Among the many resolutions people set; a common one is a job change, or even more drastic – starting your own business! Starting a business can be very lucrative (but risky) not just in terms of a financial return, but also a better personal return. If you have a desire to make money for yourself and be successful, do business your way, make the world a better place and achieve a more fluid work-life balance then it could be time to stop dreaming and start making it happen. For many in this day and age, starting an internet business may be on your mind. Whether it’s becoming a blogger, an influencer or something else, the internet is a great, and affordable place to start a business.

To help get your creative juices flowing, let’s explore a few tips to get you off on the right foot:

Identify A Genuine Need

Don’t fall into the trap of a lot of first time entrepreneurs by starting with a fixed idea of a product or service. Every successful business is based on a genuine customer need first and foremost, so start with the data to work out where the need lies before designing something to meet it. Market research is quite easy to do online. Internet forums can be extremely useful for understanding what is missing from the market that people are seeking – these are your potential customers. You can also get a lot done with keyword research tools and sites such as Google Trends which let you see what people are interested in right now. Lastly, when you begin to have an idea of what might play well, do some competitor research. See what’s out there already and who is doing what – and more importantly, where the gaps are that you can fill. 

Get Specialist Support 

Although starting your own business means that you have to become somewhat of a jack of all trades – doing everything from pitching to investors to creating a marketing strategy and even ordering the stationary – it’s good to tap into some specialist help where you can. A little help can go a long way! If you need help by commissioning a web design agency to get a killer website, or you need certified payroll and hr when you start to expand, then don’t be afraid to invest a little in  getting the right business support services. After all, it can be a false economy if you try to do something where you’re hopelessly out of your depth and you end up failing. 

Spruce Up Your Website 

Once you’ve identified the market opportunity and have the right support in place to bring your product or service into play, then you need to focus on getting a great website. Your site is the portal that connects what you do to your customers, your investors and your suppliers and it needs to be well designed, easy to use, conformed to current web accessibility standards, and visually appealing. On average, you have less than five seconds to hook in a casual visitor, so if people can’t navigate easily to what they want, or it looks a mess, you’re going to lose business.

Your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is key for driving traffic from organic search, and many business owners miss so many opportunities for boosting their SEO ROI. So make sure you take care of things like using engaging copy that is optimised with keywords, using the alt text on images and making sure fonts are legible. Your website should never be a static thing – you should continuously be developing and refining it in response to customer feedback, shifts in the market and changes in the external environment. 

The internet makes it easy to start and try a new business idea, and hopefully these tips will help better set you up for success!

Disclosure: Some links are affiliate links that may earn me a commission.