Welcome to the ultimate guide to starting a successful online business .
Today I decided to reveal some of the secrets to start a business thanks to the network.
Many marketers resell this type of information for several hundred dollors, I give it to you for free: you just have to be patient to read the whole article.
I decided to share this opportunity with the readers of Open Company because I embarked on a path of consistency with my sincere passion to help people who have more difficulties with new technologies: these people unfortunately are often unaware victims of the most aggressive marketing strategies.
I feel compelled to share my skills with blog readers because Italy is going through one of the most difficult periods in its history.
Excluding the world wars, I believe that this period is absolutely one of the worst of the modern era.
Double-digit unemployment rates, injustices and impunity, forced emigration, increasing poverty, free-falling purchasing power; every day the news seems more like a bulletin of war and despair.
In difficult contexts such as the current one, the smart ones come into play : foreign employment agencies that are only interested in the registration fees, courses to solve easy earnings, stock speculators, alleged traders and many others.
In my small way, I share guides every day to give hope even to those who have unfortunately lost hope.
The world is big and the opportunities are endless, you and your willpower must make the difference in seizing them.
I will start this article by debunking some commonplaces, and then go into detail of the various concrete possibilities that you have in front of you to create an online business from scratch without spending incredible fortunes.
The truth is that you can start making money online by investing only a few hundred dollars.
But first let’s analyze the current situation.
Index
1 The consumer crisis is actually part of the technological revolution
2 The supremacy of the niche creating tangible value
3 Online presence is everything
4 The 5 secrets to starting a successful online business
5 Creating an online business: final considerations
THE CONSUMER CRISIS IS ACTUALLY PART OF THE TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION
Walking through the streets of the center of any Italian city, we see many commercial activities in difficulty.
Precarious jobs, wages not in line with the cost of living and widespread insecurity lead people to save as much as possible.
Despite the difficult situation for many small merchants, many innovative companies see their turnover increase continuously: companies like Ikea, Amazon, Ebay and many others do business in gold thanks mainly to online sales .
I have my own personal opinion about it.
If on the one hand it is true that many workers have lost their jobs and safety, on the other many traditional purchases have inevitably moved onto the network.
Unfortunately, in USA, the online market is dominated by the large foreign multinationals mentioned above, but the possibility of competing in the sub -market niches still exists.
Large companies have structural limitations. In these large portals there is no contact with the customer, the direct dialogue between those who sell and those who buy.
The classic relationship between trader and customer in real life can be successfully replicated in virtual reality on the web.
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This is an operational advantage that large companies cannot sustain because they fundamentally lack a vital factor: the human faces behind the product.
The ongoing digital revolution has shifted millions of dollars in turnover from the real economy to the digital one. Either you can climb, or you will always be left behind.
THE SUPREMACY OF THE NICHE CREATING TANGIBLE VALUE
The first step in creating an online business is to decide in which sector to specialize.
Leave the idea of creating a multi bazaar.
A single person, or a small team of entrepreneurs, does not have the technical and managerial skills to manage a large real warehouse and to install an e-commerce site with thousands of pages.
The mere management of a large online store involves first of all an inevitable delegation of some key functions, with the disadvantage of having to hire, or at least pay, external staff.
One of the key principles of entrepreneur 2.0 is to start light .
With this term I indicate a business growth model made by steps, to start with limited funds and to continuously test your successes and failures and change course and strategy if something is wrong.
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In the internet jungle, the more your business is niche, the easier it will be to reach the top and become the leader and the undisputed reference point.
But how to choose the niche?
The market niche is a small group of people interested in a specific product or topic. The best niche for you comes from selecting one of the niches you are already part of.
Do not invent anything, stop and reflect on the things you love. Create a table with three columns where for each row insert a specific niche among your liking.
In the first, enter what you love to do.
In the second, write down what needs you can meet. In the third, identify the products you can create for this niche.
Only the niche that has needs to satisfy through a product you created (or resold) has economic value to develop.
Once you have chosen the niche, actively begin to create your online presence and direct contact with your future customer.
ONLINE PRESENCE IS EVERYTHING
The only way to start your online business is to create a blog and publish useful content for your reference niche.
Before you start the blog, you need to decide on your domain name. The rules for an excellent brand are few but you have to follow them:
1. Short, with no dots and dashes in the center
2.Easy to remember
3.Immediate in the topic
4. Enclose the keyword you want to be visible for.
Many domains are now registered, but with a little imagination you can buy an excellent domain.
Once you have chosen the name, you have to invest a small amount in serious and reliable hosting. I, like many other online entrepreneurs, use Siteground.
