How To Start an Online Business

Starting an online business has become a great way for many people across the world to escape the traditional job and take control of their financial future. You get maximum flexibility with your work time, your daily tasks and can see a direct correlation between your effort and success online.

If you’re wondering how to start a small online business, then this is a quick guide to help you build a business, from scratch with no previous entrepreneurship experience.

How to Start an Online Business

So here are the steps to starting your online business.

Step 1 – Choosing a Market

The first decision that you’ve got to have is deciding what market you would like to enter. You can’t do anything until you know what you would like to do. You could create affiliate marketing businesses, eCommerce stores, dropshipping, consulting, sell services or sell advertising space with news/articles. There are endless choices.

Step 2 – Choose Business Name/Domain

Now you need to choose a business name/domain for your website. There are many things to consider when choosing a name for your business. For instance, is there a domain available associated with that name (check here for free), does the name create positive vibes for your business?

Consider thinking about what works for your competitors and other online brands and be creative. You can always use a free Business Name generator to help you.

Don’t delay in buying your domain name either. Domains can go very fast. If you’ve found a good domain, you should buy it quickly.

During this phase, think about branding. Logo designs, business cards, colors for your brand and more should be selected early.

Step 3 – Choosing Hosting

Next, you need to choose your website host. There are lots of ways that you can do this. One of the best is to think about what your business needs. If you’re looking for shopping, then you will want Shopify or WordPress. If you’re looking for blogging for affiliate marketing, then WordPress is one of the best options.

You can then use this to find your host. Many hosting platforms have different attributes that make them better. For instance, small online service providers might be best using Wix.

When you’ve chosen the best host for you, you can then buy a package. Some of them, like Shopify, offer you a free trial. It is also important to note that some platforms like WordPress don’t have specific hosts, but can be hosted on places like Cloudways.

Step 4 – Build your Business’ Website

Now you need to spend some time building your website. Depending on your platform and host there can be a page builder or lots of great templates for you to use. Always look at the templates and see which ones you would like to use. There are plenty of recommendations on our blog pages to give you a head start.

In this part, you should look at adding in products/services, payment methods and more. You should also look at ways to improve your SEO. This can be done with some apps like those found on WordPress and Shopify.

Step 5 – Test

Before going live, always test your website. Don’t just do it yourself. Get friends, families and others to test your website with ease. They should look for errors like links not connecting to a page/the right page, images that look wrong, SEO is incorrect and more.

Once you’ve found errors, try to correct them quickly.

Final Word: How to Start a Small Online Business

Building a small online business isn’t tough. It is really simple to do, especially if you follow the simple steps above. Take your first journey and become an online entrepreneur with the help of this free Business Name Generator and Domain Name Checker now.