creating the best product you can.

4. Or, Focus On Reaching New Verticals

One often overlooked strategy for list building is to step outside of your immediate market, and get known in new verticals. Take for example, my list building advice: it works for bloggers, but it can also work for photographers, dentists, and jewelry designers. I’ve been able to repurpose my content and do short focused bursts of list building in these different markets.

You can actually choose any of the previous 3 strategies to go into new verticals, you could do a big launch in a new vertical or go the slow and steady route. The benefit here is you can usually jumpstart your efforts because of the previous work you’ve done in your main market, and you can get more specific in how you serve people.

Someone who has done a great job of becoming known in many verticals isChris Guillebeau, he sits at the intersection of many markets like travel, entrepreneurship, artists, and so on. I personally stumbled upon this idea with my different blogs and businesses in the raw food market, when I realized there was a lot of overlap and people would follow me from one topic to the next.

Can you think of a few “sub markets” you could focus on, in order to help you reach new people and grow your list further?

Which Are You Going To Use First?

All of these are winning strategies, but which one are you committing to doing next? If you’re already in one of these categories, is it the right one for you and your goals? Leave a comment below, I want to know!

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Where do I start? Choosing your niche

Where do I start??

You have decided to start your own online business!!!

What do I sell? what market is good? where do I start??

Well, first you do need to decide what area of the market you want to get into....

First of all, think of all the things that you are passionate about.

For example, if you are passionate about Golf - that is where you should start.
I use this example because of how popular that niche is.
You could start by giving tips on improving your swing, or how to drive the ball further etc.

If your passion lies in a less well known niche, then you need to find if the market is there for you....

If there is a magazine available about your passion, then there is a good chance that it is popular (just think of the cost to produce a magazine .....)

If you do not have a passion for anything in particular, then think of something you would like to learn about - 

The most important thing with internet marketing is to enjoy what you are doing, otherwise you have no real motivation and you will drift away and just eventually stop because you get bored.

If you are still not sure of what niche to choose, then click on the link at the bottom of this post and you can see two free videos from British internet marketer Sarah Staar on choosing a profitable niche.

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7 Reasons Why You Should Start Your Own Internet Business

Too many people view Internet business through an extremely narrow lens – either you’re pawning off your personal possessions on eBay or you’re trying to be Mark Zuckerberg with the next big Internet thing. The reality, of course, is that there are as many different ways to do business online as there are people making this lifestyle work for them.  For example, as an Internet business owner, you could:

• Sell your handmade arts and crafts on Etsy
• Run an informative site that generates revenue through advertisements
• Provide professional services to clients around the world
• Generate client leads for offline businesses
• Sell other peoples’ products and earn a commission for each referral

But the “how” of Internet business isn’t important – there are enough different Internet business models out there to suit any particular combination of strengths and weaknesses.  What really matters is the “why” – that is, why you should consider pursuing online business in the first place.

The following are just a few of the benefits of owning your own Internet enterprise to help encourage you to make the leap:

 

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Reason #1 – Find the ultimate job security

Ask a handful of people what they think about the idea of pursuing Internet business, and you should hear at least one person respond with, “It’s too risky!” I have to disagree. When you learn how to do business online, you’re actually training yourself to create ultimate job security. If you learn how to sell products online, chances are you’ll be able to repeat this process – even if your original idea doesn’t pan out.

The same goes for finding freelance service clients, sending traffic to ad-based sites and successfully re-launching every other Internet business model out there. Now, contrast the ability to generate income online over and over again with a steady day job held at a single employer. Considering how many companies go under these days, putting all your eggs in that single basket ultimately sounds much riskier to me than learning how to make money online!

Reason #2 – Work on projects you’re passionate about

As someone else’s employee, you aren’t working on the projects you’re passionate about – you’re completing tasks in order to increase somebody else’s bottom line. And while this arrangement works for some people, most chronic employees don’t know what they’re missing when they trade the passion of working for yourself on projects you care about for the “security” of the daily grind.

