Starting a Free Online Business
Before starting off on any business venture, you first need to take into consideration certain aspects like, what products or services you will provide, market research, marketing and sales and more.
A free online business, is no different, start off by thinking what you want to sell, it may be your services (interests, passions, or skills) that are in high demand or even products if you choose to become an affiliate Marketer of a certain company.
The article here presents a step by step guide on how to start your free online business.
Step 1. Brainstorm Your Business Idea:
The first and crucial step towards any business is having a business idea. It’s also important to select an idea you can stick with, for the long run, as opposed to finding the cheapest and most profitable option. Building a business out of something you are passionate about increases the chances of success insurmountably and furthermore, you’ll enjoy doing it.
Since you already have the skills and passion, it saves you more time and money investing in learning or acquiring the said skill.
A good way to brainstorm your idea is to write down a list of what you can possibly do or offer and don’t filter them too soon. Later on, when you do research, you’ll get more adept at the idea and tune it respectively.
Step 2: Determine the Demand for Your Idea:
As you may have the interest and passion, is what you are offering in great demand? It is critical and logical to select an idea that can be marketed. The market also plays a huge role in assessing one’s business capabilities and longevity. Without a market, you simply won’t have a business despite providing the best, quality services or products.
Keyword Research:
Since your business operates in the online platform, an ideal place to start your research is by delving deeper into keywords related to your business idea. You need not rely solely on search engines to lay down a plan for your business, however, you’d want to make sure of the number of people searching for your idea.
To perform a keyword research, start off by making a list of words and phrases that you think most people would use to discover your business topic. Once you have your list, use a Keyword Tool to work out the math and tell you how often the terms you jotted down are searched, is a specific time frame. A keyword tool can also provide you with related keywords to use, so feel free to exploit it to the max.
With the keywords, you can then begin your reconnaissance, enter them in a search engine and check the results that pop out. Quite often top sites will be listed, you can enter them and see what they offer and work out something better to theirs. Easing off the competition and finding the popular search terms are the primary goals of using keyword tools.
Market Research:
After keyword research, market research follows. You have your keyword set and a ready market willing to pay for your idea. It is time to do a feasible market research to determine how many people can actually and are able to pay what you are offering. Market research helps you identify your target market, i.e., the people most likely to buy.
Step 3. Setting Up a Free Web Presence:
Now you have done your research and are wondering how to get to your target market and start selling. You’ll need a website for that of course.
The internet age has made it possible for an online business to flourish and there exist a number of free resources that can help you set up a Free Online Business Website. However, some factors need to be considered first:
What you’re selling, i.e., tangible goods, digital goods, affiliate goods or services, all of these require different resources.
What offers the best value and service? The adage “you get what you pay for,” is essentially true, therefore, along with the lowest cost, you want to ensure you’re getting quality.
There are numerous free options to get you started with a website, some content management platforms also give you the opportunity to create your own website for free.
Step 4. Build Your Website:
Sign up on that free platform and start building. Create a website to fit your business and most importantly you need to show potentials that you are serious about your online presence. Fortunately, most website building platforms don’t even require you to be an IT specialist.
Step 5. Monetize Your Website:
Once you create your website, the next project would clearly be creating one or more revenue streams from your website. Monetizing your website has the potential to generate a steady form of income. You can also create your own e-commerce site to better control and manage your brand.
Step 6. Market Your Online Business:
Having a web presence doesn’t mean you’ll automatically get customers or clients. Quite possibly you are competing with thousands of other similar ventures. To emerge out of this chaos, you’ll have to employ critical marketing skills to effectively and successfully market your online business.
There are hundreds of marketing strategies you can employ, a huge chunk of them are free, but before you attempt any marketing, you need to ensure first that; You’ve identified your target market and the demand for what you are offering.
Determine the ideal place to locate your market, find out there popular hanging spot and you’ll most likely discover locations that match your provisions.
Lastly, to effectively market your brand, create contents that attract and influence your market to purchase. Always remember people buy solutions, it’s pointless to simply tell them what to do.
Starting an online business shouldn’t be an arduous task as most people think. In fact, it is easy as long as you follow select guidelines and maintain focus. Moreover, with the many sources online, creating a free business online has never been easier.
I would love your feedback, questions, or insights you have into how to start a free online business. Please leave your comments below!
Thanks for your wonderful insights. The breakdown is thorough and contains plenty of useful information. I can tell you want to help. I know first hand its hard to decide how or where to start and know this will be great for someone in that position.
Keep up the great work!
