Hi, I am planning to open an online business which I am very passionate about. I have searched over Google on guide how to start up an online business but I did not find any practical guide yet. I wonder if there is any website/forum that contains post about starting an online business as well as online business start-up resources. Any helps would be very appreciated. Thank you in advance
You asked very broad question. But I guess Gurbaksh Chahal (college dropout) made more than 200 millions started from his pc at home could inspire and give you ideas. Read his book "The Dream" , the best thing about his book is that its not usual self-help book, he tells his exact story how he developed his business ideas and how he made millions. Just read his book you will get inspiration and ideas from his book.
You didn't find any guides because they don't exist. There are simply too many different niches of business you can go into. In the broad spectrum of things it is really hard to predict how to make a successful business if you don't know what niche it is in.
Exactly! For example, you can bet that starting a Online Shopping Network would be completely different to starting an Gaming Entertainment business. What niche are going to "tap" into?
Well, I can certainly tell you that a guide will NOT help you with opening a business. It could give you some info and guide you towards that business, but you have to experience it and fix your own mistakes. I recommend starting up your own blog for a little, then move onto selling e-books or things of that liking, THEN start up your own business full time because the experience will DEFINITELY help you out a lot. Yugo,
Thanks for all of your comment. My business idea is just like envato or wufoo, creating internet services and making revenue based on number of people who use the professional paid services. My struggle is how to find investors to pour money in. I think to do that I need a prototype of my service (website) first. However, to do that I would need a team of programmers and designers. But then, that leads to a problem of lacking money Does anyone know whether the investors would accept just a business plan without prototype?
No they will not simply give you money. You need to have solid business. They will request 6 month of your finance statement to judge the RR ratio of your venture.
Start a blog, become a recognised expert in your field, use Twitter, FaceBook, StumbleUpon, develop a following.... Read 'Tribes' by Seth Godin . . . Only then may they buy from you...
There is no definative guide to starting an online business. But I can give a few general pointers. Firstly you need some working capital that you are going to invest in your company (you may or may not see this again!). Once you have your capital, you need to decide what type of business you are going to start - the best are ones where you are selling a product (ideally something that isn't affilliate powered e.g clickbank products), or a skill you posess. Once you have decided this, you need to start a website (must look and feel professional for people to want to purchase from you) - note this when deciding how much to spend on the designg of the site. Then you need to do some on-page search engine optimisation or SEO to help your site rank well in search engines for the keywords you want e.g "homemade oak chairs". You can do your on-page SEO yourself or pay a pro. If you want to try your hand at doing it yourself here is a free SEO tutorial. You then need to do some off-page optimisation like social bookmarking and link building to help increase the authority of your sites. There are many tutorials on these topics in other sections of the forum. then you can start selling. Good luck!
the online business everyones dream, wake up anytime u want. go to work anytime. lots of free time and lots of money. it takes a lot of hard work
There are plenty of guides to get you going online asap. But anything you choose, it will still take some time to get it going. If you have plenty of day available, you can probably get going within a few days or weeks. However unless you are incredibly lucky genius or have direct access to a few of those, chances are you won't see a serious income for few months. I'm not saying "don't do it" - online income is really amazing thing to have, but it takes a lot of work to setup and maintain. You can produce a few niche sites that can run on auto-pilot for years, but again ... lotsa work to get them going. So if you don't have much capital or a working and proven prototype to get financed, a nice and cheerful part-time job is a must. Check out my DP Profile > Home Page > Products for 4 useful guides (2 free, 2 for $10) that talk exactly about what you are trying to do: * Getting Started with Online Business eBook - My top 5 business resources for online success. * 5 Business Lessons Learned - This information alone can save you THOUSANDS of DOLLARS! * My Firesale Walkthru eBook - Secrets and tricks to launch a Fire Sale for fast cash without any products or list * Priceless Videos and Newsletters - List of valuable free newsletters that will assist you in the supersale. Plus Brian Tracy's 10 Lifetime Success Secrets.
I think google is the best guide to start online business. Type keyword "How to start online business" and you will get a lots of guides describing about online business. Even I has started my business by this way. I had the same question in my mind when I had started my company COSPRO Technology [cosprotechnology.com] Now I got the answer of my question.
You can start an online classifieds business using our classifieds software. You will not need to invest a lot of money in this business or hire a lot of professionals. The special edition costs $219.
Thanks for all of the comments, guidelines and cheering. I really appreciate them all. As what I have read through, I think it's better that I start something small to accumulate some money and then put them in the bank until it grows big enough for me to hire some developers to make my idea come true. Then, I think I could roll out business and begin to find investors as well as expand the company base. However, could you recommend reliable books, forums, resources that have helped you at the beginning for me, please? I want to find some on Amazon but they really got tons of books out there