If you aren’t personally satisfied by your current day job, you owe it to yourself to at least investigate the potential fulfillment that comes from running your own online enterprise.

Reason #3 – Access a wider network of clients and buyers

If you already operate an offline business that either sells products or takes on freelance clients (for example, as a freelance writer, web designer, programmer or accountant), transitioning your business online will give you access to a much wider pool of clients and buyers. No longer are you competing against other agencies in your area for the same small network of customers – instead, as an Internet business owner, you’re free to think as big as you want. This could mean accessing buyers a few towns away from your own or even “going global” in order to expand your business’s reach dramatically.

Reason #4 – Cut your child care expenses

With childcare costs rising steadily and often topping thousands of dollars a month for the full-time care of infants and toddlers, you may find that running an Internet business allows you to both cut your costs substantially and spend more time with your children. For most dual-income families working today, that’s a pretty big win-win!

Reason #5 – Explore your interests

One of the greatest advantages of running your own Internet business is the flexibility this arrangement provides. When you work a day job, you’re tied in to a set schedule that in no way corresponds to the amount of work you have or the hours in which you’re most productive. Unless you have a very understanding boss, you aren’t able to drop everything for a two-hour hike when the weather’s nice or start your day at noon because you aren’t a morning person.

Running an online business gives you the flexibility to set your own working arrangements based on your particular needs. It allows you to travel more (as most Internet businesses can be operated from anywhere in the world), to work when you’re most productive and to pursue the hobbies and interests you care about alongside your business pursuits.

Reason #6 – Enjoy low startup costs

If you’ve always had an entrepreneurial bent, know that business owners who choose to launch their ventures online enjoy substantially lower startup costs than those in the real world. Think about it – the “real world” business owner must pay for commercial space, physical inventory, printed stationery and more.

As an Internet business owner, your only real expenses will be a domain name and hosting account. Even if you do decide to purchase inventory outright or invest in tools that will make running your Internet business easier, your overall investment will still be much less expensive than maintaining a physical presence offline.

Reason #7 – Increase your earning potential

If you’re employed in a full-time day job, your earning power is limited by your field and your experience. If you work as a teacher, for instance, you can accrue all the experience and certifications you want – you’re still never going to hit the same million dollar salaries that investment bankers or lawyers will. But with online business, the sky’s the limit.

If you sell one product online, you can train yourself to sell fifty. If you decide to expand your service offerings significantly, you can always take on additional employees to help manage the workload. Instead of negotiating a pithy 3% raise with your boss, you’re essentially creating this increase (and much, much more) for yourself – a truly empowering experience that makes all the risk and uncertainty of Internet business worth it.

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How Can I Get Started With Online Marketing?

Simply by asking this question, you are already ahead of the game. Instead of rushing headlong into online marketing, taking the time to step back and think about how you should approach it is key.

The first, and perhaps most important, aspect of launching into online marketing is to consider what your end game is. What goals and objectives do you have? Do you want to increase your Web traffic by 40 percent? Grow your Facebook followers to 5,000? Generate four new leads a month? Whatever your online marketing objectives are, make them measurable so that you can track your progress, gauge your efforts and make adjustments when needed. Before you make any efforts in online marketing, set up Google Analytics for your website so that you can track pageviews, traffic sources, number of visitors and other metric, and sign up for Google Alerts or Social Mention to keep track of when your business is being mentioned online.

Once you have your goals in mind and your analytics set up, the next step is to ensure that your website fits the criteria for modern marketing. Is your website contemporary and fresh-looking in color and design? Do you have up-to-date and well-branded content and writing on your site? Are you offering calls to action, such as downloadable white papers, e-books, newsletter sign-ups, etc.? Do you have a way to capture the contact information of the visitors who come to the site? Have you created a mobile version of your website so that it can be easily accessed from a cell phone or tablet?

