Before Getting Started[]
Before you get started find out if people are interested in buying your products or services. Find out who your competitors are and whether the market can sustain your business.
The first of the steps to starting a small business is to carefully consider these questions:
- What do you have to offer?
- What makes you an expert?
- Do you have all of the education and skills you'll need to compete successfully in the marketplace or will you need to do some brushing up or retraining first?
- Does the product or service meet a need?
- Is this a seasonal product or service, or can you market it all year long?
- How sensitive is marketing this product or service to general economic conditions? When the economy is weak, how do you think your business will be affected?
- Will you be energized by going through the steps to starting this particular small business - is it something you'll love to do or sell - or are you just going through the motions of starting a small business to try to make some money?
Which Business Structure[]
What type of business structure will you use? Will you be a sole trader, in a partnership, a company or a trust? There are advantages and disadvantages to consider for each.
- Sole trader: an individual trading on their own
- Partnership: an association of people or entities running a business together, but not as a company
- Trust: an entity that holds property or income for the benefit of others
- Company: a legal entity separate from its shareholders.
And learn more here .
Should I Go Online Early?[]
Yes, if you have a business, you should have a website. You should at the very least have a presence on the web so that customers, potential employees, business partners and perhaps even investors can quickly and easily find out more about your business and the products or services you have to offer.
These days you can have a decent website with free domain and hosting in a second by using this online website builder. Start blogging, sharing information about your services, products and activities. Connect your website to Facebook and Twitter to grow your customer base. Use your website as a tool to test the market and demands. Start building connections, referrals and more.
Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail[]
In reality, business plans can take a long time to write, require that you have a tremendous amount of data at your fingertips, depend in part on projections, and often are responsible for creating a long list of research you still need to conduct and other work you need to complete. A Business Plan is Simply a Must-Have for Some Businesses. Read here and here and there .