But you’re stuck. How do you work out if your cool idea has legs? How do you get it off the ground? Where should you begin?

Work Out What You’d Love to Do

Firstly, if you’re going to start an online business, don’t just pick something that you think will make a lot of money. Yes, it’s very cheap to get an online business up and running – but there’ll be a big cost in terms of your time.

Find something that you’d really enjoy doing. Perhaps you love creating images and designs, and you want to offer illustration services. Maybe you’re a keen writer, and you want to write for blogs. You might love making jewellery and want to find somewhere to sell it online. Whatever it is, make sure it’s something you genuinely love.

Get a Website

Frankly, you can’t start an online business without a website! You should get a domain name (ideally ending in .com – or whatever your country’s extension is, for example .co.uk for the UK, or .ca for Canada).

Consider having a blog: the more pages on your site, the more traffic you’ll get from search engines – and a blog is an easy and fun way to keep adding content to your website.

I use Dreamhost for all my websites – they provide lots of space, a free domain name and loads of other features like shopping carts and blog software that you can install with just one click. If you register with them and put in the code “aliventures”, you’ll get a second free domain name (very handy if you ever want to grow your business and branch out into a different area!)

Put information on your website about what services or products you offer. Make it very clear what you and your business are all about: be careful not to make assumptions about how much your potential clients will know. Having a page of Frequently Asked Questions can help convert prospects into customers and clients.

Learn From the Experts

There is a lot of advice out there about online businesses – and it can be very hard to separate the good stuff from the rubbish! Well-reviewed books can help, but the problem with these is that they’re already a couple of years out of date by the time they hit the shelves – and the online business world is evolving fast.

The best resource I’ve come across for anyone going into online business is Naomi Dunford’s very highly regarded Online Business School: you can read about it on my Starting Online Businesses website. It’s been an invaluable tool to help me grow my freelancing and add extra streams of income to my business activities.

Article Source: EzineArticles.com

If it isn’t – or if you’re not sure – then you need to take action. Here are three steps to help you make massive improvements to your small business’s website:

Step 1: Watch Someone Use Your Website

Invite a friend over, someone who’s never used your website before. Try to find someone who will be about as web-savvy as your target audience. For example, if you sell second-hand computer equipment, your audience will probably be quite competent and knowledgeable.

Sit your friend in front of the computer and open up the site. Tell them to simply navigate around the site for a few minutes. As they’re doing so, make a note of:

• What seems to catch their eye?
• Is there anything that they get confused by?
• Do they quickly click a link and end up off your site altogether?

After a few minutes have gone by, ask them to stop and give them some questions:

• What did you think the site was about when you first saw it?
• What do you think now?
• Do you understand what I’m selling?
• What would make you more inclined to buy it?
• Did anything on the site confuse you?

Step 2: Get a Professional Critique

Make any changes which you decide on after asking a friend or two to look through your site. Then, if you can afford it, get a professional website critique. There are a number of people and organisations who offer this: I recommend the Men with Pens, who regularly provide “drive-by” critiques on their blog.

Before paying for a critique, ask to see testimonials from previous customers, and samples of previous critiques. Don’t be tempted to go with the cheapest option available – poor-quality information could end up making your site worse.

Step 3: Think From Your Client’s Perspective

Take a look at your website with fresh eyes. Try to see it in the way that a potential client would. Ask yourself whether it would make you want to buy.

Are your services and products clearly explained? Do you have an FAQ page that lays any niggles or doubts to rest, to prevent the prospect from putting off buying? Is there an enticing sale or special offer running? Are your contact details clearly available – including your phone number? (You’ll usually find that people don’t phone, but it makes them more confident to see that you’ve made this available – they know you’re not some fly-by-night company.)

When I was learning to think about my business from the client’s perspective, I found a huge amount of useful advice on this (and loads of other topics!) in an online course called Online Business School, by the well-known small business guru Naomi Dunford. You can read more about it on my site here: Starting Online Business.

Here are six ways to find time for your side business:

1. Go for an Online Business

My first tip is to go for an online business. Why? Because it costs almost nothing to start, it’s easy to maintain, and it gives you a huge amount of flexibility. With many online businesses, it won’t matter to your clients that you’re unavailable 8-5 … but with other businesses (such as a dog-walking business or local shopping service), clients will need you to be around when it’s convenient for them.

2. Get Up Earlier

If you find that you don’t have much energy left at the end of the working day, try getting up an hour earlier and putting in some time on your side business before you go to work. This is how I got my freelancing business off the ground!

3. Use Your Lunch break

If you work in an office, you can use your lunchbreak to keep your online business ticking over. That might mean answering emails, reading up on the latest industry news, doing some marketing, or even carrying out client work.

Warning: Check your company’s policy about internet use. You don’t want to end up losing that day job before your side business is ready to support you…

4. Switch Off The Television

If you spend a couple of hours or more in front of the television each night, you’re burning time that you could be investing into your side business. Switch off the television, and make sure you spend at least one hour each evening on your business.

5. Negotiate With Your Partner/Family

Perhaps your home circumstances are making it difficult for you to find quiet time to get on with your business. Try negotiating with your partner or family so that you can have at least half a day at the weekend and a couple of evenings in the week to work on your side business.

That might mean that your partner does the cooking and takes care of the kids on Mondays and Tuesdays, and you take over on Wednesdays and Thursdays, or something similar. Uninterrupted time is vital for getting your business off the ground.

6. Only Accept the Best Advice

When you’re short on time, the worst thing you can do is spend hours trawling the net for advice and how-tos on starting and running a business. You need to make sure you’re only spending your precious time on high-quality advice.

Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Freelance bloggers, especially those working on a regular basis as staff bloggers for a particular site, get paid at a professional rate. There are plenty of blogs out there which pay $50+ per post (for 700 words or so), and I always advise even brand new bloggers never to write for under $20/post.

I’m not going to give silly, inflated figures about how much you could earn. Of course some freelance bloggers will earn fantastic sums, but others will be perfectly content with a steady, sustainable income.

Earn an extra $400/month in just five hours per week

If you currently have a full-time job or a lot of commitments, you might be concerned that you don’t have enough time to be a staff blogger. But if you can manage just one hour a day, Monday to Friday, that’s enough time to easily write four blog posts and spend an hour on administration (like checking and answering comments, and invoicing editors). At an average starting pay of $25 (which is on the low end), that’s $100 a week, or over $400 in a month.

I’m betting you could use that extra $400/month. I know that, when I was working full time, having some extra money coming in helped me to build up an emergency fund – and I was eventually able to leave my job so that I could support myself by staff blogging whilst taking a postgraduate degree.

I’ve written a self-study guide, the Staff Blogging Course that costs just $19 and shows you, step-by-step, exactly how to find and apply for blogging jobs that you’ll love – and how to write great posts that’ll see blog editors eager to keep you on for good. And if you manage to write just one paid post for $20, you’ll have covered the cost of the course. There’s a 90-day money back guarantee, so you’ve got nothing to lose by having a go!

Article Source: EzineArticles.com