The Step-By-Step Guide of Starting Your Own Business
Are you hung up on the “idea phase” of starting your own business? Do you feel like none of your ideas are good enough–or do you have so many ideas and don’t know which one you should turn into a business? This post is for you!
First: I hear from many of you who have heard the advice that business should be about your “passion”. If I hear the words “find your passion” or “follow your passion” one more time, I’m going to stick a fork in the eye of the person who says it.
Starting your own business isn’t necessarily about “following your passion”, and you don’t have to “find your passion” before you start a business. Stop beating yourself up for not having a passion that people will pay you large sums of cash for, and follow this four-step process to starting your own business instead:
1. Figure out who your customers are.
Most aspiring business owners start from the wrong place. They start from “What do I know how to do?” or “What’s my passion?” That’s where a lot of people get stuck. They don’t know what their passion is, or how to monetize it.
I start from the opposite end. I listen to people having conversations, and my most common questions when talking to others are “What do you want?” or “What do you need?” That way, I find out what is missing in their lives, and then figure out if I can build a product or service around that.
I love watching reality TV, but I don’t expect someone to come dump 5 figures a month in my lap for me to do so! Instead, I start out looking at what customers will pay for. Then I create products and/or services that I know people want and charge people for them.
The benefit of looking at business from this perspective is that it’s not hard to find customers. You already know there is a market segment that is asking–no, begging–for this product or service. You don’t have to create a market. Just find the people who need what you have to offer and cater to them.
2. Survey some potential customers to see if they are interested in what you want to offer.
Again, this starts with the customers, not with what you want. Ask them what their thoughts are on your upcoming product or service. (This isn’t the right time to pitch them.) Ask them if they would use it. Ask them what you can do to help them make a decision.
This is your time to write down all the questions they have. “Is x included?” “Would I have to…?” You need to be able to understand what questions your customers have, then answer those questions in your website copy or when you pitch potential customers later on.
3. Once you get some “Yes” answers, sketch out what you have to offer.
Regardless of whether you’re selling a product or service, customers generally hate open-ended offers. You want to be able to offer a few packages of services or products and let them choose.
Imagine going into a restaurant and having the waiter say, “Okay, what would you like to eat tonight?” You reply, “Well, what’s good here?” The waiter says, “Everything, sir!”
At that point, you’d probably be stymied. Do you order a hamburger, a steak, or a salad? You’d also probably never come back to that restaurant again.
Now compare that to your sales process. If you’re a web designer or other service professional, you’re probably used to asking the client what they want first. That’s a good sales tactic. But then most people make the mistake of leaving it open-ended, or worse, letting the client decide what he or she wants. (Hint: Most people have no idea what they want. “Um, a website. That gets us business.”)
After you ascertain what the client is looking for generally, you pull out the menu of services that you provide. If the client wants something outside the scope of your menu, you can figure that out with him or her. But your menu sets up some “ground rules” when working with your client, and it also allows you the freedom of being able to systematize some parts of your labor later on.
Always have a menu.
Post your articles and make money online
Driving traffic to your site is one of the most important factor to make money online with your website. Article writing and submission is one of the best strategies for driving traffic to your sites.
Without question, you should have your own blog that contains fresh content.
But submitting articles to other sites is an absolute must for a number of reasons.
1) Articles on other sites provide you with link opportunities that can send traffic to your main site.
2) Articles on other sites provide you with search engine benefits. If the article site gets indexed by Google, it’s a plus for you.
3) Articles on other sites can make you money! These are harder to find, but they do exist.
EzineArticles.com is one of the oldest and best sites for submitting articles. There is no limit to the number of articles you can submit and they provide authors with statistics.
BUT, if you want to submit articles to another site AND earn money, then you want to use WorldVillage.com
WorldVillage is one of the earliest sites online. Launched in 1995, it was one of the first 25,000 sites on the web!
Anyone can sign up to be a “Villager” and submit their own content. There is NO limit to how much content you can submit on your account.
Besides providing you with a link back to your site and great search engine optimization benefits, WorldVillage.com also invites you to insert your Google AdSense publisher ID into your account.
The AdSense ads that display on the site will contain the author’s publisher ID 50% of the time.
There are WorldVillage writers earning up to $50/day in AdSense just from submitting original content to the site!
Sign up for a FREE WorldVillage.com account today and begin submitting your content.
Be sure to completely fill out your profile so you can get links back to your site, and also include your AdSense publisher ID so you can begin making some extra money online.
It’s all very self-explanatory on the site, so go and create your account now!
(Recommended by Joel Comm)
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