Friday, November 28, 2008

Nine Guidelines To Selecting The Right Internet Business

Writen by Craig Dawber

There is a wide variety of internet businesses for you to choose from. You should select a business that is easy to handle and fulfils your monetary requirements.

The strategy for choosing an internet business involves the following:

1. Research your options – Before deciding on any particular internet business it is important to evaluate the various options. Research the successful and non-successful internet businesses and analyse the reasons for their success and failure. While researching, you will come across more failures than successes as verified by the dot com collapse. Therefore, it is important to understand that an internet business is not a," magical" ticket to success. You have to work hard as anywhere else to turn your internet business into a success.

2. Think of it as 'part-time' work – Considering the risky nature of this business, it is not at all advisable for you to leave your full time job or other business for starting an internet related business. In fact, initially you can treat it as only a part-time vocation. After some time, when you start earning a profit then you can leave your regular job and take up the internet business full time.

3. Decide your work pattern – Choose your internet business based on the time and other resources that you are ready to invest in it. Evaluate the amount of time that you can take out from your current job for your new internet venture. Also, assess your financial position and decide how much you are ready to invest. You may also feel the need to hire people for the job or involve some of your family and friends in it. Evaluate all these factors, check out, whether the internet business that you have selected suits your work pattern, and only then select it. Whatever business you select should be within your reach, something that you can handle with ease.

4. Evaluate your expectations – Careful thought should also go into analysing what your expectations are from the new business that you are setting up. You should have a clear goal in view. You should know what your expectations will be from your business after a year of starting it. This will help you in taking the decision in selecting the right business and putting the right amount of effort that would fulfil your expectations.

5. Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses - Before starting any endeavour look into your strengths and weaknesses. You never know, you may actually come up with a good business idea from your own hobby. For example, suppose you have a good coin collection. Then maybe you can turn it into a profitable business of buying and selling coins on the internet. Your knowledge of coins would help you a great deal in this business.

6. Seek help – If you feel the need, you can seek help from others who have taken the same path. However, be careful you will find many who are ready to give you advice without any knowledge. Therefore, take advice only from those who have personal experience and a sound basis to impart advice. You can take the help of professionals if you like. It would be best not to listen to those who have no background knowledge or those who have encountered failure.

7. Analyse the best internet businesses – Before you decide on any business, you should have full knowledge of all the business options in the field. Look for the most successful internet businesses. When you do this, you will realise that a particular type of businesses are more successful than the rest, for example service oriented or information based businesses. Some of these successful businesses are:

· Membership websites – which provide access to the website, its products, information and services in lieu of a membership, entry or subscription fee

· Software websites – sites that provide their own independent software's for a charge and make profit from these sales

· Training and support websites – these are those websites, which give you help, support and training on various topics and subjects

· Shopping websites – these are websites such as, eBay sales which earn by providing a market place for buying and selling items on the internet.

You would do well to undertake businesses in which you have direct control over the manufacture of the product yourself, for example 'in demand' customized software. This would allow you to succeed, as you will not have much competition and dependence on others.

8. Analyse the worst internet businesses – After the best its time to analyse the worst internet businesses and look into reasons for their failure. This way you can avoid those businesses, which have not made it in the internet world. Some of these unsuccessful businesses are:

· Any site involved in selling popular and common products for a minimalist margin such as selling dog food, groceries, furniture etc.

· Avoid competing with a large corporation such as Tesco or Dell. This is because whatever you do they can do better with their ample resources.

· Any business in which you are moving from wholesale to retail. Here the chances of earning a profit are slim.

9. Go with your intuition – Listen to what your heart and mind tells you to do. There are chances that you will come across some businesses that you like over others. Your choice should be of a business, which you know you will enjoy. Your business should not be a chore but something that you are happy doing. Be sure of your decision because once you start a business you can't just go back on your decision.

If you keep all these points in mind while selecting your internet business then you can be sure that you will make the right choice and be successful.

This article was written by Craig Dawber of smarket.co.uk Need advice and guidance with your online business check out the resources found in this website.

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