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Saturday, April 4, 2009

An Online Business? How To

Recently I’m getting more friends and relatives asking me how to start an online business. It’s not rocket science, but it’s not easy maths too.

Starting an online business is pretty much the same as starting a brick and mortar business, except that the cost is much lower and so is the risk.

When I say it’s pretty much the same as a brick and mortar business, I also mean that you need to be entrepreneurial, to be able to ’smell’ the needs in a market and to have a vision. Are entrepreneurs born or breed? I don’t know. What I believe is, if you think you are, you are.

So, if you are entrepreneurial and want to learn how to start an online business, read on……

Step 1: Never reinvent the wheel

Believe me. Almost all the smart and innovative ideas you can think of are already done by someone else online, in one way or another. If you think you’ve a unique online business idea, it just means that you’ve not done enough research.

So, if you have any online business idea, the first thing you need to do is head over to Google and type in some keywords related to your business idea. Thoroughly check out all the top websites that provide similar product or service. This means you may have to try out their products/services and find out their pros and cons.

Next, you have to evaluate those pros and cons and come out with a BETTER idea.

Remember, the job of an entrepreneur is not to invent things. His job is to seek proven business ideas, improve on those ideas and get a piece of the pie out of the market, preferably a bigger piece.

Step 2: Think of the marketing system

Most newbie entrepreneurs have one problem. They spend too much time trying to perfect their products.

Having a good product is important. But what’s more important is the marketing system.

Without a good marketing system, no matter how good your product is, it’s going to be hard for your online business to grow.

Regardless of what you sell, your marketing system should answer 3 important questions:

- How can the system attract and capture a list of potential users and/or customers?
- How can you make the system viral, such that users will refer more users?
- How to convert prospects into customers?

For example, recently I developed a great online tool (I think) that can help me to manage all my stocks (I’m talking about the stock market). I believe if I roll this service out to the market, someone will be willing to pay for it. But before I even think of developing the tool for the multiple users, I first have to think of the 3 questions above.

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Also consider the idea of owning your own customer helpdesk, read more...
http://profitsdesk.com

Greg.

Check out my own HelpDesk here.