Starting a small business online: What’s the best way ?
Starting a small business
The best way of starting (and continuing) your own small business online is to…
…do something you really enjoy.
That way you will be enthusiastic in building your website and you won’t get tired of it.
With that in mind what is the first step in starting a business online?
- is it to find an accountant?
- is it to make a business plan?
- is it to find funding?
- is it to approach others for a joint venture?
These things may be important BUT if you have nothing to sell then they are pointless.
What you really need to do is:
- Choose a subject you like.
- Find out if your subject is something that is in demand.
- Find out if people will be prepared to buy what you make/recommend.
This means market research - and how do you go about that? It sounds like spending lots of money and in the offline world it is but…online it’s free!
Use a Crystal Ball!
You need one to find out what people want tomorrow.
Believe it or not…
…in the online world crystal balls do exist and they are tools that use the data from the past to indicate what will happen in the future. When you type in a search at google that information is logged in the google’s database application and stored.
Every search made at google (and other engines) is logged in a database (each search phrase is known as a keyword). You can find out what people searched for in a previous month by using the free tool at digital point:
www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
If you were interested in the subject of fishing you can just type fishing into the tool and it will come back with the main keyword but also lots of other keywords that people searched for (that also contain the keyword fishing).
The tool shows two columns one called Wordtracker and one called Overture and each show is a database of recorded results showing your keyword at the top and showing the number of searches per day for each keyword phrase.
Here is a result from digital point on 10/Aug/07 - click to view
So the tool does your market research for you and by clicking the button in that tool you just asked millions of people whether they are interested in fishing!
That is an amazingly powerful marketing tool and it enables you to identify target markets without any trouble at all.
Successfully Starting a small Business online
One thing to remember is that to be successful you must not enter an area that is too large as all the major companies will dominate that area of the internet.
You really need to find what is known as a niche i.e. a small enough area that is not noticed by the big players but one that offers enough demand for it to be profitable for you.
An ideal demand for a target niche is about 10,000 searches per month. So try to find something you are interested in that has about 300-500 searches per day.
This is all part of the process in finding a niche where you can have a successful website.
You can read more about the company that automates this process for you by clicking this message
Filed under: Small Business
This is exactly what I expected to find out after reading the title s the best way ?. Thanks for informative article
Hey Blogger , I like a lot your blog post expecially the article for overture keyword tools and your post regarding s the best way ? , it looks very interesting. Nice to share it with us. I found you on Ask Jeeves while searching for overture keyword tools . I just Digged it on Tuesday so will notice also an increase of blog traffic in exchange.