WORK FROM HOME: BUILDING A WEB-BASED BUSINESS

A Web-Based Home Business?

Have You Thought About…

Working from home is great – especially when you have kids. A home-based business provides flex time, the commute is a breeze and you can, in fact, earn money from home. Now, this has nothing to do with those scams you see that’ll pay you “to work at home” stuffing envelops or evaluating websites. Stay clear.

No, this is about starting your own online business. Lots of people do it. It doesn’t take a million bucks to get started. You don’t need to be a computer geek and you can build a business around the things that most interest you – things you enjoy, things at which you excel.

However, what things should you consider before getting knee-deep in a project about which you know so little? Let’s take a look.

Your Interests

If you have no experience or interest in ranking micro-cap oil stocks, it makes no sense to build a business ranking small cap stock markets around the world. Within the realm of e-commerce, the learning curve is long enough without having to learn about the topic of your site. Besides, micro-caps are boring (unless you’re a professional investor).

Instead, think about the things you enjoy. It’s human nature to enjoy those things we do well so, chances are, if you’re a first-class craftsperson (you knit, throw pots, create macramé wall hangings, refurbish antiques, etc.) the topic of your site and basis of your business is easily defined. Go with what you know. Think about what interests you. That’s your business.

Learn All You Can About SEO and SEM

Search engine optimization (SEO) is optimizing your web site for search engine spiders that crawl the web regularly (every 48 hours according to web lore). Search engine marketing (SEM) is the art and science of advertising (marketing and promoting) your web site so that web users know it’s there, visit and order something from you.

Good sources of information? Well, blogs like this one contain the most up-to-date information on everything from how to design an attractive site to how to use ASP scripting to best advantage. (Just kidding. You don’t need to know a thing about ASP scripting unless you want to go deep. If so, it’s not tough to learn and again, today most of this stuff comes in template form.)

Buy a book or two at the book store. There are plenty of online SEM experts who will be happy to sell you a $695 package on everything you need to know about web success. A couple of books from the local bookstore or library will get you started, and you can save that $695 for other, more useful purposes.

Other good sources of information? Webmaster (site owner) web sites and forums. Just Google “webmaster sites.” There’s a slew of them. Pick one, dive in and start reading. Don’t be concerned that you’re only understanding one-third of what you read. In a few days or weeks you’ll learn all about conversion ratios, back links, embedded text and search engine algorithms.

And despite the fact that it sounds like rocket science, far from it. The whole e-marketplace is comparable, in many ways, to the world of brick and mortar commerce. You need an attractive place to sell stuff, you need to advertise, process orders and returns and, of course, keep the customer satisfied. The W3 has lots of similarities to the 3-D world in which we live.

Capitalizing Your Online Business

Once you’ve learned enough about SEM basics, start comparing web hosts – the companies that provide the on-ramp to the world wide web. Go with a web hosting company that gives you a lot of freebies and toll-free tech support. Guaranteed you’ll get glitched up somewhere down the line (don’t worry, it happens to everybody and it happens in any business, online or off) and you want someone to talk you through it. Now. Some of the low-ball web hosts will nickel-and-dime your new business to death. Get the all-inclusive package and make sure it’s really all-inclusive before signing up.

Also, a good web host will provide all the web-building-database-management-secure-check-out-add-a-blog software-and-services you need free. If you have to buy this stuff at retail, you’re out of business before you even post a pixel. Remember, we’re trying to keep this cheap so you don’t have to mortgage the house. Just skip a few meals out at those fancy restaurants. You want EVERYTING. Cheap.

A web-based business is the last bastion of true entrepreneurial spirit. Try buying a McDonalds franchise. You’re talking millions in up-front capital. Your start up costs for an online business will be much lower – but there will be costs. Plan on it and budget for it. The number one reason so many online businesses fail is undercapitalization – not enough money to run the business for some time before it starts showing a profit.

And it does take time. The widely-publicized, web grand slams, like You Tube and MySpace are the exception, not the rule. Most web-based businesses won’t see a profit for months. Maybe even longer.

The smallest cost, believe it or not, is web hosting. It’s a killer, competitive industry so you can buy enough server space to create a web presence. But that’s the easy part. Then, you have to market the business. 6,000 new sites come online every day. The commercial web is growing like some mutant fungi. Marketing your web site will cost more than the web site itself, something to remember when putting together your budget. Set aside a big chunk of change for marketing.

If you can’t write a lick, you’ll have to hire a copywriter to prepare your site text. There are lots of good sources for low-cost writing services. Checkout guru.com and elance.com and post your project. Lots for cheap on these “work for hire” web sites. If you can write a lick, no problem. Do it yourself, make sure you catch all typos and go to town.

Building Your Site

You don’t have to know a thing about web site building. Today, it’s all done with templates. Choose the style you want as a back drop, “Add copy here,” get some product pictures (pictures sell products better than plain old words), add a checkout module (it really is easy if you go with a web host that provides all of this site building paraphernalia) and launch. You’re an e-trepreneur!

Marketing

When immersing yourself in the SEM world, be sure to learn about low- and no-cost marketing opportunities, sometimes called viral marketing. You can list your site in topic specific directories, syndicate content in exchange for back links, you can blog other sites – lots of ways to get your “Open for Business” sign out there for zip.

Also, learn all you can about pay per click, or PPC, advertising. The most well-known is Google AdWords – those stacks of site links that appear on lots of web sites and on Google’s search engine results pages. You can log on to Google, click on Business Solutions under the search box and learn all about PPC advertising.

There are pros and cons to this kind of promotion. One negative? You pay for each visitor to your site. That’s why it’s important to have the capital to properly market your venture. It’ll be the biggest expense you have in the first 12 months of operation.

Think Big. Plan Small.

If you envision your site as the next Amazon, don’t. The sobering fact is that 94% of all web businesses don’t make it past the first year. The 6% that do grow to profitability relied partly on smarts and partly on luck. You can do this, but think big, plan small.

Don’t mortgage the homestead, learn all you can about SEM, keep your expenses to the bare minimum and take advantage of free marketing. This blog contains numerous articles on how to market a site on the cheap. Check them out. Then, check out other resources on webmaster sites for even more information.

Finally, select a web host that wants you to succeed. These companies provide lots of disk space on a server, a tool kit filled with templates and one-click modules to add features (like a checkout or blog) to your site. Never get in deeper than you want to be.

It’s a lot to fathom and this article has either scared you away from online marketing or it’s piqued your curiosity about the possibility of building a real, genuine, profitable home business that will supplement and even supplant your current income.

And let you raise the kids, too. You’ve found a good place to start learning. So, what are you waiting for?

Later,

Webwordslinger