63 Tips For Starting Your Own Online Business: The Complete List

Starting an online business is obviously not an easy task and there are a variety of scenarios which you should take into consideration before you even think about investing your time and money into your venture.

63 Tips For Starting Your Own Online Business: The Complete List – An infographic by the team at Smarter Digital Marketing – If you want to use this infogaphic let us know here

Starting an online business from home shares the same risks and common problems inherent with starting any kind of business. It is essential that you plan ahead, set yourself a benchmark and produce a clear budget.

If you want to generate revenue online and succeed in your niche you need to act upon the following 63 tips.

It is essential that you identify your market and trends which  you think you can take advantage of.

Finding the appropriate niche and service you wish to provide will set your business apart from the crowd.

The Internet offers endless amounts of possibilities and opportunities to start a business online.

Not only that, the revenue generated actually contributes to over 8% of the UK economy, making Britain one of the biggest e-commerce markets in the world.

The importance of this is often underestimated and people don’t spend nearly as much time as they should on this stage. A detailed plan is essential and generally just good business practice.

It helps you to identify trends that you can really capitalise on, as well highlighting possible bumps in the road that you may encounter on the way to starting an online business from home.

Ask your friends and family for their feedback – this can help you identify some concerns that customers might come across when online.

Compile a long-term budget plan clearly stating how much capital you have, how much equipment and training will cost and extra for back up in case anything requires a sudden large outlay.

If you don’t know how to plan your marketing budget then you migh’t be in for a shock.

Now that you have a solid, detailed plan and budget in place, you need to take action.

There are too many people who get to this stage, delay the launch of their online business and actually end up wasting an opportunity to target a gap in the market; ultimately losing out on the potential of becoming a very successful online business.

Make sure you don’t fall into this trap; launch your product or service and get it out there. It is all about gaining experience and learning from your mistakes.

The sooner you do, the sooner you become experienced, more successful and closer to earning a sustainable income.

Registering a domain name is simple and affordable, but an important component of your online business.

You want to make sure that it clearly reflects your brand or business, it is easy to spell and remember and does not run the risk of being confused with another company. It can be damaging to your brand image online if you change the domain name at a later date as it often causes confusion amongst your customers and target audience.

It can be time consuming and difficult to change your domain or brand name on every social and online platform – you run the risk of having duplicate, incorrect or misleading information.

You want to design an image, brand or company logo that is attractive to the eye and a clear statement of what you are about.

Once you have established this you can build your website and online business.

There are many important aspects to a well designed website: it has to cater to the needs of the browsers, it should communicate relevant information well, it has attractive colours and images, easy to navigate, user friendly, fast load times and most importantly, it has been optimised for use on mobiles and smart phones.

Recent studies show that around 80% of Internet users own a smartphone and 48% of them use search engines for their mobile research.

Further studies have shown that website users will abandon the site if the load time is slow; they leave between 1 and 5 seconds.

Not only that, you have around 15 seconds to capture the attention of your site user before they click the back button and exit your website. You want to make sure that your site is mobile friendly and displayed clearly.

This is an extremely important aspect of your online marketing strategy. This will determine how effectively you connect with your target audience, clients and potential customers. Search engine results are content driven – crawling your web pages for high quality information, relevant links and appropriate content to return on the search.

One of the biggest challenges in marketing is producing engaging content on your website and social platforms with 36% of your time being spent doing this; this is not including the time spent producing varied content and in enough volume for it to be effective.

The key to driving traffic to your website is clear, up to date information and links, images and relevant material; do not upload duplicate content, irrelevant links or information just to fill out the page with key words which you want to rank for.

Create compelling, engaging content and build your referral traffic to increase visitors to your website.

Once you have launched your online business and are completely happy with the public version of your website, then you are ready to market your services or products.

To achieve success you must generate traffic to your website by using relevant online marketing,  such as SEO, pay per click advertising and using web analytics tools, for example:

Investing time and money (if you have room for it in your budget) is a great way to learn about the best ways to promote your online business. Whether is it spending time researching digital marketing strategies online to attending seminars and marketing events, it will only be beneficial for you and your online business.

If you want to learn how to build a website then read 5 tips on how to build an ecommerce website.

If you learn as much as you can about the sector you are entering into, then you will be well on your way to becoming a successful online business owner.

