Starting Business Isn’t Rocket Science!

Starting business doesn’t have to be the end of your sanity as far as you know it. We often hear stories of people who start an online business with dreams of quitting their day jobs and spending more time doing the things they love, but instead find themselves working tediously long hours scrambling for money just to pay the rent.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Of course we have to invest an incredible amount of time and effort to build a successful enterprise, but it’s about working as smart possible.

The early stages of business planning and research are where you should determine whether your idea will be a success or not. Before any money is invested you must figure out the ins and outs of your business. Some important points to consider include:

• - Clarifying for yourself what your product is exactly and who your target market is. Determining this will give you focus and assist you in later steps when it comes to competition and market saturation research, consumer demand, marketing and sustainability and contingency planning.
  

• - Determine who your target market is. By knowing who you are selling to you will be able to customize your product to fill the needs of that particular niche. Here, it is better to focus on a specific market segment rather than have a broad reach. We’ve all heard the phrase ‘jack of all trades and master of none’. As a starting business you will no doubt face a barrage of competition from day one. It will be better in the long run if you can get to the top of your niche and then think about expanding later, rather than be mediocre across several segments and wonder why you you’re not achieving the progress you desired.
  

• - Know your competition. Once you have your particular market segment in focus, find out who your competition are. List them in descending order and figure out why they are in the position they’re in. Search them in various search engines using terms to describe your niche to find out who are the most popular. Why are they so popular? How does my product differ from theirs? Remember here that their ‘product’ isn’t simply just the price of the digital camera or wholesale clothing item for sale, it’s the entire package. It’s the way they present their information on their website, the ease of website use, the product and industry information they offer, product range, target audience etc.
  

Once you know your competition, you should shift your focus back to your product and determine from here whether you’re ‘product’ will be better than the competition. If you’re satisfied that your product will be strong enough to beat the competitors in your list, it’s time to start planning the business.

We will address the business plan in later topics. Always remember to work smart as well as hard.