Nibletz Staff
What is the path of the modern entrepreneur? The road from zero to success is probably a lot shorter and easier to travel than most people realise. It’s certainly true to say that becoming an entrepreneur is a lot simpler than it used to be. You first need to formulate an idea. This could be a business idea or an idea for a product or service that you wish to sell. Next you need to consider whether this is a product or service the public need or want. Have you found a market gap and do you know how to fill it? You must be honest with yourself at this point. Make sure you have not convinced yourself the idea is an original concept when it’s something that others have already thought of. Next, you need to think about funding, and this is precisely where the journey begins.
Step 1: Do You Need Money?
You may have read a few articles online that claim to start a business you do need money to begin with. Essentially, they say, you can’t start something from nothing. But we disagree with this mindset. In fact not only do we think it’s possible, we think it’s the easiest way to do it. It all starts by knowing what type of business you want to set up. We would like to present the idea of an ecommerce business. This means that your business will operate entirely online. There are a number of advantages to this model, but the first one is obvious. It’s free to set up or at the very least, priced to be incredibly valuable.
Step 2: Knowing The Benefits
Before we continue this journey, it’s important that you know all the advantages you get following this path. Firstly, we’ve already mentioned it’s cheap but your business model is already going to be saving you money. By running your company online, you’ll will be able to operate it from home. You’ll also find that you can run it without hiring many if any, other members of staff. If there are jobs that are too big for you, you can outsource these to another company saving on costs.
Since you will not be investing money in your business, you’re cutting the risk. If you do spend money on your business, we think the most you’ll spend is up to a thousand. Losing that isn’t nothing, certainly, but it’s a lot less than you would need to set up a business offline. If your company does fail, you can cut your losses and move on. At least you will be able to say you tried.
You will also find that setting up online; it’s easy to make a name for yourself. There are a number of different tools that you can use to set up your online company and gain interest. Again, a lot of these won’t cost you anything.
Step 3: Getting Started
You may think at this point your business has already started. But we’re still at the hypothetical stage. All we’ve established is that you won’t spend much money if any and the advantages of this model. We haven’t yet shown how you will do this.
We suggest you begin by making a name for yourself, building an online profile. You can do this using the social media accounts that you are probably active on every day of your life. Af first, we suggest that you use the basic social networks like Facebook and Twitter. On these, you can set up business accounts. You can then use both to update already interested followers and gain new ones. Updating these accounts with interesting information will catch the attention of potential customers online. You need to post about the industry you’re thinking about joining. Start to tease the product or service that you’ll soon be offering and slowly grow your campaign. At this point, you still shouldn’t have spent any money.
Will your business involve anything colourful, graphic or interesting? An online fashion store would be an example of this because you could share pictures of the clothes you’ll soon be selling. Get creative, hiring models to wear the clothes and photographers to snap pics. Then set up a blog adding the pics, and link some to Pinterest. This is just one example of how social media can help your new brand blossom overnight.
Step 4: Site Set Up
When you are starting to gain the interest of people online, it’s important to have somewhere they can find more about your business. This will be your company website. You should only use your blog for advertisement or to expand on ideas. When you set up your site, it’s important you use an e-commerce software that enables easy payments and transactions. If you do this, you make customers lives easier, and they will be more likely to use your company. A poor ecommerce software could damage your business before it’s begun. That’s why this is an area we do suggest you spend a little money to get the best. A Magento agency for ecommerce use one of the best pieces of software on the market. It’s certain to give your company a running start.
Don’t forget when setting up your site you can spend a little extra on marketing. That way you’re sure to gain the interest of consumers. Remember this won’t cost a fortune and will still fit nicely into the average person’s personal budget. We suggest you focus on SEO and web design. You must make sure users find your site, and once they do, it’s important they stick around to make a purchase. That means your site needs to look and feel professional.
Step 5: Free Funding
Your site is up, your networks are active and you’re ready to sell. But wait, you might be wondering how you can afford to produce what you’re selling? There are two approaches you can take for this issue. Either you do finally take out a small loan to be for the first fixed costs and then pay it back. Or you use the support, you’ve already gained, through a crowdsourcing scheme. We know which option we would choose but you may not want to be dependent on your customers. The choice is entirely yours to make.
Once you’ve taken these steps, you will have a successful business up and running online. The best part is that you could easily have completed the whole process in less than six months on a shoestring. But you’ll still have the potential to make a fortune!