In addition, consider using a blog as part of a content marketing strategy to provide visitors with specific information, tips, ideas, videos and industry information. Be sure to add sharing buttons to your website to boost brand awareness, since search engine rankings are partially determined by how much your content is shared. WordPress offers a whole slew of widgets for your website that allow users to share your blog posts and other content on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and other sites.

Remember, your website is the hub of all your online marketing efforts, so there is no point in putting content out there if you aren’t driving potential clients back to a website that inspires them to buy.

At this point, you’re ready to jump into the social media fray. But start small. The big four social media players are, in descending order, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Before signing up and investing effort into pursuing these, take the time to review the demographics of each to determine which one or two sites would be the best place to begin. A recent Pew report gives a thorough overview of who’s hanging out on which site.

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How to Start an Online Business: The 15 Vital Steps

Starting a startup? The appeal of the Internet as a platform to promote and sell products or services is irresistible. Your place of business, your marketing literature and your communications hub are all in one location, and best of all, it costs relatively little. It’s like inheriting an empty business premises from a rich uncle plus enough money to get you up-and-running. That kind of luck would give any smart entrepreneur a competitive advantage, were it not for the fact that with an online business, everyone has a rich uncle.

Compared to a bricks and mortar business, there are less headaches in setting up online. Yet, in no respect can you be less professional than you would be if you were opening on the high street. Here are fifteen of the most important factors to consider carefully when setting up an online startup business. The list is divided into two categories: A) The Business Plan and B) The Website.

The Business Plan

Every kind of business needs a business plan. In a way, creating a business plan is like looking into the future and establishing where you expect the business to be in, say, a year. Based on that answer, you devise a strategy to enable you arrive there. However, one important operation must be carried out first: market research.

1. Market Research

Market research is vital. It establishes two facts. First, whether or not there is a viable market for your products or services. Second, whether or not you can compete in the market and still make a profit. Unless your research determines that there is such a market, there is little point in setting up the business.

2. Legal Entity

Will you operate as a sole trader, partnership or a company? Incorporation brings benefits and problems. The main benefit is that your personal liability for the company’s debts is limited to the amount of capital you invest in the company. Creditors have no claim on your personal assets outside the business, unless you sign personal guarantees for some of the company’s debts. Incorporation has disadvantages too. These include more paperwork, additional auditing bills, additional legal bills, extra filing requirements and less privacy of the business’s financial affairs. Make sure you get good legal advice before deciding on the trading structure you adopt.

3. Name of the Business

The name of a business can have a direct impact on its success or failure. Choosing it should never be rushed. Carry out online market research on the name to ensure no competitor already uses it or something similar. Since it will be an online business, research the availability of the related web domain name (see next item). Get it right first time. Once the business is up and running, changing the name is extremely disruptive and costly.

4. Internet Domain Name

Many big organizations such as Microsoft offer free websites with addresses that are sub-domain names of theirs. This means that your website is not just a location on their server, but your web address is part of their address. For relatively little cost, you can have your own unique domain name. For any serious business, this is a requisite, simply because it looks professional. The sub-domain option may give quite the opposite impression.

5. Paid Staff

Make sure you are fully aware of all the costs of employing someone, as well as your legal obligations to them.

6. Premises

If you intend to rent a premises, make sure you have legal advice on any contracts you propose signing.

7. Running the Business from Your Home

If you intend to operate the business from home, remember that it’s a business like any other except you save on rent. Allocate the room or rooms to your business and use them for nothing else. There are many downsides to working from home. They include: interruptions from family and friends. It takes time to convince them and yourself that, though you’re at home, you’re actually at work. On workdays, always be at your desk on time. Don’t linger over breakfast or coffee breaks just because your office is a few yards away from your breakfast room. Don’t waste work time on the phone with friends; tell them you’ll meet them after work. Don’t do household chores during working hours. Write out these rules and pin them over your desk. If you have family living at home, give each a copy: they need to respect your rules and support you.

