Mistakes to Avoid While Starting an Online Business

From experience, time is a certain commodity that along with the money you just cannot get back once it is gone. Money can be made again but time cannot be retrieved. Many mistakes and bad decisions can end up with you losing a significant amount of time that could've been done on another project and losing a lot of money.

No Plan and Understanding the Market Value

We all have many great ideas and get very excited once we think it is going to solve the crisis’ of our current troubled world. However, it is known that more than 50% of small businesses fail in the first 4 years and 46% failing secondary to incompetence.

It is essential to understand what the odds are and to not become a statistic you really need to know your product and the potential value.

Does your plan have a means to an end and does it solve a problem that has a significant monetary value?

In addition to having a plan on your audience, competition, and exactly what people will pay for your product; you need to understand how much money you need in your reserves to stay afloat.

Burning out all your funds while waiting for people to buy your product is why businesses fail. It might be a good idea to have a second job or make sure you have enough revenue coming in to make sure your business does not fail.

So, don’t go out and buy that domain yet and make sure you will not waste time to only find out that three other people have similar products.

Not Analyzing Stats on Social Media

People dive into social media and just start sharing ideas, topics, and adverts when starting a business without actually thinking about the big picture. The worst thing that an online business can do is to not know who their audience is and not be able to use this information to target potential sales.

The best case scenario is to start with a small audience based on initial research and spend a little money to gather more data to analyze. Facebook allows for some great analytics and once you narrow down as much information as you can it allows to get the best bang for your buck.

It is essential to lay the groundwork and have a significant baseline from the beginning. With the building of data it allows you to dissect your audience and slowly build your brand around the people that will support you.

Understanding and Monitoring your Employees

The first people that you hire for your business will either make your business sail the blue seas or sink very fast. It is very important to spend the time to hire the best people you can for your company.

They need to be positive, understand the company’s mission, and most of all can work as a team. These new hires need to support your skill set and be able to fill in areas you might be less adept.

With hiring your employees, you will need to be able to manage and monitor them while working in a remote environment. This can be quite challenging for people that are new to working online.

Using software like clockspot allows you to have an online time clock, automate payroll to help reduce labor and mistakes, and eliminate any second guessing of activity by tracking GPS or their device.

Author Bio

Wendy Dessler

Wendy is a super-connector with ManageBL.io who helps businesses find their audience online through outreach, partnerships, and networking. She frequently writes about the latest advancements in digital marketing and focuses her efforts on developing customized blogger outreach plans depending on the industry and competition.