How to start an online business

You are looking with growing interest at the possibility of earning some money on the Internet; however, having never had any experience in the world of online business, you don’t have the faintest idea of ​​how to do it, nor do you know what strategies to possibly adopt to obtain significant gains. Well, if you want I can give you some advice on the subject.

If you dedicate a few minutes of your free time to me, I can explain how to start an online business by taking advantage of some of the opportunities that the Net offers. Obviously, as with “traditional” business opportunities, also with regard to the “digital” sector, you have to find the right market niche in which to enter and you have to make many sacrifices: only in this way can you hope to obtain important results ( which in many cases do not arrive before a year from the start of their activity). In short, even in the online world, as they say, “nothing comes from nothing”.

That said, if you are ready to get involved and want to know more about the subject, you already know what to do: make yourself comfortable, concentrate on reading the next few lines and try to identify the business opportunity that inspires you the most. I wish you good luck with your online business!

How to build a successful online business from scratch

Let’s get right into the topic and see how to build a successful online business from scratch. Check which of the following activities is right for you and follow my tips to take your first steps as a web entrepreneur.

Monetize a website or blog

If you want to start an online business, you can think about monetizing a website or blog. With this type of activity, it is possible to obtain potentially high earnings: I stress “potentially” as to reach important earnings, it is necessary to reach high numbers in terms of views, which clearly does not happen overnight: it takes at least one year to start seeing some appreciable results.

Having said that, how is it that you make money with a website or a blog? The main method usually derives from the sale of advertising thanks to the use of special services, such as the very famous Google AdSense. In this case, as I told you, the more visitors reach the site, the greater the earnings that can be obtained.

Since the continuous fluctuations in the advertising market can have a more or less significant impact on earnings, I suggest you diversify your revenue. An excellent way to do this is to join affiliate programs, such as that of Amazon which, by inserting sponsored links on the site or blog, allow you to obtain percentages of earnings on sales generated by them within the next 24 hours.

Would you like to learn more about the topic? It seems right to me: you can do it by taking a look at my guide on how to make money with a website.

Starting an ecommerce

Starting an ecommerce is another concrete possibility of earning online that I invite you to consider. More and more people, in fact, rely on the Internet to make purchases of all kinds and, therefore, the sector is still very fruitful. If you don’t know where to start to open an online store, keep in mind that it is possible to do so by taking one of the following paths.

• Turn to prepackaged packages – using prepackaged packages is definitely the simplest and most immediate way to start an online store, especially if you don’t have the IT skills to buy a space and customize it with a CMS and/or if you don’t have the resources necessary to entrust the work to a professional who is able to do this. That’s why turning to sites like Shopify can be a winning choice. All you need to do to open a shop on Shopify is to type your email address in the appropriate text field, click on the Start free trial button and provide the password and name of the shop.
  
  After this step, you just have to fill in the forms that are proposed to you indicating if you have already started selling, what your current income is, in which sector you want to operate and if you are creating a store for a customer or not. Once you have clicked on Next, you just have to fill in the form relating to the address to receive payments and click on Enter the shop. You will then access the e-commerce management page, where you will have the possibility, through a convenient side menu, to manage orders, products, customers, view analyzes, set up marketing campaigns, integrate discounts and customize the appearance of your online store.
  
  I also point out the possibility of using the Facebook sales channel to synchronize your products with a catalogue on Facebook and create marketing activities on the famous social network directly from Shopify. By selling on Facebook you can also use the Instagram Shopping function. For more details, read my tutorial on how to start a Shopify store.
• Customize a webspace with a CMS – buy a domain and install a CMS on the latter (e.g. WordPress, Joomla, Prestashop or Magento), that is a sort of software that allows you to manage all the contents on the site and the products included in your showcase, is a preferred solution to the previous one, as it allows you to have much more possibilities to customize the store according to your needs. As I mentioned before, however, making use of this second solution requires the technical skills necessary for the creation and management of the store or, failing this, the financial availability to entrust all the work to one or more external collaborators.
• Opening a showcase on important stores – Opening a showcase on already established stores, such as Amazon, eBay or Etsy, could be the best solution for those who already have a physical store and want to expand their sales volume by “landing” online.

If you want to deepen the subject and get more information on How to start an online store. I recommend that you take a look at the in-depth study that I have entirely dedicated to the subject.

