How to House a Successful Online Business

The internet has been a boon for entrepreneurs and business owners. In this article, we’ll talk about what it takes to start an online business successfully. When you’re ready to join the digital revolution and take your company online, there are a few things you need to do first.

Consider the Business Structure

If you plan to be an employee, consider becoming a contractor. Learn all you can about the world of independent contractors. The IRS defines an independent contractor as a person who is NOT under your direct control, and has no obligation to you (except for payment). Someone is a contractor if they work with money coming in from more than one source; they provide their own tools and equipment; they get their own workspace and use it on their own time. There are state laws that define what it means to be a full-time or part-time contractor. If you want to become your company’s sole employee, read the small business articles at TaxMama.com.

Update the Business Plan

When you’re ready to start, write your business plan. You’ll need this document to apply for a tax identification number and a state or federal business license. Your business plan will explain your company and its goals, outline the steps you’ll take, and show where you see the company in three years or so.

Consider Your Location and Starting Capital

Start your online business in a place that has an established infrastructure for internet commerce. You don’t have to own an entire state or even a city; any thriving location will do. If you want to start up in another country, be sure it has a good business infrastructure first and foremost. It’s nice if you can live there, too.

Lots of people like to launch their companies on the coasts, but you need to consider things like traffic, business costs, and overhead in addition to the start-up capital. Try to estimate what it will cost you to get your business up and running. For example, if you plan on using a certain type of software or web design service, realize what the yearly cost is going to be. You may decide that it’s too costly and work around it. The point is, estimate costs, and work around them as you need to. Think about all the other costs that come with running a business, such as website development and hosting. You may want to stay on your parent’s computer or in a rented office space until your company is ready to expand.

Work on Your Passion

A lot of people become entrepreneurs because they’ve decided they want to start their own business. The rest of us are born entrepreneurs, and learn the craft by doing it over many years, so it’s best not to take this step too fast. Assess what kind of business you really want to start and why you want to start it. Have a vision of where you want to be, and then work toward that dream. If you don’t know what type of business you want to start, read some examples of the different types (http://www.AboutBusinessOnline.com/Business-Types).

Put Some Money Away

When you have a business idea, your first step is to put some money aside to cover tax payments and other expenses like website development. Your accountant can help you with this step—get him or her on board before you launch your company so that he/she can get a head start on things like taxes and fees associated with running your account.

Choose the Right Domain and Hosting

Next, you’ll need to set up a domain name for your business. If you are using a personal domain name, it should be in your company’s legal name. Your domain needs to connect to your business, not yourself (your personal website might have pictures of your kids and family on it, but not necessarily – back up those photos somewhere else). You should look at sites like AboutBusinessOnline.com for information about top hosting services and domains. You can always change domains later if needed, so don’t worry too much about choosing the right one the first time around.

Choose Your Software Choices

Your software choices are up to you, but the industry has standardization and so there is less risk and less worry about choosing products that don’t work well together. The easiest way to choose the right one is to sign up for a free trial of a product and see how it works for you. Pay attention to what other people think about the program. For example, if 90% of your potential customers give your program scathing reviews, then you may choose a different program. If it’s only 5% or less, then maybe you have chosen the right one.

Choose Your Web Hosting

If you go with a hosting company (i.e. like SiteGround), be sure they support the type of software you need to start your business. If they don’t, go with the hosting service another company has already used.

Install Your System and Customize It

Once you have your domain name and hosting, it’s time to prepare your system for startup. Make sure you’ve used a good program like Linux/Unix or Windows Server to back up all your files before you start working on your site. It is crucial that you know how to do this properly. Once the system is backed up, follow instructions for transferring files from the server onto a local computer so that you can customize it further.

Choose a Payment Processor

In order to get your website up and running, you’ll need a payment processor. This will give you an additional way to collect payments. There are many choices – the most popular is PayPal, but other companies include Square, Stripe, and much more. These processors will help you run your business so that you don’t have to worry about collecting payments on your site and returning money to your customers if they are late with their payments.

Conclusion

Start up your online business. You’ll definitely have to test things out for a while and make sure that everything is working the way you need it to. For example, you should make sure your site is working properly on mobile devices, if that’s how most of your customers access it. If you choose to sell products on your site or get into affiliate marketing/selling other products, don’t just drop them in there without testing them first – someone could have told you it doesn’t work with an earlier version of the product or a particular payment processor.