By simply researching online, you can learn how to effectively blog, utilise SEO strategies and increase your ranking on Google – it is that easy. You can even find professional SEO companies to team up with if you feel that you can’t handle the workload for getting ranked. Simply do a Google search.

You should also learn how to effectively and legally manage your finances online and research start-up loan schemes if required, with many available today.

Protect your brand online at all times. Add your services to relevant directories and get your brand name out there; create a consistent, relevant online presence.

This helps to dominate search engine pages as you have different, high quality content on several different platforms.

It is essential you keep your online content, web pages and social media pages up to date. The Internet and online market is constantly changing and so it is vitally important you change with them.

Continue to seek new avenues and directions in which you could take your online business, seek to increase your potential target audience and research new methods of effective and relevant marketing.

If you want to start your own online business you need to keep up with your market place. Make sure you know your market inside out. Promote your content to your target market and make sure the marketing messages you are sending are highly engaging.

Don’t neglect the global marketplace as there is huge potential internationally to gain brand awareness, generate qualified leads and grow your online business like you always wanted.

If your brother’s girlfriend is a good writer then why not get her on board?

You could use her writing skills to create catchy content for your website.

Not only that, speak to family and friends as they will have contacts or friends with contacts who could point you in the right direction of a potential client or online business opportunity – you will be surprised how many people are willing to help you start your own online business in UK.

Get involved within your industry online. You need to join relevant forums, groups with similar people, for example Linkedin groups, who are seeking to start an online business from home.

These types of online communities can help give you access to free, relevant advice, tips for the future and is also a potential platform of future customers or clients.

Networking is key when it comes to any type of business, but online networking can be extremely effective for your business or product.

Once you become an online business owner, you must comply within all the tax, laws and regulations that now apply to your type of business.

Make sure you fully research what laws you now have to abide by and avoid any future altercations. 

You will inevitably experience some bumps in the road when starting any type of business and so it is vital you remain motivated and determined to succeed.

Marketing, advertising and networking is trial and error to see what works better than others (change to “see what works best for your business”). Do not be disheartened if something is not as successful as you first planned.

Some marketing campaigns can be highly successful but it can take several months of hard work, persistence and time to see the effects. But when you do, it will be extremely rewarding and beneficial to your online business and keyword marketing strategies.

People use the Internet to find information, products and services. As an online business owner you need to provide that information and be as accessible as possible.

To create an online reputation you need to keep your target audience up to date with your service or products, tips and relevant articles to that sector and your expert advice and opinion. Create a database of clients and potential customers with sign ups and newsletters.

You can use this database, containing your clients and customers information, and target them with appropriate information and advice via timely and targeted email marketing campaigns.

Think seriously about how large you want your online business to become. If it is a part time form of revenue for your home, then you can afford to market and advertise on a small scale.

If you are looking to make your new online business your main career priority then you should look closely into the best ways to invest your money.

Creating an online marketing plan and strict budget will reduce the risk of a bad investment and make you look closely into where exactly you should invest your money.

Monitor how much of your time and money you are investing into your online business when you are starting out and determine whether it is all worth it in the long run.

Don’t get stuck devoting large chunks of your time (and money!) into something that is not going to become successful until coupled with other forms of marketing, such as SEO management, PPC management, or email marketing. Make sure that you find the right SEO consultant if you are investing in organic search, and remember that results can take between 6-12 months.

If it’s not time, but capital that’s the issue then Forbes suggest 7 tips for online marketing on a tight budget.

If you follow the steps until this point then you need to look into the future and what it has in store for your online business.

Make sure to be reactive and change with the times, the trends and your marketplace.

You want to constantly be researching your market, your target audience and update your website content – these simple steps will keep you and your online business successful and at the top of your market.

The three key elements of a brand are its products and services, symbol and personality. The services are in the core and should satisfy a particular customers’ need and deliver value, however, the logo and personality are the key to leaving a long-lasting image in their minds.

Brand colours and designs become a key consideration for any business. Colours could inflict emotional response in people and influence their decisions which makes understanding the phycology of colours and choosing the right ones for your brand is crucial step. 

They could help increase subscriptions, stress on important elements of the website and generate word of mouth.

The most important consideration regarding positioning your brand and the message you send could be summarised in 4C: clear, credible, consistent and competitive.