Web Hosting
Once you have chosen the niche and the name of the site, you have to start creating the best articles on the net regarding your market niche. The posts must be out of the norm, you must exceed the present for quality and professionalism.
There are gigantic niches totally uncovered, there are grasslands to be filled.
I am thinking of the niche of florists, mechanics, cyclists, pastry chefs and many other groups who are snubbed by the net.
The first six months of the activity will focus exclusively on content creation.
You decide the frequency of publication, but the first six months you must at least publish three excellent posts per week.
After the first 6 months of blogging, it’s time to test your business idea.
You must create a product or service and offer it to the readers of your site.
This aspect should be done as soon as possible because you have to understand if your online job is creating value and desire in the people who follow you.
To do this, there is nothing better than selling a product online and asking for its opinion.
To win the challenge against large companies, a niche online shop must recreate the increasingly rare environment of the small neighborhood shop.
How?
Simple, putting your face on it.
Look at the blog where you are. On the upper right part one of the highlighted images is my face. Putting your face in it, as well as being synonymous with transparency and quality, is essential to create that direct contact with the customer that is missing from large e-commerce sites.
Although the importance of the face is fundamental, even more important is the direct interaction with the writer: you must absolutely answer every single email or comment you receive.
It is hard work but it must always be done.
THE 5 SECRETS TO STARTING A SUCCESSFUL ONLINE BUSINESS
Many lose the motivation needed to create a profitable online business after the first bankruptcies. The difficulties are functional to the growth of the entrepreneur because only from mistakes it is possible to learn the lesson and evolve to the next stage.
The mass media tend to emphasize explosive growth by making us believe that success is a matter of luck.
The truth is that behind the great results there is always work, competence and professionalism.
A successful activity hides dozens of techniques and strategies behind it, but the 5 secrets that I will list are more than enough to get you started.
1. PRIMARY SKILLS
Primary skills are the essential knowledge to become an authority in the niche. Let’s take the case you want to open an online flower shop but you can’t recognize a rose from a tulip. Well, these are the primary skills.
This type of skills are not necessarily connected with the world of the web but rather the opposite is true.
On the net, the most saturated niches are those on technology and on the web, while the real prairies discovered are those topics that have nothing to do with the internet and technology.
Remember that the internet is now a mass phenomenon, it is not the meeting place for geeks like ten years ago.
2. SECONDARY SKILLS
Primary skills are worth nothing if you can’t make them known to the people of the web.
The creation of a blog, writing for the web, presence on social networks and some marketing and sales bases are fundamental to spreading your primary skills to your potential customers.
Open Company is full of articles to improve this type of secondary knowledge strictly related to the web.
3.THE NOBLE PURPOSE
Money is only a useless invention of man. Born as a mere exchange of goods, the god of money has become the only yardstick in a company sold for mere profit.
I, dissociating myself from this simplistic but unfortunately real reading of today’s society, I decided to put other values before money.
The desire to help and the passion for sharing have been the real engines to carry on my online business.
For two years I worked for free, the reward was only thanksgiving emails from you readers and that’s it. If I had chased the money, Open Company would have closed because economically unsustainable.
If you have a goal that goes beyond mere profit, the chances of success grow dramatically. The money will come later.
4. THE TOTAL DETERMINATION
A competent entrepreneur must have an absolute determination in achieving his goal. If you have the right skills and the goal is noble, total determination will simply be an inevitable consequence.
Determination is that ability that makes you impatient with fatigue and hard work. Your small online business will only grow if you never give up.
5.FLEXIBLE RESILIENCE
There is no worse mistake than believing that you will not face disappointments and serious problems. Business is made of ups and downs just like life. There are no easy days without difficult ones, there is no victory without defeat.
In business it doesn’t matter how many times you fall but how many times you get up. Competition is increasingly fierce, niches are getting smaller and problems are always around the corner. Only a resilient person, that is, capable of returning to balance after a bad event, will be successful online.
In my experience as a blogger I have not missed anything: server crashes, traffic decrease, criticisms difficult to overcome and much more
Many times I have been close to throwing in the towel but I have not done it because I was, and am, determined to achieve my final noble goal: to live thanks to my passions by helping others.
CREATING AN ONLINE BUSINESS: FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
In this article we have seen some of the features needed to start a thriving online business. Whether it’s an online store, an informative blog or an online newspaper, the possibilities are there both in Italy and abroad.
Many are discouraged by bureaucratic difficulties and fierce competition. The reality is that the real big failure is not trying at all.
Before saying goodbye, I want to anticipate the release of some posts about the practical side in creating an online business that will be the topic of the next articles on Open Company. If you don’t want to lose them, sign up for the newsletter.