Starting your online business Starting your online business

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1 Starting your online business 1FREE DOWNLOAD

2 Setting up an online business: A path to success There are plenty of reasons why you might consider setting up an online business. It could be that you want to extend your current bricks-and-mortar company into the online world. This could help you reach a wider audience and increase profits. Or maybe you have a great idea for a new venture in a niche market, and you want to see if it could be a lucrative endeavour. You may simply be looking for a fresh alternative to your current career. After all, who hasn t fantasised about becoming their own boss, setting their own hours and becoming wealthy from one of their own ideas? Today, shopping in the online world is a popular option, with millions of web surfers choosing to make their purchases from the comfort of home. And it s easy to see why so many decide to buy on the web - there s so much choice available and you can shop at any time of the day or night. Plus, it s also extremely easy: no travelling to the stores, no crowds of people and no fruitless searches for just the right thing. With the frequency of online sales constantly increasing, creating an online business could be a fabulous choice for anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit. And with the right guidance and good business sense, the company you create can become successful and profitable. Why the web is the perfect location for your new business In the past, starting a business required a significant amount of investment. Not only did you have to worry about paying employees and procuring goods but there was also the question of finding premises - and in many cases, remodelling, decorating and maintaining it. But with a web-based business, things are different and you re sure to enjoy the low overheads that come with this business model. 2

3 Depending on the nature of the products you sell, you ll probably still require storage facilities, and a place to conduct business, but it needn t be an expensive high-street shop. In fact, many online business owners can run their business from home, using the garage or a spare room as a mini warehouse and office space. If your web-based business is still starting out, or if you choose to keep it relatively small, you may not require additional staff either. Some operations become family-run ventures, while others might make use of outsourcing for specialist services like accounting and marketing. The savings that you make on your premises can have additional benefits as well. Many online businesses choose to reflect the low overheads in their prices, giving them an opportunity to offer lower prices than competitors and win extra business. Additionally, if you have a business on the internet, you can reach a much wider audience than with a traditional shop. Some e-commerce sites may choose to only cater to a British or European market, due to the complexities of international shipping, while others may decide to make their products available worldwide. How to make your online business prosper If you want to run a lucrative online company, it s important to make sure that you do plenty of research to understand the market in which you are trading. Take time to figure out the products you want to sell and the customers who will be buying them. You should also endeavour to learn all you can about the economic factors that could have an impact on the venture so that you can take steps to avoid any problems. Questions to consider are: Which sectors are the most profitable? Is there a niche market in which you would like to operate? What kind of experience do you have? What will be your brand identity? Who are your competitors and how will you differentiate your business? What is the best way to conduct market research? Additionally, be sure to spend time considering things such as your business plan, the name of your company, how it will be funded and the type of organisation it will be. All of these things will influence the success of the enterprise. 3

4 Once your new project is well on its way, you should plan to market it to ensure that it reaches your potential clients. With the popularity of search engine marketing, marketing and social networking, promoting your company doesn t need to be expensive. The key is to create good, unique content that your users will find useful and that others will want to link to. Remember that if your site is helpful and provides valuable information, it will become a valuable resource, attracting new customers and improving your search engine rankings. As for any business, offering customer service that is friendly and professional is also vital. But online, this can be even truer since the instantaneous nature of the internet means that unhappy clients can quickly make their feelings known. Therefore, always be aware of the attitudes about your business, and work swiftly and efficiently to ensure the happiness of your customers. After all, word-of-mouth advertising is free and extremely effective! 4

5 What you need to do when you start a business This link to HMRC s website provides information on what you need to do when you start a business, their website says.. You will find links to guidance on what you need to do for tax and National Insurance purposes when you start up a business as a self-employed person, a partnership or a limited company. You will also find links to additional help and support HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) offer new businesses Click here to visit site How and when to register for VAT I have included this link to HMRC s website in response to many requests I receive for information regarding when and how to register for VAT. If you re unsure about whether to register for VAT, this guide will help to answer many of your questions. It explains when you must register and also when you can register voluntarily, and why you might benefit from voluntary registration. Click here to read the guide 5