To build a successful online business you should consider these and make sure that you clearly communicate the benefits you offer to your potential clients. To prove your credibility you can easily include client testimonials or awards your business has received on your website.

Deliver a consistent brand message to your target audiences across all channels.

Always bear in mind the tone of voice, language and images you use and tailor them to your audience’s preferences. This will help you preserve your competitive advantage.

The only reason for a potential client to be interested in your business is the value you can offer them. However, before your try to sell your brand to them first you need to persuade them that you can deliver the sought benefit.

One way to do that is to offer free valuable resources. You can do this through a web design strategy, a mobile app or even teaming up with other people / companies to make sure you deliver a winning product.

These could be e-books, reports, videos, webinars and even free advice, which serve as a great way not only to capture the clients’ attention, but also to proof your knowledge and competency in the services you offer and increase the perceived value of your business.

Visual information is processed 60,000 times faster by the human brain, than text on its own, so it should not come as a surprise that using multimedia, eye-catching imagery and infographics on your website definitely grabs the clients’ attention.

Using videos and infographics helps communicate information in an entertaining manner, saves the clients’ time as the information is presented in a more concise format and increase social media sharing.

Images convey feelings and messages more successfully than text alone and could help draw the attention to particular parts of your website such as call to action buttons or subscription forms. Also, if you don’t have a business logo you need to create a logo which means something to your audience.

a call to action (CTA) button is a necessity for an online business. On its own it can boost your website’s conversion rate with 13% and help acquire new clients.

As far as website features go, design, style, layout colour, shape, size and positioning are of vital importance. Include placing your call to action buttons on the homepage using round shapes and eye-catching or contrasting colours that make it stand out from the background.

The words used are also of importance with phrases like “Get your free e-book”, “Get free quote” or “Add to cart – Save 25%” generating more clicks.

The main thing to understand is to make the CTA button appealing, offering benefits and rewards instead of pushy and demanding for the client.

Blogs are the best way to regularly add new content to your website, which will improve your ranking and drive relevant traffic providing you have done your keyword research correctly.

Let’s be honest, website visitors won’t stick around long and they require highly relevant and up to date information about the topic they are reading. Writing factual articles will increase the perceived value of your business and keep them engaged.

In-depth articles, 2000+ words in length with a well-researched topic, rank high in search engine results, get more shares and convert 30% higher than shorter ones.

Key considerations when writing articles is to find topics that your target audience is interested in or expanding on current trends.

This advice stands both for your website and blog. The headings are key element in search engine optimisation and should include keywords and grabbing phrases to capture the attention of the reader.

This is not an easy task as research shows that you have 8 seconds of attention before the client moves on to the next result. Some tips on how to achieve that include keeping the heading short – length should be between 15 and 65 characters.

Use numbers or phrases like “how to…” to make your content more appealing to the reader and stressing on the actual benefit from reading.

Do not forget that headings can generate more traffic to your website, while providing a better experience to your visitors. If you have an SEO company working on behalf of you then make sure they are formatting articles with HTML in mind.

Valuable comments on your blog can drive traffic and generate word of mouth. They are also a great opportunity to create contacts with bloggers or potential clients so it is important to nurture them.

After you have their attention keep them interested using subheadings, quotes and images. The final touch is a call for action – ask the reader to share their experience or make suggestions. This way you can gain more comments and more potential clients. 

This is a fundamentally key step before creating or changing elements of your online business (like the logo, website, colours, blog design) is testing their impact. This could be done with the help of friends, family or by recruiting volunteers and then collecting their opinions.

Every element of your online business should be created with the customer in mind and the more feedback you have, the better you will understand what works best for you.

Consider this a necessary research into your brand that will help you delivering the right message to the right people.

One of the biggest mistakes when starting an online business is measuring performance incorrectly.

For online businesses this is relatively easy as you have all information available from your own website and from other resources, for example Google Analytics, WordPress and other online marketing tools.

A long tail keyword study was conducted which shows the long tail curve that most marketers hold to be correct, however this does not hold true for pay per click marketing.

If you know that a particular page on your website or an article in your blog has generated a lot of traffic find out why that happened, what were the factors that led to this and try to recreate them in the future. If you did not achieve the results you expected, learn from your mistakes and avoid repeating them.

