Starting a Business
Starting a business is every person’s dream. The excitement you get when you think of becoming your own boss is propelling you to start your business. But then, there are several obstacles that are keeping you from doing it. Among this is the lack of capital or money to run the business.
Before you start a business, there are several areas you need to analyze. Your business has to be perfect on paper before you start actually working on it. A business, just like the mind can be the biggest asset or liability you have. You need to plan. Creating a business plan is important as it will enhance your clarity and take you through all the important aspects of your business. When it comes to an online business, planning is everything.
Whether you have money or not, your plan will hugely determine the success or failure of your business. When you plan, always use strategies that have been proven to work. Do not be the one reinventing the wheel. Learn from the mistakes that others have made in the past.
Will you launch the business alone or will you have a partner? It is important to consider finding a potential partner to help you start your business. If you are a lone wolf it will be better if you just do it alone. If you want to have a partner, go for someone who is as ambitious as you are. Just like employees on ResumesPlanet, rush my essay, essaymama.com, or even ninjaessays.com your goal should be to take the business to the next level.
Ensure that you have common goals. Get to know what your partner will expect in the end. A perfect partner can greatly improve your chances of success. And the relationship will always get better.
So you already have a business idea in mind, but you just don’t have the cash you need to start it up. Guess what, you are not alone! Most people across the globe find themselves in such a situation at one point in their lives. But they do it anyway. As the saying goes, there is always an excuse but never a good reason.
Today, I am going to share with you five detailed steps that every successful entrepreneur with an online business followed to reach where they are today. Most of them started with no money, followers or even email lists. They just followed these five steps.
The Broke Entrepreneur
It is important for me to share a short story about an entrepreneur from Singapore who wanted to start an online business but he did not have money. Just a year ago, Tommy started his online business that dealt with educating entrepreneurs with online businesses.
Today he has more than eight thousand people who attend his online conferences. Before he started his online business, he was a co-founder of two different companies in Singapore. And they both failed. He was totally broken.
So when he started his online business, he had very little money for marketing and other essential business expenses. He had to come up with a way to start and grow the business without money, employees, fame or following. Majority of people find themselves stuck in this position. They have mortgages to pay, bank loans, children’s education; the list is endless.
A great thing about an online business is that you get to save a lot of money as compared to the traditional business which requires you to pay office rent, part-time and full-time employees, equipment, insurance, and furniture. Similar to writers on top essay writing services, like cheap essay service or essayhave review, it is possible for you to start your online business with no money if you follow the five steps below.
1. Get to Understand What Your Business Will Be About
What are you interested in? This is the first question you need to answer to discover what you are good at. Are you experienced in marketing? Sales? Software development? Maybe e-commerce? Most successful entrepreneurs earn a living from what they love to do.
Starting a business that deals with something you do not love will just lead to failure. In Tommy’s case, he had over seven years’ experience in marketing and four years’ experience in running his businesses. He loves anything related to marketing and being a successful entrepreneur. And so he created an online educational business for entrepreneurs.
2. Going Niche
After figuring out what you love doing, it is now the ideal time to start thinking about niche. So, let’s say you love teaching people how to attract and retain more clients. In your mind, you may be having the thought that every person who is in the business of providing service wants to have more clients and therefore you should be targeting everyone who may be interested in the service you provide such as a lawyer, coach and teacher right? Absolutely not!
A major mistake that most entrepreneurs make is targeting a very broad market. Do not join the herd! Go for a niche market instead. Just as a writer from AssignmentMasters understands who he or she is writing for, you should understand clearly the small group of people that you will be targeting.
So, instead of teaching everyone how to attract and retain clients, you can be more specific by teaching for example female trainers in New York, how to get and retain more clients.
Since you have a clear idea who your target is, you can now focus your time and energy on discovering where your target is located and how they can grow their businesses exponentially. You can now start creating content that specifically targets this small group of interest. Later, when your business has grown bigger, you can broaden your target audience. But for now, focus on a small group.
3. Choosing Your Products
Any online business falls under two categories namely online services and informative or digital products.
Online Services
An online service simply involves you providing a type of service or doing a job for your clients. It could be providing software development services or social media marketing. In our example, it could be providing a specific service to help fitness coaches attract and retain clients. Many online businesses which offer online services succeed because of the determination of the entrepreneur.
Digital Products
You can think of digital products as things such as e-books, online memberships, videos and online courses. There are those digital products that are quite easy to create such as videos, audio files and e-books and there are those that are more complicated and may require a huge amount of money especially if you do not have an idea on how to code or use WordPress.
So if you are going to teach other people how to attract and retain clients, you can write an e-book about attracting fitness clients or you can teach an online course about it. You can write the whole book in Google Docs or Microsoft Word and then design the cover with Canva.
Starting an online course is quite easier than you think. What you have to do is record videos and prepare a few notes. You also need a good camera and microphone. The camera does not need to be professional. You can start by using your phone camera. You can also watch videos on YouTube on how to prepare and sell your online courses easily.
