With advancements in internet technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) and most recently agentic Ais, it’s now easy and fast for any aspiring entrepreneur to start small business online successfully without any hassles. So, if you’re ambitious and determined to succeed, you can use available free and paid web tools to automate and simplify your daily business tasks and jobs without wearing yourself to death.
Whether you already have an existing offline business which
you want to migrate to the internet or you’re thinking of starting an online
business entirely, the basic steps of running and growing a business profitably
remain the same. I’ll discuss these details shortly for clarity.
But first, you’re either going to create and sell a product
or provide services to a targeted audience who has the need for it on the
internet after you’ve done your due diligence and conducted market research
satisfactorily to that effect. In the area of creating products to sell, it
could be a physical product or digital product or both.
However, the most important take away is that you’ve to
identify an audience who has pain points to solve, build trust and relationship
with them and provide the needed solution for your target audience through a reliable
platform.
To make it easy for you to get clients or customers at
scale, you’ve to demonstrate high level of expertise in your niche and gain trust
from your ideal customers. This is why it’s important you’ve to prove yourself as
a thought leader in your industry before you start promoting and selling products
and services to your target market.
The other area which you’ve to closely look at is getting a
platform to publish your content and/or showcase your products and services.
More often than not, a lot of entrepreneurs want to make money online without a
website. While it’s possible to do so but I must tell you that it’s not
advisable if your business goal is for the long term.
The first step is for you to research online business ideas which
you can start and choose one out of them after juxtaposing it with your
experience, expertise, interest, or passion.
The second step is for you to investigate, study, identify
and understand your ideal customers. This is where you’ve to draw up your basic
ICP (ideal customer profile) for easy reference and guidance. You must
understand the fact that you don’t have a business if there are no clients or
customers to serve. So, having prospects and leads to prime for the sale is key
to your online business success.
If it’s an existing business, it will be easy to find data
of your best customers by simply looking at long-term customers, large accounts
customers, or even affiliate marketers who have brought in large and constant
sales for you from their independent promotions. This is where building email
marketing list is vital to the success of your small business online.
You can make use of CRM automation systems, Google Analytics
and market survey tools to come up with your ICP. For example, you can use
SurveyMonkey or JotForm to ask questions, and elicit information about the pain
points of your target audience if you are building and nurturing an email list
of subscribers.
However, you’ll easily get better responses if you
incentivize your list members with a complementary free PDF ebook, video or
anything than can go for an ethical bribe.
I can assure you that it’s not expensive to start a small
business online. With as little as $200, you can build a website, create a
blog, and subscribe to reliable email marketing software for a start. Your
website investment will include registering a domain name, buying web hosting,
and subscribing to an email service provider (ESP). This will create a strong
foundation for you to start and grow a profitable business.
Personally, before I start any business online, my first
task is to make sure there is enough demand for what I want to do. This will
involve me spending money to buy web hosting,
create a blog for free, regularly publish content on my blog, consistently build
email subscribers’ list, and religiously follow the engagement before taking
any step further.
There is myriad of website tools which you can make use of
to execute these tasks such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and
Google Keyword Planner. The good news is that they are free to use. It will
help you to know the direction of your small online business before you go full
throttle.
You’ve to understand that every step of your small business
journey is important to your overall success. For instance, you have to write a
business plan to guide you as work on your project. Also, if there is any need
to get licenses and/or certificate of proficiency in your field, you’ve to sort
that out as well.
In any case, the bulk of your regular tasks will involve consistently
creating content and driving targeted traffic to your website or blog. You’ve
to learn SEO (search engine optimization) if you want to invest less on paid
adverts such as PPC (pay per click) advertising.
All in all, if you want to start small business online,
simply invest in:
- Domain name registration,
- Buy web hosting,
- Create a blog,
- Regularly publish high quality content on your blog,
- Optimize your blog for search engines and AI overviews,
- Set up analytics to monitor traffic sources,
- Build an email list of subscribers,
- Monetize your blog accordingly, and
- Make improvements as you go.
The essence of starting a small business on the internet is
to make money. Beyond that, you must be willing to put your best foot forward
in researching problems and challenges your target market are facing and
proffering spot-on solution to solve them.
Like I said earlier, building trust and credibility must be
your priority when starting an online business. As a matter of fact, potential
buyers are always wary of strangers who are looking for the gullible to fleece
out of their hard-earned money.
Unless you can demonstrate it beyond every reasonable doubt that you are for real, making money online will be a mirage. I have spent months on this side hustle blog publishing content (even though by fits and starts) to gain traction before seriously monetizing it.
This is why as an entrepreneur you should not expect immediate ROI (return on investment) from your business without giving out value first.
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