During the search process and from several trial and error trials , finally what I have been running for quite a long time and I am still working on it today, namely in the business line of providing web hosting and website creation.
If calculated, it's been more or less 5 years. However, if you want to summarize it and make it a guide, I think I know a little. In fact, many are more "masters" than me even though they have just started to enter the realm of the online business world.
But, it's okay , while still learning and remembering the process I've been through, let me write some notes on starting this business via the internet.
After all, the stages in starting an online business are arguably typical (almost the same), both for product and service-based online businesses.
3 Steps to Starting an Online Business
There are many varieties of online business models, from those that are completely online and do not involve physical products, to those that involve physical products.
Well, this last one I will try to discuss. Businesses that involve physical products or services that involve physical activity are often online businesses that are commonly done offline.
For example: selling fashion products, selling herbs, selling cars and motorized vehicles and their accessories, selling house and land properties, installing air conditioning services, drilling wells making services, interior design services, and so on.
And to start with, based on the experience from my business trip for more than 5 years, I came to a conclusion that if any business is going online, there are at least 3 things we can do in the early stages.
What are the steps? See what happened next.
1. Decide What You Want To Sell
Your first step is to decide what to offer, or what you want to sell. Or if you want to build a blog site, determine the topic of your website.
No need to be too detailed, the important thing is that you have a big picture of your business plan.
In my experience, this first step is the toughest. Why?
- Because we have to compile a business concept / business model.
- Must research on products, competitors, and market trends.
- Determine which one to execute first.
- It doesn't have to be perfect
- And those three things used to make me despair, because there were so many opportunities, they tended to be selective, so that time ran out at this stage.
The obstacle is, sometimes we want everything to be perfect.
I suggest for this initial stage, start with what you can.
You must be willing to invest time, effort, and maybe money, to learn and repeat if the product / service you are trying to sell is not yet paying off for you.
Starting From the Market
The tips, do market research and find what people need. It could be people in your neighborhood, or people on the internet.
And when talking about people on the internet, we can find a collection of many internet users on social media sites and forums, such as Facebook, Instagram, KasKus, and so on.
Find their needs, and find solutions.
The tool I like best, is Google Trends . We can see what is currently popular in people's searches based on country location, time of day, and search category.
For a businessman, this information is very valuable!
If you have found what you want to sell, let's move on to the second step, which is creating a selling website. It doesn't have to be cool, the important thing is that it is informative and comfortable for visitors to explore the content in it.
2. Create a Website to Sell and Promote
The second step is to create a website.You will be struggling more with things that are technical in nature, such as learning to install website applications, and maybe learning a little web programming language.
To create a website, you will need a domain name and a hosting lease.
What is a domain? And what is hosting?
- Domain, is the name of your website, for example: www.namausahasaya.com .
- Like home, domain name is your home address. So try when you decide to create a domain name, adjust it to your name, or the topic of your website, or your type of business.
- Hosting, is a place to put your domain name. If you use the house analogy above, hosting is like land. The bigger the hosting capacity, the bigger the land size of your house.
- For starters, you may not need too much hosting space. So, you can prepare around 200 thousand to buy a domain and hosting.
Estimates for buying a domain name are around 130 thousand. But remember, domain names are only valid for a year, so next year if you still want to use them, you'll have to renew. You can use the rest to buy hosting space.
Hehe, not bad .. I haven't started yet, I have to prepare capital.
Eits, but calm down. The good news is, you can still create a website for free. For that, you can start creating a website with a free blog.
Free Website Platform
On the internet there are several free website and blog providers, the most famous of which are WordPress and Blogspot .
Both platforms are widely recognized by internet users in the world, and are also easier for search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing to recognize.
Please you can choose as you like. But if I may suggest, go with WordPress.
Simple Website Design
For the website display design, use the standard one first, and it doesn't have to be really cool. Don't be tacky, use bold colors that make your eyes hurt, or use different types of fonts.
The priority of website design that should be used is as much as possible that makes visitors comfortable, and easily gets the information needed, so that they feel at home and want to linger on the website.
After that, start doing promotions, so that your website business and business start to be recognized by others.
Do Website Promotion
Later, after the website is ready, you can fill it in with the product / service information that you have, then distribute the link to your selling website both offline and online.
The easiest, is via online. Namely by distributing these web links to several social media sites, forum sites, marketplace sites, business directory sites, and others.
For those who are offline, you can distribute your website info to the community you have, or it can also be to your neighbors, work friends, relatives, and others.
The more people who know your site and the products you sell, the greater the chance of your site being visited by many people.
3. Business Automation
When the business has started, the wheels of the business have started to turn, it is better to start to do systemization, so that it is easy to scale up .We have to start building a system so that the business can run, even without our full role.
Usually there will be repetitive patterns, such as marketing, stock purchases, sales flows, packaging processes, and so on.
Tools for Business Leverage
After knowing and understanding the ins and outs of our business, things that are repetitive in nature can begin to be delegated to others, or use tools / tools such as software or applications.
If you already have funds and it is considered possible to hire staff to help with existing business processes, do it.
It can save you the time you used to spend on a technicality, to divert into thinking about accelerating business.
But if that's not possible, try investing in things like buying software or applications that can speed up your workflow.
Examples: billing and invoice applications, online marketing tools, promotional banner templates, and so on.
Small Team But Powerful
One of the benefits of running an online business, we can make efficiency in terms of employee costs, buildings / offices, and transportation.
Several startups when running an online business, many of which have a core team consisting of only a few people.
Yes, maybe 1-3 people, the rest are freelancers , and they don't have to work on-site, but can be done anywhere, even from their homes.
The important thing is there is internet access and a computer. Oia, don't forget, snack
So that from the cost side we can also save and concentrate on things that can increase turnover and sales. For example, to increase product stock, and increase the online promotional budget.
Conclusion
Well, that's a big three-step picture of how to start my version of an online business.
Of course, these steps can still be developed and adapted to the conditions you are living in.
The important thing, just start first. Then do it persistently, step-by-step, understand the concept, and don't have to target grandiose results just yet.