There are several online marketing strategies which are relevant in 2015 you can take when it comes to starting your own business online. The Internet is bursting with an endless supply of potential online business opportunities that you really are spoiled for choice.

If you follow the steps above, compile your online business plan and dedicate yourself fully to the cause, you can become a very successful online business owner. Some of the most successful business ideas include:

In 2014, a massive 74% of adults in the UK bought products or service over the Internet, from online businesses.

You can create user friendly, easy to navigate and successful ecommerce websites and start selling your products all over the world today. An ecommerce site allows you to reach a huge number of customers.

If you are an inspiring photographer or an artist you can create a website, start selling your goods and services and begin to make money off your skills.

Numerous companies nowadays turn to part-time contracts or freelancers and request their services. You can also list yourself on the relevant directories to increase your online exposure.

If you begin to teach yourself the basics of successful digital marketing strategies. With this knowledge, you can offer your services to other companies eg. manage their social media, write their website and blog content and maintain their social platforms.

Not only will you be getting paid for providing these services, you will be getting free, expert advice on how to improve and develop your skills.

You can advertise and offer your services and skills in designer websites for other business. You can help take their online presence to new levels by creating an attractive, user friendly website. Not only that, you could offer to create unique content for their new website.

Social media marketing is used all over the world to promote businesses every single day.

The average person has around 5 different social media accounts and spends up to 2 hours per day online – the potential to help promote other businesses, and get paid for your services, is huge and offers the opportunity for great success.

If you are can speak multiple languages and are looking to start your own online business, then there are many opportunities out there for you.

Offering your translation and teaching services is a niche that not many people can fill and so there is great potential online for these types of services.

Firstly, if you require translation and can’t afford to hire a professional then you can visit Translated to increase your online exposure internationally.

Always check Google Analytics location reporting for measuring your website’s geographic performance as there’s no point targeting countries which your website isn’t visible in.

If you are an expert in something, and there is a high demand for it online, you can easily set up an online educational service and start earning off of your skills.

Make sure to fully research your potential market and find out exactly what your customers wish to learn about.

There is huge potential to start-up an online business where you sell your products. If you currently own a shop, it could be a great business opportunity to make your products available to buy online.

With the online shopping industry to account for up to £50 billion by 2018, the opportunities of running a successful e-commerce business are endless.

Many companies start with a great idea for which there is high demand, but do not devote enough time to formulating a clear business strategy.

It might sound like an unnecessary theoretical exercise, but devoting time to this can help you stay on track later on.

Once you get into the dynamics of your business and the everyday tasks it becomes easy to forget where you actually want to go. Having a business plan, strategy, values and vision will help form a long-term goal and pursue it.

It can also be used to persuade potential customers and investors in the value of your business.

Believe it or not, too many people spend too much time over the little details with their website; the look and feel of the brand, the logo and the layout.

Although these aspects are very important, more time should be spent creating unique content for your website to engage with, while also focusing on the promotion of your website.

Relevant and useful content is what attracts customers back, time and time again. They want to come back to see what else they can learn and discover.

The attractiveness of your website will become unexciting pretty quickly if the content is not high quality, relevant or appropriate. 

For many businesses the time and investment involved in having a fully responsive website could be off-putting.

However, customers’ habits and technology use are constantly changing and now, in the digital era, owning and switching between devices (laptops, desktop PCs, smartphones and tablets) are common parts of your customers daily routine.

Be honest with yourself, not having a responsive website is pushing your potential customers away and leading to losing potential profits.

When starting an online business, especially with limited capital, it is often appealing to look for low-cost website options for creating your website and online presence.

Instead of choosing and agency or a professional to do the work, you might trust your website in the hands of a software engineering student, because of the lower price.

This usually result in delays in launching the website, lack of professionalism and unreliable maintenance, which eventually costs you more in the long-run. 

There has been too many people who start a project, structure a long-term budget, organise and detail their future plans, but then take no action whatsoever.

You have to be prepared to take a leap of faith and get you and your product or service online; don’t be afraid to start charging for your product or service, but it must be a compelling purchase, otherwise it won’t sell.

If you take too long to launch your product or service, you run the risk of missing what could be your biggest opportunity in the market, and ultimately the potential for great success.

