Every year, more and more people buy things online than they do offline. People are becoming more comfortable with eCommerce. This makes it very important for anyone who wishes to start an online business. Unfortunately, not many persons even have any single idea on how to go about this. Therefore, we want to show you how to start an online business out of nothing. We will ensure to give you every practical direction you may need to get your business started online.

You must note that online business is quite different from offline business. You can offer similar or even identical services, but, online business is an entirely different game. This is why you need this guide on how to start an online business. You will need to ensure you get it right to minimize costs at the long run.

How To Start An Online Business From The Scratch

Let us point out something from the onset. Starting a business online is not a get-rich-game. It is for the serious minded people. It will take your time, focus, consistency, energy and resources to pull through. So, if you are not ready, then, don’t even bother to start.

So, if you are ready, let’s give you some practical steps you must take to start a business online.

1. Find a Problem

The first step to building an online business is to find a problem, a need that is unmet. Most people think you first start a business before you find buyers. No. The secret of businesses is to find what people are already in need of and provide that for them in form of a business. When you find a need people needs solution, it means you already have a customer base that is waiting to buy your product/service even before you produce them.

Also See: Best Online Business Ideas With Low Start up Capital

If you start without identifying a problem to create a solution for, you will end up opening a business and begging people to buy. You don’t need to be in that situation. Find a problem and start seeking means to solve the problem. eg, POS started because most people can buy stuffs from you and say they will pay later that their money is in the bank. POS came to eliminate that excuse. You get the idea?

How To Find A Problem?

1. Visit online forums to see what questions people ask and what problems they’re trying to solve.
2. Do keyword research to find keywords that a lot of people are searching, but for which not many sites are competing.
3. Check out your potential competitors by visiting their sites and taking note of what they’re doing to fill the demand. Then you can use what you’ve learned and create a product for a market that already exists–and do it better than the competition.

Also See: Best Online Business Directories In Nigeria

2. Create the Solution

Okay, we have identified a problem, now is the time to create the solution. There are some questions you need to ask yourself. Some of them include: Who needs this solution? This is simply identifying your target audience. The importance of this is to help you create a solution that meets the needs of the buyers.

Your solution can come in different forms. This is how you package this solution to the buyers. So, what type of online business solution can your provide?

Examples of Online Business

The following examples are the ways you can package the solution to the problem you are creating to people.

1. Affiliate marketing. Rather than creating your own solution, you can find people who already have the solution. Then, recommend the solutions to the people who need it. When they buy from you, you get paid commissions. See how to run affiliate marketing without a website.
2. Digital Marketing/social media marketing. This is a business that helps people to be seen and sold online. There are many businesses online that do not know how to use the social media and digital technologies to sale. You can offer these services to them.
3. Digital Products. This includes eBooks, video and audio products etc. You can package the solution to the problems you identified into a book, video and audio courses and sale and people will gladly pay for the services.

3. Create a Landing page

So, another thing you need to do to How To Start An Online Business is by creating your landing page. You need an address online just like offline businesses have their addresses. This could be a website, blog, social media business accounts. See how to create a Facebook business page as well as Instagram business account here.

If you don’t have money to create a website yet, you can utilise your social media accounts to create effects. A lot of businesses you know online today started online from their social media pages before expanding. You can see the top social media sites for small businesses here.

4. Tell People about it (Advertise)

You have created your business solution and you now have an address. So, you have to tell people about your business. This is where you start to publicise and advertise your business. Of course there are many ways to do this. One of the most effective ways is to run ads online. You can use Google ads, social media ads etc. Whatever advert means you use, make sure it contains a link to your landing page where people can see and learn about your business.

Also See: Learn How To Start An Online Store In Nigeria

You can also put down a sales copy. The sales copy is what details the solution you are offering and the solution and benefit to the buyer. You sales copy needs to be convincing. It needs to show the buyer what they stand to gain.

Also, you can run promo as a start. As you already know, there are people who are doing what you are doing already. You can offer the same services at a lower cost (not reduced value). You can also offer the same services but add another bonus to what people already offer. By doing these things, you should be able to get people to know of your business and patronise you.

Conclusion

We have show you how to start an online business from the scratch. You have seen how you can know what to sale, how to produce them and get it before the buyers. So, it is up to you to get this started. But please note, this isn’t just that simple. People need to trust you and your solution needs to be value-packed.

You have any question for us? Use the comment box below.