Slow down! Where should I start?

So we have discussed some of the more important aspects to starting an online business such as Ecommerce solutions and the right hosting provider, but you might be asking at this point “where do I start?” This post will be geared towards guiding you on a process that will save you time (which i think of as money).

1. First thing you should do is research. Are people interested in what I have to sell? Is there a market for it? Will there be a market for it in the future? How much am I willing to spend? Will I need capital from investors? What would be a good name for my company? Does the name of my company conlfict with any potential legal issues (Trademark, Copyright), Should my company be a sole proprietorship, Partnership, or Corporation? (I will dig deeper into these questions in a future post). All of this information needs to be answered before you start doing anything. Analysing your thoughts and putting it on paper is all a part of the first step that I call research. This next piece of information is vital to YOUR success in a start-up. If you are going online and have known competitors and are unsure, even a little bit, of how successful you might be, you need to start with a Business Plan. If you have an extremely innovative idea, you have no known competitors and are sure people would love to use your product or service, forget the Business Plan for now and go right to getting your business up and running ASAP.

There are an incredible amount of benefits that come with being first in a market. Even if you make some mistakes people are more often to forgive you if you’re the first one there. You will also have brand recognition over any new competitors and you will have many people in the online community helping you grow your business. Take Blackberry for example. Even though the Iphone is stepping in and taking away market share, the Blackberry will always have brand recognition and people will trust the Brand basically because “it was there first”.

2. Second thing to do when starting an online business is find advice and tips like this Blog. There is nothing worse than going into something with a blindfold. If you have a mentor, a professor, or even Bloggers that have gone through the process already, then you’re going to save time and money. I would also suggest reading some good entrepreneur marketing content that can be inspiring to some. I like Entrepreneur.com even though their site is now cluttered with Ads.

3. Third is getting the right resources. This can be handled in a few ways. By now you have a good idea of how much money you can spend, and if you are going to try to do most of it yourself or if you’re going to outsource, etc. I personally learned how to do everything myself for my business. Pro’s for this are - it keeps costs down and I know how to change things quickly. I also now have the skills to set up Ecommerce sites for others which is a great weapon to have in the back pocket. Cons are it takes quite a bit of time to get everything working and there really is no “back-up” in personnel. If you do decide to teach yourself how to customize an Ecommerce site then I highly recommend to train an employee, even if they are part time, on how to update the site and run the admin interface. Otherwise your spouse/girlfriend or hampster may get mad at you because you can never take vacation from you j.o.b.

4. Get your website necessities set up. This includes choosing a Hosting provider (I suggest Simple Helix), choosing an Ecommerce Cart Solution, and purchasing an SSL certificate for your site. (You can get a very recognizable SSL certificate from Simple Helix through your account for an amazing price). The SSL certificate is a must for Ecommerce sites. If you hear of “shared SSL certificates” from some hosting providers for free, just ignore them. You need a fully credible SSL certificate for your site.

5. Implement your ideas. This is the toughest part that I personally had. If you have some design and development experience you’re lucky, and if you can get a good designer and/or developer for a great price then you are also lucky. The great thing about the Top 3 Ecommerce solutions I mentioned in a previous post is that there are tons of people on forums helping each other with problems you run into. This stage may take you awhile, but if you are an entrepreneur at heart then you will persevere. Looking through add-ons, and forums may help you gain some ideas that will help your business needs.

Also in this step you really need to concentrate on keeping things modern. You may find yourself doing things over and over again, especially if you are a perfectionist. Best remedy for this is to have a few designers, or even good friends that don’t mind being critical, to help comment and provide feedback as you go along.

A few design sites that are extremely helpful to me are

• http://www.webmasterkit.info/2008/05/30/download-free-web-icons/
• http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/icon-tutorials-for-photoshop/ (Everyimte I go to this site I think of George Kastanza off of Seinfeld - if you get the reference good for you).
• http://www.mind-projects.it/blog/jqzoom_v10 (This one is great for customers viewing products in your E-store. Very modern.

6. Lastly, work on your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) continously. You now have your website up even though its taken awhile, you have all the legal aspects of your business covered, you have a few employees, and your as excited as you were on your 16th birthday when “Veronica” showed up at the bowling ally. Ok, maybe not that much but you get the drift. You’ve now spent quite a bit of money and you want results and fast. Not going to happen unless you are an expert in viral marketing, you have something that 18-25 year olds will love and you live on a huge University Campus. (not joking here, if you want to spread things virally a University campus is the best place you can start). It takes months, maybe even years to get your site ranked well in  search engines like Google. This is why you have to pick your “keywords” intelligently and why you also have to work everyday at researching SEO on the net and implementing it over time.

I will be going more in depth on these steps in future posts so stay tuned. Topics such as funding, Business Plans, research, and SEO all need their own posts because they are just that important. I hope this post has given you some insight on a general process that works for myself and many other online entrepreneurs.

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