For many potential clients your online presence will be the first impression they get of your business. Obviously it is crucial to take this opportunity and present it in the most professional way possible.

The website design, colours and ease of use are the key factors that will influence their opinion of your brand and affect their browsing and purchasing decisions.

Key considerations are building brand awareness, consistency and relevance, which further emphasises on the need to create a strong brand image and content that is tailored to the target audience.

This also helps retain loyal customers and the recognition of your brand.

Consistency is important in staying competitive in an industry. The vision, mission and values of the business should be in the centre of all decisions made and in the way you treat your clients.

Avoid changing the tone of voice you use in communication, the colours your use and try to create the same feeling across the whole website.

A trap in which some businesses fall is following a trend or using resources because their competitors do. Before doing that remember that your business is unique, with its own strengths that set you apart from the rest and not everything the competitors are doing will be suitable for you.

After all, you are trying to build a consistent and credible brand image in the eyes of your clients and this is essential part of your reputation.

Although it is important to develop a customer database, and have subscribers to your new blog, don’t confuse this with running a business – it does not create direct sales.

Instead of offering free advice use your blogging and writing skills to promote your website and use this platform to write high quality content with appropriate keywords and links.

This is much more effective in the long run for the promotion of your website as it will yield high results on search engine returns.

Your clients’ interest is dictated by the benefits you offer. Naturally, they want to know more about the business and they want to stay informed, that is why they have become your subscribers.

As a business owner you need to know how much interaction is necessary and how much becomes off putting. Using email marketing is a great way to communicate benefits, but if you constantly bombard them with emails that would eventually lead to them ending their subscriptions.

Try to find the right amount to keep them happy. 

Customers will come to your site to view your brand, product or services, with the intention of maybe buying. So don’t take any short cuts with your website or search engines, invest in your site, product and service and help your customers find exactly what they are looking for.

Don’t just fill your web pages with irrelevant content just to suit the search engines.

Your website is a platform for you to promote your business, as well as an easily accessible place for your customers to come and find out more about you and your services, so make it enjoyable for them.

A lot of people make this mistake, concentrate on just being successful and jump into the first ‘gap’ in the market that comes along. You want to inspire your customers and readers to buy your product or services.

It is much easier to be creative and innovative with a niche that you are interested in and have a passion for.

Deep knowledge and stamina for the market you want to focus on will be very beneficial to your online business in the long run.

It is vital that you educate yourself on the market you are entering into. You need to learn how to effectively create SEO strategies and improve your conversion rate.

Learn how to create a website from scratch, how to direct and built traffic and how to use social media to successfully run a business online.

A lot of people dive straight into starting an online business, as the initial expenses are not too costly.

If you want to make this new online business your main source of income, you will have to have adequate finances in reserve to support you throughout this time, as well as being able to educate yourself and expand.

Starting an online business requires just as much time and energy as a physical business. You must be prepared to put in the necessary hours required for your online business to be successful. Don’t make the usual mistakes everyone else does.

It takes discipline, determination and consistency to build an online business. You have to build one brick at a time and commit to the task in hand.

Many people don’t want to reach out for help and they try to succeed on their own – this is not the way to do it.

If you are struggling with a certain aspect of the business .eg. creating high-quality content for the website, you should ask for help or hire someone for their writing services.

In the long run, it is much more beneficial to operate at your maximal levels, don’t half do a job because you aren’t prepared to ask for help; you are only doing yourself an injustice.

You need to familiarise yourself with your target market’s language and style of search. You can use the below tools to help you plan your online marketing strategy:

It is essential that you effectively research the most appropriate keywords and strategies for your online business.

Obviously this takes time and effort, but keywords are vitally important when it comes to making sure your business is visible in search engine results when people search topics relevant to your nice.

There are many keyword-tracking tools that you can use to make the process much faster and easier. Pro Rank Tracker is one of the best tools available, and it is fairly cheap.

There are also several strategies that could be very effective for certain businesses, such as long-tail keywords. These are more specific phrases than words that customers search for and it is a great SEO strategy for your online business to utilise.

Think of the phrase a potential customer might search for – it may be more valuable to use long-tail keywords throughout your website content and trigger more search returns on Google. Businesses have reported a 91% increase in visitors to their website after spending time researching the most appropriate long-tail keywords.

