To start a small online business, you must learn many new things: from branding your company or freelancing as an individual entrepreneur with different options for each, SEO strategies that will be most successful in today’s competitive environment.
When you have the correct information to guide your way through it all, then success becomes inevitable. In this article, you will learn all these things.
Step 1. Online Business Branding
A brand is the most critical asset of any business. Choose it carefully.
In a nutshell, a brand is everything that allows distinguishing your services and products from other persons’ services and products. A word or a combination of words is the simplest example of a brand. For example, Nike, Apple, Four Seasons, Be Young, etc.
Your name may also be a brand. For example, Marques Brownlee. He is an American YouTuber and professional ultimate frisbee player, best known for his technology-focused videos and his podcast Waveform. As a rule, a freelancer’s name and surname are a brand used to promote a freelancer’s services and products. That is called ‘personal branding’.
Slogans, designs, songs, smells and so forth may also be a part of a brand.
A brand is so important because there are millions of services and goods offered by the same number of freelancers and companies on the Internet. Only a brand will help you establish yourself as an authority in a particular field and succeed in running your online business.
Trademarks and domain names are vital for a branding process:
Trademarks
A trademark is a sign capable of distinguishing the goods or services of one enterprise from those of other enterprises.
Don’t infringe the intellectual property rights of other persons. If your name and surname are not your brands, then note that your brand cannot be identical or similar to already registered brands. The following methods may be used to find officially registered trademarks:
- Google. Google the name that you want to choose as your brand. If it matches already existing trademarks, company names, etc., avoid registering it.
- Check the name in the database of WIPO to identify its similarity (if any) to the already internationally registered trademarks.
- Check the name in the database of EUIPO;
- Check-in local trademark databases, e.g. the UK.
Protect your brand. A significant part of a branding process is to protect the elements of your brand (logos, slogans, etc.). This can be done by registering trademarks, designs or copyrighting your logos, pictures, etc.
Domain Names
A domain name (i.e., a human-readable address for any web server available on the Internet) is a part of branding. A domain name is the face of your online business. Register it as soon as you have chosen your brand. Why? Because of cybersquatters.
What is cybersquating?
Cybersquatting (also known as domain squatting), according to the United States federal law known as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, is registering, trafficking in, or using an Internet domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price.
The term is derived from “squatting”, which is the act of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building that the squatter does not own, rent, or otherwise have permission to use.
Source: Wikipedia
Step 2. Choosing Business Legal Form: Company Vs. Freelancing
Company
A company can be set up by submitting certain documents to a particular institution or agency. For example, in England it is the Companies House, in the USA it’s U.S. Census Bureau.
As a rule, the incorporation process consists of the following steps:
Step 1: Name your corporation.
Step 2: Create your articles of association. Articles of association (AoA) is a document that states the regulations under which a company is to be run. It usually contains the company’s name, registered office, objects, and powers. It may also contain the names of the directors and shareholders and details of how shares are to be held and transferred. An AoA is sometimes called a memorandum of association (MoA).
Step 3: Establish the registered office address and appoint company directors. Every incorporated business must have a registered office address and a board of directors. A registered office is the official legal address of a company. It’s the place where company mail is delivered and from where official company notices are sent. The first board of directors is the initial group of people who are appointed to run the company. They’re responsible for making decisions about the company’s future and ensuring it operates according to the law.
You can incorporate a company by yourself, but it’s better to hire an intermediary such as lawyers and accountants who can help with this.
Freelancing
In most countries, an individual can provide services and sell goods without setting up a company. Note that freelancers can render not all businesses. Some of them can be rendered by companies only. Do some research to find out that.
As freelancers must pay taxes, in most countries, an individual must submit a particular application to tax authorities in order to be registered as a person engaged in business operations.
Call or send an email to tax authorities to get information on whether any registration is required and what documents and information must be submitted if registration is required.
What Is Better: A Company Or Freelancing?
Generally speaking, a company is better than freelancing.
A company is a limited liability entity. That means that if your business fails, you will lose only property and money invested in a company. Your property (e.g. a car, house, etc.) will remain out of reach for your company’s creditors.
Setting up a company costs some money. In addition, there are accounting, reporting, etc., requirements applicable to companies. You will have to hire people to adhere to those requirements or outsource such services from other companies. If you decide to wind up a company, it will cost you time and money. As a rule, it is relatively easy and cheap to incorporate a company, but it takes time and costs more money to dissolve a company.
Freelancing is a lot less regulated than an activity of companies. However, if a freelancer’s business fails, he/she is fully liable before creditors. In addition, by taking certain precautions, it is possible to limit a freelancer’s unlimited liability and protect yourself from creditors.
If you are not going to scale your business or you don’t feel very confident about your business’s future, first try freelancing.
If you take the protection of your assets seriously and want to be sure that governments or creditors will not seize your assets, hold assets and render business operations through two or more companies.
Step 3. Accounting And Tax Reporting
Accounting is the process of recording, classifying, and summarizing financial transactions to provide information that is useful in making business decisions.
The goal of accounting is to help business owners and managers understand how their company is performing financially so they can make informed decisions about where to allocate their resources. Financial statements such as the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement are used to measure a company’s financial performance over a specific period of time.