Hi
Thanks for your comment. Trying to give the correct information on how to start a free online business for anyone who is truly serious in getting away from their 9-5 job or for the stay at home mom and dads or for that matter anyone that need a part time or full time job.
I’ve looked the net over for years for this and finally found Wealthy Affiliate, turned my life around all for the better. Hope you found what you where looking for. Happy business Happy life.
Wayne
Bestonlineaffiliateprogram review:
How to Start a Free Online Business- Step by Step
I like that picture of the person on the mountain with arms raised in triumph for the freedom being celebrated. It’s a personal goal of mine.
To be able to know in my heart that I can make money to live on no matter where I am is a feeling I used to have early in my life. Injury took that away. Your article has a plan for people to get that feeling of financial freedom. Thank you.
I’m glad you offered a place to go and learn each of the categories you covered in your article. Getting people to go to Wealthy Affiliate to begin is a great bit of advice. They are very friendly and the training is amazing.
Hi Paul
Stick to your personal goal and it will happen. It is the best feeling in the world to be able to work from anyplace in the world (that has WI-Fi) . Getting your financial freedom and being able to work from anywhere you want is the number one choice of millions of people. Going here to Wealthy Affiliate, taking there training and getting help from the community is how to make this dream come true.
Wayne
Hi Wayn,
First of all thank you for the post!
I have some observations about the content as well as about the form.
1. For the content: I find that the article is too light and does not present practical information for the reader who must go elsewhere to complete his learning.
But, it remains that the article is well structured with titles and subtitles.
2. In my point of view, it’ll be better to choose between 3 to 5 social media for sharing the article. Having ten social media channels scatters the reader a bit and drives him to skip this step.
Good luck
Youness
Hello Youness
Thank you for the comment and I’m glad you liked the structure of the site and I agree there is to many social media channels, I have just put up a new program and got carried away. Thanks
Wayne
I’m just starting out in the online world and unfortunately I think I may have skipped a few steps after reading your article.
Most interested in “determining the demand” as I’m not really sure how to go about this in my chosen market.
Look forward to trawling your site for some more info. Thanks for sharing.
Determining the demand requires you to do a search for your product by trying different search terms, Jaaxy is the #1 search tool for this as it tells how how many visitors you can expect from it. It also depends on what you are selling, you can go on amazon and check out your product there as they show you what is trending and hot. Generally speaking most anything sells well on the internet if it sells well in the stores on the street. The best policy is to sell or promote what you are passionate about as you already know all about it.
Wayne
I enjoyed reading your article. It was a most educative guide to build an online business from scratch. Easy to understand the steps described in detail. Important points highlighted in layman’s language. I will look forward to more such articles. Building online business from scratch seems possible now. I understood the importance of market & keyword research being such an integral part of online business.
I,m glad that you enjoyed the article and will help on your way to success. It seems like it’s a lot to do and out of our reach but once you start doing these things on a daily basis it become easy and natural then you can add another step and gradually work your way up, it will all soon become 2ed nature to you.
There is more awesome training at Wealthy Affiliate and it is free to join, no credit card required.
A well written concise article. It is important to learn that niche market research are essential before starting an online business. Great guide to give food for thought to a newbie or a professional. It will be great if more tips can be given for the steps outlined for a better understanding. Overall an interesting read!
I’m glad you enjoyed my article and hope you got some new insights into starting a free sight online. You can get a tons more info on this subject at Wealthy Affiliate all for free with no credit card needed.
Wayne
Thanks for writing this article. I am thinking about starting a new website on a new topic that I haven’t written about before. You mentioned in #2 that you should Determine the Demand for Your Idea. You have given a few ideas regarding research. Thank you for that. My question is that I have heard that a niche with only a handful of visitors still has the potential to be profitable. Do you believe this? And if so what is the best way to go about growing this idea into an online business.
Thank you for your comment and as for the niche you would like to get into, yes I do believe it can still be profitable but may take a little more work.
Now how to make it profitable, without knowing the niche I will use pets for example. You could start with dogs and go with diseases, causes and what to treat them with or do you need to take them to the vet, then maybe toys and from there to dishes and food Etc. There are hundreds maybe thousands of good long tail keywords that you can come up with for these using Jaaxy using the free or the premium program.
I hope that I have given you some insight into what you are planning to do, Good Luck.
Wayne
Hi! I first came upon your site on this page, but I love your ‘Next page’ and ‘previous page’ arrows! I plan on investigating further! Thank you for delivering a great tutorial!
Hi Sherry
I hope you find what you are looking for, you should take a look at Wealthy Affiliate if you are working toward making money online.