4. Making People Aware that Your Business Exists
After creating your digital product or defining your service, it is now time to move to another crucial section: Marketing. Your marketing strategies will determine your success or failure. It is important to ensure that every strategy you use has been well thought about and has proven to work in the past. Marketing is very expensive. Have you noticed how big organizations spend a lot of money on marketing?
And just because you have completed your online course or e-book does not automatically mean that people will start buying from you or paying for the services you offer. You need to take some time to make your target market aware that your business exists. You also need to make them trust you.
When it comes to your marketing strategy, the first thing you need to find out is which medium will reach your target market best. Are you going to use a website? YouTube channel? Facebook? Instagram? LinkedIn?
Choose a marketing channel that your target market loves to visit on a regular basis. Do not waste time marketing your business on Instagram if your target market does not exist there. Most entrepreneurs reach their target audiences easily using YouTube because any person can find all the answers he or she wants. Most people also visit YouTube for entertainment.
YouTube is currently the second largest search engine in the world. Why should you not use it to market your business? It is cheap, easily accessible and easy to use.
5. Give Your Target Audience Free Useful Content
After figuring out which medium you will be using to reach your target market, you will need to create free content that your audience can read or watch. There are some people who never give free content to their target market because they are afraid no one will actually buy their products or services. But is this true?
Take a moment and remember the last time you were surfing and you came across something interesting such as a book or an audio recording. You tried to get a summary or something related to the product for you to review but the site only insisted that you buy. No free content. Would you go ahead and buy such a product? Personally, no! Who wants to spend money on something he or she is not really familiar with?
Take another scenario. You are surfing the web and you come across a book that interests you. When you try to get a short summary, you are given a free e-book, a short video for you to watch and the summary you had requested. Would you go ahead and buy the book? Personally, I would purchase it because I now understand what I am buying and what I expect to see in the book.
People are curious. They want to get to know you better before investing their time and money on your products or services. If you fail to give them free useful information, your product or service is dead!
My friend Tommy gives away two free sessions on average for every online conference he runs. He gives away videos, articles and interviews as free content and in return, he gets to build the awareness of his brand, trust and personally connect with his audience.
You do not need to spend your money on creating content. You can use your phone, so long as its camera is in good working condition, a mic and video or movie software. Most phones have these software nowadays.
You also do not need to spend your money shooting pictures for your Instagram or writing articles on your blog. Other types of free useful content include free e-books, guides, workbooks, email, worksheets and infographics.
Does Creating a Website or Paid Ads Cost Money?
You have definitely heard that creating websites cost a lot money, right? Or Paid Ads like those we come across on Facebook. Thanks to advancement in technology, we have several options to choose from. If you currently have no money to start your online business, all you need to do is invest more time in it and work harder.
You can create your website for free using WordPress. So if you do not know how to create a website using WordPress, you should be ready to invest your time to learn how to use it. As the saying goes, there is no thing such as something for nothing in this world. Take your time and watch YouTube videos. Get to learn how to create your website using WordPress so that you do not have to spend your hard earned cash paying a website developer or designer.
You should always keep in mind that simplicity is key to success. It is better to create a website with few pages. The website should be so simple that it can be used by a seven-year-old child. Spending a lot of time creating a very attractive and complicated website will lead to disaster. Before making it too fancy, get several clients first. If you desire something that is easier to create than a website, go for a landing page.
If you have a digital product that you want to sell, you can look for platforms that do not charge monthly fees. With the internet, you can find anything you want. If you have online courses, you can host and sell them on platforms such as Teachable. FetchApp is also great platform for your e-book.
Do not start using paid ads at the moment. There are very many ways in which you can promote your service or digital product at no cost. Don’t think of using paid ads now because you have no money. As an entrepreneur, you only use what you have right now. Focus on free but effective marketing strategies now.
Conclusion
So there you have the five simple steps to start your online business with no cash. It all starts with you thinking about what you enjoy doing and what you are good at. Secondly, you think of a small group of people who will be interested in buying from you, that is your target market. Thirdly, you choose what you are going to sell, either a service, digital product or both.
Fourth, you decide which marketing channel you will use to reach your target market easily. And fifth, you create free useful content which you will give away. Remember, when you stop giving away free useful content, your business starts to die at that very moment. Your customers want to know who you are and what they are buying. If you refuse to share with them what you have, they will also refuse giving you their money.
Get to understand what works and what does not work for you and your business. You can only do this by practicing what you learn. Do not waste your time on strategies that you find them difficult to understand. There is always an alternative way to making something happen.
You will definitely reach a point where you will feel like giving up. Maybe your customers will not buy your products or services as fast as you anticipated or you might find it difficult working on a job while creating your business. Do not give up. Do what you can every day to the best of your abilities. Be patient. As an entrepreneur, you will definitely need to be patient most of the time to reap the rewards. As the saying goes, patience pays.
Starting an online business is just like preparing a dish. If you follow a proven recipe, the dish will be delicious. It does not matter who is doing the cooking. With an online business, all you have to do is follow the five steps outlined above. This system works until proven otherwise and it will not fail you.