Tax reporting is the process of preparing and filing tax returns with tax authorities (e.g., the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the United States).
For example, in the US You need to report all your income, even if you think you don’t have any tax obligation for that source. As a freelancer, you will have multiple sources of income from local clients or from overseas. Therefore, it is easy to lose track of earnings if selectively reporting them as a freelance worker and not getting the W-2 form that reports taxes. Instead, 1099 MISC will be issued by the various clients in order to report their share of your earnings.
The purpose of tax reporting is to ensure that taxpayers pay the correct amount of taxes on their income. Taxpayers are required to report all of their income, including wages, tips, interest, dividends, and capital gains. They are also required to report any taxes they have already paid, such as payroll taxes or state income taxes.
You should contact local tax authorities or consult a local lawyer about accounting and reporting procedures and requirements.
Step 4. Online Business Platforms
Create Your Own Website
The most sustainable way of rendering online business is to own an e-shop, i.e. buying a domain name, renting a virtual server (hosting), and setting up an e-shop by yourself.
Here are the basic steps you need to follow:
- Choose a web host. This is the company that will store your website’s files on its servers. The most popular hosters are Hostinger, DreamHost and BlueHost.
- Register a domain name. This is the address of your website (e.g. www.example.com). There are a few different ways to register a domain name. You can go through an online registrar (e.g. Domain.com), or you can register the domain with your hosting company.
- Install WordPress. WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that enables you to create a website or blog from scratch or to improve an existing website. WordPress is free and open-source software released under the GPL. It is used by millions of people around the world, including many large organizations, such as The Guardian, Forbes, and The New York Times. Note that you need “WordPress.org” but not “WordPress.com”.
- Create your pages and posts. This is where you’ll add the text, images, and other content for your website. ProBlogger can help you to discover a recipe for a perfect blog post.
- Customize. There are many ways to customize WordPress, but some common ones include adding themes or plugins, changing the site layout and design, and adding features. To start customizing your WordPress site, go to the “Appearance” tab in the dashboard and select ‘Themes’ from the left-hand sidebar. Visit WP Beginner for customization tips and tricks.
Rent A Website
As an alternative, you can rent an online shop from:
These sites are very intuitive and easy to set up. You will create your online shop without knowing how to code. The following is a list of the top three pros for each platform:
1) Ease of use. It’s straightforward to start your online store with these platforms because they have good tutorials that walk you through the entire process.
2) Customization. You can customize everything about your website, including colours, fonts and layouts, which makes it easy if you have specific allergies or prefer certain design elements over others (ex: I’m not into flowers, so my site doesn’t have any!).
3) Customer service. If something goes wrong during setup or afterwards, customer service will be there to help you out quickly without any hassle.
Rent A Sub-Shop
Amazon, eBay and other similar platforms are great places to sell goods and services. You can quickly reach a large audience and expand your business. To start selling on these platforms, all you need is to set up an account. No coding skills are required.
However, these platforms charge colossal commission fees, it’s challenging to compete with other sellers operating on the same platform, challenging to establish any attachment to your brand, and you are entirely dependent on the operators of such platforms.
The most recommended way is to offer your products and services on a few channels. It will minimize dependence and risk. However, if you are going to sell (license) iOS or Android applications, you will have no choice but to offer your products only in app stores. There are ways to avoid that, but it will be rather difficult or even impossible to grow your business without your presence in those app stores.
In my opinion, it is better to own your website than to rent it.
Step 5. How To Promote Your Online Business?
It is relatively easy to set up a business. Much harder to grow it. Promotion of your goods and services is the key to your business’s success.
The most popular methods and channels to get noticed by customers:
- Social networks (Facebook, Instagram, etc.).
- Digital advertising (Google, etc.).
- Direct marketing (direct calls and emails to potential clients).
- SEO (to be on the top of Google search results).
- TV or radio ads (it can still work if your potential clients (target group) watch TV or listen to the radio).
The most important way is SEO. There are a lot of sites on SEO on the Internet. I like these:
- Backlinko. Brian Dean, a founder, has many good tips and tricks on how to boost your traffic.
- Neil Patel. Neil Patel offers the SEO tool called Ubersuggest, which has good functionality for a rather low subscription fee.
- Woorise’s blog. Woorise blog focuses on how to grow your business, run contests, giveaways and competitions and also provides tips for social media, marketing and growth hacking.
- TrafficGenerationCafe. On this blog, you will find a few interesting tricks and tips on how to grow your audience.
- DigitalNomadWannaBe. This site is run by Sharon Gourlay who lives a life of a digital nomad.
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of making content more visible and appealing to search engines such as Google or Bing. Your goal is to rank #1 on Google’s or Bing’s search results.
You need backlinks to your site and good content that is interesting to readers to be ranked #1 by search engines. On those websites, you will find much advice on how to get many backlinks. For example, you can add your site to website repositories, such as SiteSimilar.net. This site helps users to find similar websites, the best alternative sites and competitors in the world.
Step 6. Before You Start Your Business, Ask Yourself These Five Questions
Before investing your time and money, ask yourself five questions about your readiness to start an entrepreneurial career. If you know all five answers, then you can start launching your business.
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Images from Pixabay.
