Four Things You Need When You Start An E-Business

There are a lot of things to think about when opening a new e-business. Here's what you need for success in your online venture:

1. Market Research

The most important thing you need is market research and understanding your potential customers and their needs before running an online business. This is very important since it will set the foundation for all of the growth strategies that you will use to set up your e-business.

2. Branding

Once you have determined your market research and your niche, the next step is to create the right branding for your e-business. Branding involves creating an identity for your e-business that will give it a unique feel and allow it to be memorable. Many people will choose to use their own name, but this can be risky if you do not know how to run a business yet. This is where brand management comes in and this is what separates those who succeed from those who fail. Has your name been trademarked? Then keep it! If not, then consider trademarks like "Your E-Business", or even "Your Business". 

3. Marketing/Promotion

Once you have your identity in order, then you need to start marketing it online. This means building a website and also social media profiles. Start with a website. It doesn't have to be expensive. Many can be purchased for $30 or less and they will work just fine for small businesses. In fact most big companies started out no bigger than yours and many of the well known brands of today had humble beginnings as well.

2D Logo Design is one such platform that offers some excellent affordable Logo Design Services . 4. Financials

You will also need a business "operating plan", which is basically your budget for running the business in terms of time, money, etc. This plan should include all of the startup costs you will need, such as domain name registration, hosting costs and other things like licensing fees for content or products.

5. Content

The next step is to start creating content for your e-business and getting it out on your website, blog, social media pages etc. You can take a lot of different approaches to content creation depending on what type of business you are starting. Some businesses might focus on affiliate marketing with other companies since it is less work but remember that affiliates will expect a high conversion rate in order to pay you their share.

A lot of people start web design and marketing with this approach, especially if they are starting a blog and hoping to make money with affiliate links.

Another option is to write content for your niche or market since many businesses now have their own blogs on which they can post content. You can also get paid to publish short news articles on your blog. There are some excellent news sites that pay bloggers like Examiner , E-Dinar Media , Money Morning, TheRichest etc.

6. Sales/Marketing Skills/Systems

The last step is to start selling products and services directly online as well as working with affiliates and potential clients through outbound sales (generating leads). This is something that takes a lot of hard work and practice. However you can purchase a book called Start Up Nation by Dan S. Kennedy , which will give you a great understanding of the basics of running any type of e-business.

7. The 4 Week Startup

The last step is to be patient and take the time to build your online business, following all of the steps above and being very patient with yourself and not giving up if you don't see immediate results from all of your efforts.

You can start your online business in four weeks or less if the above things are in order:

1) Research your product or service to find leads, then contact them with a sales letter/email/video, etc.

2) Launch your website and blog.

3) Start blogging and posting content on your social media pages.

4) Get leads from your blog and start outbound marketing.

5) Build an affiliate marketing network. 

6) Build a relationship with your affiliates so that they will promote you through other networks, and once they reach a certain level of sales, they too will become affiliates, creating a win-win relationship for both parties in the long term.

7) Get paid for referrals through affiliate marketing.

8) Pay your monthly hosting and domain costs

The above steps are not the same for every e-business. You need to do what is right for your own business and find out what works best for you. You can take these steps on a part-time basis until you are ready to take them full-time, or you can use them as a way to fund other work or save the money in order to invest in other investments at a later time. You need to find out what works best for your business and the expenses that you have planned for it.

9. Co-Founders

Starting an online business is a team effort. You can't do this alone, so many people choose to start an e-business with another person who also wants to start their own e-business. This person can help you with everything from research, marketing, organizing etc. However this can also cause problems if they are not interested in the project or if they are looking for a "partner" in the traditional sense rather than someone to help them start their own online business.

10. Outsourcing

If you are not interested in creating your own products and services, then you can outsource this task as well by finding a company online that is willing to create the perfect product for you. You can also hire an independent designer on Fiverr or 99 Designs . Alternatively, some people choose to get their products or services from Amazon , but there are always exceptions.

11. Business models

You will find that there are many different ways of making money with your e-business, so instead of listing all of them here we will focus on one of the most important: affiliate marketing. This is a great way to make money online because it requires little overhead and you don't even need a website, just a link to the affiliate's site.

12. Content creation

Another popular option is writing content for other webmasters or companies that want to write content for themselves but don't know how or have enough time to do it themselves. There are many freelance jobs available online as well in the market research industry. This industry can complement your business quite nicely since it requires very little investment and can actually be quite good at building your community.

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Conclusion

I hope that these tips were helpful to you in creating your own online business. There are many ways to make money online and some of them can be very difficult, but many more are easier than most people realize.

Remember that there is no one way of making money online, so you need to find the best way for your own personal situation. If you would like to read more about how I started my own e-business, then please check out my blog post: How I Started My Online Business In just 10 Days .

Good luck! :) Photo Credit: by John Brooks from Arizona, USA via Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license .