Careers Online - Starting a Small Business

This article pertains to those wishing to start a small business online with the number of employees starting at one. It is assumed that you intent on building your own web site and will be the administrator of all aspects of your new business until revenue permits you to hire help. The main objective here is to focus on a long-term goal: permanent full-time self-employment.

1) Investment: Time is your primary investment. Most people would assume that capital is the primary
investment, but this is not the case. The capital required to run your business will initially be your own salary, your computer and an Internet connection, and your costs to buy your domain and host your site. Product
sales and service costs may or may not be relevant depending on your business, but the point is getting started and going from there. As you produce revenue, you can then invest in product to sell.
2) Goal: The focus should never be on the short-term windfall … you stand a good chance to fail due to impatience. Expenses can stress your ability to hang in there, and if so, get a side job to pay the bills, but don’t ever quit on the objective, which is working for yourself … even if the word is “eventually”.
3) Change: Leave yourself open to changing your plan of attack so-to-speak. You may find, and more than likely will, that what you thought would work … doesn’t, or doesn’t quite. This would be due to online inexperience. Stay open to moving with the current of the consumer.
4) Have at your disposal the right tools for success. This means investing in a reasonably good computer. Maintenance of your computer is critically important.
Ref - “The Newbie's Guide to Personal Computer Maintenance”
5) Choose a domain that is short, yet specific to what it is you intend to do with your business. Do not pay for any less than a two-year term. You have to allow yourself more than a year to succeed. Choose a web host that caters to commerce. Never ever choose a free hosting package for a business.
6) If you don’t have any experience with web design, sign up to receive newsletters from any web design source and browse forums for answers to your questions.
Ref - “The Newbie’s Guide to Small Business Web Design”
7) Once you have bought your domain and begun building your business, make a point to be thorough with regards to the basics of web design, such as having rich content, and acquiring inbound links to your site. The “backend” of your web site, meaning the placement of keywords and tags, will eventually help your inevitable success. Be a perfectionist here, but don’t spend too much of your time trying to be #1 on the search engines. Let your future webmaster worry about that.

The key point to remember here is to allow yourself time to succeed without wasting time trying to be a millionaire tomorrow. Plan to be in business for fifty years, and go from there. Save your first home page as a reminder to show down the road to your many employees as to where you were. Tell them all how you started out with nothing and made the company “what it is today” from this simple beginning.

Don’t run the human race, but break free from the rat race, by making your move.

About the Author
Austin Culley is the Chief Operating Officer for Oil-Net.Com Inc.
http://www.oil-net.com

Written by: Austin Culley