8. Cash Flow Projections

Every business plans its cash requirements: its cash flow. Based on conservative projected sales, establish when you will be paid and that you’ll have enough cash to purchase new raw material or stock, as orders come in. Estimate your projected sales and outgoings (costs) for each month for at least six months. This way you’ll have a very good idea what your bank balance will be at the end of each month. For this exercise, it doesn’t matter where the money comes from: sales, borrowings, or investments; or what the money going out is spent on: raw materials, wages, utility bills, legal fees, accounting fees, courier services, rent, etc. The principal reason for doing cash projections is to have advance warnings of possible cash shortfalls long before they happen.

9. Working Capital Need

If your cash-flow projections indicate that you are likely to need extra working capital, you can raise it from your own resources, a business partner, investor, or the bank. If it comes from the bank, they may ask for collateral or that you sign a personal guarantee.

10. Unforeseen Customer Demand

Apart from normal working capital determined by initial cash-flow figures, circumstances sometimes require the emergency injection of capital. Unexpected demand for products or services is one common reason. It’s a serious problem if there isn’t enough ready cash to fund the additional stock or raw-materials needed to satisfy the sudden demand. This predicament is sometimes called “overtrading,” and strategies should be devised to deal with it. This problem is caused by sales outstripping product availability. It is usually only a problem if you give credit to customers. If you insist on pre-payment, overtrading is usually not an issue.

11. Dispatching Goods

If you sell physical products, careful consideration must be given to their delivery, insurance, postage and packaging. New business owners often pay scant attention to these basic questions. Before you start selling, make a parcel of each individual item you expect to dispatch. From the Post Office, find out the cost of sending them to different locations and from a courier service the cost of their various delivery services.

12. Returns and Refunds Policy

Establish a clear policy for returns and refunds. Check what your competitors do and establish the industry norm. To avoid ambiguity, information about your terms should be posted clearly on your website and attention should be drawn to it during the customer’s buying process.

The Website

13. Website Design and Development

This is a crucial and potentially hazardous area. It’s crucial because your entire business hinges on it. It’s potentially hazardous because it’s easy to set up a website and many people do it themselves. That’s often the beginning of the end for many businesses. For an online business, the website is the business. It performs the functions of store, brochure, advertising, public relations and contact point. No one should contemplate setting up their own website, unless they’re professional graphic designers with experience in web design. If not, employ a professional. Even if you are a professional graphic designer with web experience, unless you have expert technical knowledge of web development: html, Flash, online store technology, online payment systems, search engine optimization (SEO) etc., you should engage a professional with that expertise to work with you.

14. Copywriting

Once the visual and technical aspects of the website are taken care of, there is another area of expertise of vital importance: copywriting. A visually attractive website built on the solid foundation of a professional technical “backroom,” initially will impress visitors to your site, but only excellent copywriting will hold them there, get them to look at many different pages and guarantee their return. As is the case with graphic design, many online start-ups believe they can write the content of the website themselves. The majority can’t. There are many ways to obtain good copywriting. There are specialist companies that do nothing else; they bring together some of the best online writers. They supply top-quality writing at surprisingly reasonably rates to all kinds of websites. That’s what good copywriters do, and they’re well worth the money.

15. Online Shop and Payments

If you intend to receive payment from customers via the website, there are many methods to enable you to do that. “Shop, checkout and pay” services like PayPal, which are free to setup, are satisfactory solutions for most websites. Generally, these online payment services charge a commission based on the value of the sale. The commission is relatively small and justifies its cost, unless your site is very specialized, or processes such a large number of transactions that a customised payment facility would be more cost-effective. By using such services as PayPal, customers can pay with their credit cards without you having to have a merchant’s account with the card company.

Regardless of how good your products or services may be, if you adopt an amateur approach to starting up and running the business, you’re virtually guaranteed to fail. A common trait of successful business people is that they acknowledge their limitations and let experts look after the specialist jobs. If you approach your new online business in this professional way, are willing to work hard and follow the steps outlined above, your business is likely to be a success.

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