Monetize a social profile

Among the business opportunities that I recommend you consider, there is also that of monetizing a social profile. Again, the numbers are quite important and only by having a certain degree of notoriety is it possible to succeed in earning some money.

If you have not yet become famous on social media and, therefore, you cannot monetize one of your profiles, I recommend that you take a look at the guide in which I give you advice on how to try to succeed in this intent. Obviously, don’t expect to build an important following from one day to the next: it takes time and planning to achieve concrete results. In any case, as soon as you become popular on one or more social platforms, you can start earning in different ways.

For example, you can use affiliate services. After subscribing to one of them (eg Amazon’s), you can insert sponsored links in posts, stories, etc. At that point, if a user clicks on one of the links in question and purchases a product or service within a certain period of time (usually 24 hours), you will be paid a percentage of the sales generated.

When using affiliate services, be careful not to become a “spammer”, inserting links to products or services at random: in fact, I recommend that you only promote products and services that are actually useful for your target audience and, another important thing , to do so only after having actually verified their operation. Otherwise you risk losing credibility with the people who follow you, which would be downright counterproductive.

If you have one or more social media accounts that are particularly popular, perhaps with tens or even hundreds of thousands of active followers, you might think of collaborating with famous brands, so as to be paid by the latter to promote their products or services through posts, stories. , direct and so on. When you collaborate with any company, remember to be as transparent as possible with the community that follows you, reporting this with the use, for example, of hashtags such as #ad, #adv, #sp, #sponsored and so on.

Since there would be a lot more to say about how to make money with social media, I highly recommend that you read the article that I have entirely dedicated to the topic: there you will find other information that will surely help you.

Open a YouTube channel

Do you like making videos, are you a videomaking enthusiast and do you feel comfortable in front of the camera? If you answered yes, opening a YouTube channel might be the most suitable business opportunity for you.

It’s true, Google’s video-sharing platform is already saturated with content and emerging has become much more difficult than a few years ago but, with the right idea, it is still possible to obtain important numbers in terms of subscribers, views and, therefore, also of earnings.

How can you make money on YouTube? Once you have opened a Youtube channel and are eligible to do so, you will be able to participate in the YouTube Partner Program, open to channels that have managed to total at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 viewing hours in the last year. In this case, the earnings derive mainly from advertising and, therefore, the discussion made a few lines above for sites and blogs are valid: to obtain important earnings, you have to make many visits, otherwise, it is difficult to “keep the shack up”.

On YouTube, moreover, it is possible to earn with affiliate networks and various sponsorship activities: if you are already an established youtuber, sponsors will most likely be looking for you; if, on the other hand, you are at the beginning of your journey, you can try to find someone willing to collaborate with you, perhaps by doing some research on Famebit: a portal that connects content creators and companies that want to promote themselves on YouTube.

For more information on how to get more subscribers on YouTube and how to make money on YouTube, please take a look at the insights I linked to you. They will be of great help to you.

Advice on starting an online business

I want to conclude this guide by giving you a number of other tips on how to start an online business. Hope they can help you get your web business started the right way.

• Choose the right market sector – if you make a mistake in choosing the sector in which to enter, perhaps by introducing yourself to an unprofitable or already completely saturated market segment, you will hardly be able to be successful. Therefore, try to avoid sectors already besieged by competitors, especially if there are well-established ones; identify a market niche that is relatively “empty” or verify that you have a truly revolutionary idea for an already saturated market (which is very, very difficult).
• Study and acquire specific skills – given the fierce competition that exists in the world of online business, studying and acquiring specific skills is very important to be able to emerge and increase the chances of obtaining significant gains over time. To acquire new skills, read books, actively attend courses useful for your sector and get in touch with people who work in the sector in which you have decided to introduce yourself. Believe me: doing all this makes a difference!
• Diversify the sources of monetization – markets are subject to fluctuations and periods of crisis, you don’t have to be Warren Buffet to understand this: diversifying the sources of monetization is a “smart” move to deal with emergency situations and could make the difference between saving yourself or going bankrupt.
• Do not give up on the first setbacks – you must take into account that, especially in the initial stages of your business, there will be moments of stalemate or real setbacks. Try to learn from the mistakes you make by analyzing them and avoiding repeating them. Also, don’t think about getting instant earnings: as I have already told you from the beginning, it takes at least a year (if not more) to see the first fruits of your work. Don’t give up and keep working hard! Understood?