The importance of properly researching your keywords is immeasurable.

Starting an online business takes time and effort – you will not see success overnight. There are several steps that you need to take (as you can see above) in order to start, develop and maintain a successful online business. You need to attract and hold visitors to your website before you can convert those visitors into sales. Setting unrealistic targets will leave you disappointed and discouraged and will ultimately lead to the failure of your business.

Many businesses believe that going viral is the best way to attract customers. Indeed having a viral campaign supporting your product or service generates buzz and word of mouth.

To go truly viral you will need something highly unique, engaging and, so you should have realistic expectations regarding this.

Content creation takes time and if it becomes viral in a surge it will probably drop down in a surge as well. Focusing on being sustainable is a much more reliable strategy in the long term and should be your primary focus.

Some people, determined for success, start online businesses within multiple niches and this is really not what you want to be doing when first starting out. Juggling multiple businesses, each in a different market from the next, often result in failure, as you can’t give 100% of your time and effort to each one.

Several markets often mean different marketing strategies, different avenues of education and different websites to look after – it will become confusing and hard to manage.

The Internet is a vast space of opportunity and potential, but you don’t want to get sucked into the safe, mundane corners of the market.

You want to create an online business that gives visitors and customers a reason to choose you over a similar online business. Instead of trying to be better, be different and you are bound to attract more attention and draw more visitors to your site than your fellow competition.

There is nothing more deterring than being curious about a product, you seek to contact the business but find no easy way to do so – visitors will immediately leave and this means the loss of a potential sales and future customers.

Make sure your website has a high quality ‘About’ page and contact form. Even better for your online business is to purchase a proper domain name and set up a brand email address and make it easy for your customers to contact and approach you.

Many people set their prices too low, but this is normally successful when dealing with high volumes of products.

Setting the bar too high deters customers, as they are still unsure of your reputation, so why would they pay extortionate prices for uncertainty?

When you are creating a product or service, make sure you are bringing value and guarantee to your customers by offering affordable, reasonable prices.

If you are not willing to invest, or haven’t reserved enough capital to invest in your online business, then you don’t really stand a chance of becoming a force to be reckoned with.

People will not take you seriously if you are still running your business through a free, website template or generic hotmail email address. Invest in your business, invest in professionalism.

Networking is crucial in any business, but is a form of marketing that is often missed, or left until last.

Don’t waste time and start networking immediately.

It will help increase traffic to your site, will help your email database grow, you will learn from your fellow competitors and you have the potential to be seen on different sites and social media platforms for business.

Online businesses require focus, effort and most of all, time. You will not get immediate results, the process is long and difficult, so you must not become disheartened or even contemplate giving up on the project – results come with time and commitment, so do yourself a favour and stick in at it.

It’s true, too many people don’t ask for, or appreciate, customer feedback. You need to listen to the customers in your market, research what it is exactly that they are looking for, and give it to them.

Listening to your customers not only means that you will understand them better, but you will get invaluable information on way in which you can develop your product or service and come up with better solutions for them. This will immediately set you apart from a large majority of your competitors.

Success online is not usually based on the amount of experience people gain.

Before making a decision consider your situation very carefully: are you making it because it is the best option or because you are scared of taking a risk? There is no “right” formula so staying well-informed and adaptable is crucial to your success.

Many businesses forget to create objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) against which to measure their success. It is important to start doing this from day one to have a clear idea of the direction your business is going into.

A step in the right direction is using SMART objectives, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. Formulating these before starting a new business project will help you stay on track and measure your performance.

Adapting to the changes and following the trends in your industry can be a challenging task, requiring a lot of research, dedication and even taking risks.

But this is the only option if you want your business to stay competitive. Try to take advantage of the current trends, creating valuable, fresh content for your website, getting new ideas for your business and adapting your strategy.

Capitalising on new developments and writing about them could help you increase the traffic to your website and build your reputation.

Being self-employed or a director of a company and working from a computer all day from home doesn’t really feel like work as you are not at the office; but that doesn’t mean you can slack off.

Too many people embrace the joys of working from home and lose their motivation. It is so easy to lose track of the time you actually spend working as you are your own boss – you have no one looking over your shoulder telling you to get on with your work.

It is essential that you don’t let your time get the better of you, stay 100% focused and determined to succeed online.