6 What happens when you swap coffee and Sunday papers for a pasting table and numb fingers I often receive s from people who are just starting out on ebay, asking me how much capital they actually need to get going and I always tell them that you really need very little to enable you to purchase your first batch of stock. I spent about 150 on my first small wholesale lot, so this is around the figure that you should aim to have to enable you to get started. Years ago I used to enjoy going to Car Boot sales from time to time not as a buyer, but as a seller. I used to regularly have a good old clear out, load up the car with my junk, throw in the pasting table and off I d go at the crack of dawn down to my local racecourse where a Car Boot sale was held every Sunday morning. This was a long time before I started my ebay business and I used to do it simply to make a bit of extra cash once every few months. It s true when they say one man s junk is another man s treasure because I used to regularly make over 100 from the bits and pieces that were sitting in my house taking up space and gathering dust. So, thinking about raising cash to buy your first wholesale lot, I wondered whether rather than just having a clear out at home, it might be profitable to purchase a load of items from a cash and carry for say between 50 and 75 and then sell these items on at double the price at a Car Boot sale, thus doubling my money to spend on stock for ebay. You might be thinking, why go to the trouble of buying stock at a cash and carry and then selling it at a car boot sale just to make money to buy stock for ebay doesn t this sound a bit long-winded? Why not cut out the middleman in this case the Car Boot sale and just buy some items from a cash and carry and list them on ebay? Well, you could do that, however the thing with ebay is that you have to do your research and be absolutely sure that the items you are going to list will sell and quite honestly, a random batch of cheap cash and carry items most probably won t! However, cash and carry items are ideal for Car Boot sales where you can reach a wide range of people from all walks of life who are mostly just looking for cheap knick-knacks i.e. non specifics. 6

7 People go to Car Boot sales for something to do on a Sunday but they are never really looking for anything in particular. A bargain is a bargain though and most can t resist buying something whether they want it or not! So, as I have said, I wanted to test this theory out and so on a cold and windy Sunday, instead of being curled up on the sofa reading the Sunday papers, I could be found shivering behind a very wobbly pasting table displaying my goods at my local Car Boot sale. Once I had beaten off the rabble who tried to actually climb in to my car boot as I was unpacking my stuff I hadn t even got it out of the boxes and people were poking their noses into my car asking what I was selling I set myself up, arranged everything nicely and waited for my customers. I had for sale a range of goods that I purchased at random from this website: in bulk. I bought packs of dishcloths, cutlery with novelty ends (?), bottle openers, toy robots, pirate swords and kites. I then added a few items of my own that I wanted to get rid of after our recent loft conversion. So my total spend was about 52 plus delivery at 7.95, so I spent under 60 including delivery and had a total of 70 items to sell. And I purposely wasn t too choosy about what I was buying because as I have said, the market at Car Boots is very wide. My plan was to buy cheap and make preferably 100% profit on each item I sold. My trick was to put only a couple of each item out at a time (to disguise the fact that I did in fact have multiples of each item) mixed in with my personal stuff, so that interested buyers assumed that the items were limited and if they wanted them they would have to buy now. I was also careful to keep the money I made on my personal stuff separate from my purpose bought items so that I could see exactly how much profit I made. My aim was to at least double my initial investment of 60, so I wanted to come home with about 120 or near enough. Each item I had purchased cost me on average 85p, so I needed to try and sell everything on my stall for anything over 1.70 per item. This is about right because to be honest, Car Boot sale buyers are looking to part with up to about 2.00 maximum per item they buy preferably much less if they think you are a push-over! Anyway, to cut to the chase I didn t sell everything but near enough! As luck would have it I had the kites and Sunday was so windy that I sold all of them within an hour at 3.00 each! Brilliant, but definitely a stroke of luck and not prior planning on my part! 7

8 Pretty much everything else went except the novelty cutlery probably not to everyone s taste I have 4 sets left which are now residing in my own cutlery drawer and providing much amusement to my children. I totted up my loot and overall had a grand total of this was largely due to the kites selling at more than I thought which more than made up for the disastrous novelty cutlery! So all in all it wasn t a bad morning s work. No lie in and 5 hours behind a pasting table but I was 81 richer, well 76 richer after I took out the Car Boot entrance fee of a fiver, so in my book it was definitely worth doing and if I was starting out on ebay right now and wanted some capital, this is what I would do why not give it a try yourself? I know that 76 isn t huge riches, but if you set yourself a target and did say four car boot sales in a month and made 50 each time, that s 200 which is more than enough to get started on ebay. Alternatively, you could do two Car Boot sales a month with purpose bought goods, make 50 a time and that would give you an extra 100 a month to do what you like with and all for just a few hours work. 8