About - long - boring - nerdy

 

Starting an online business can be a daunting task.

You don’t know where to start so you ask Google...

“how to start an online business”

Mr Google suddenly knows you are in the market. You are a potential client for courses. You are targeted by advertisements. Facebook suggests what groups you might want to join. 

From the moment you show interest in starting an online business you are introduced to dozens of gurus you have never heard about and you may never hear about again. You are exposed to people shouting that if you bought bitcoin one year ago, by now you’d be a millionaire. Suddenly many people at once want to sell you magic software that will trade Forex for you.

No skills required!!!

This single mum made £2673.38 today!!!

Exclamation marks essential!!!

 

Welcome to the world of wizards, charlatans and legitimate businesses. But how can you tell which is which?

You see a face like mine on the screen for the first time and you wonder:

Can I trust this person?

Is he there just to take my money?

How can I tell if he’s honest?

You have heard stories about people promising you mountains of gold as long as you pay them to reveal their secrets to you… well if these secrets make money on autopilot - why do they bother selling you anything? They must be making money automatically right now. 

If you are like me after a short period of time you develop an allergy to anyone who shows off with sports cars, yachts, villas with swimming pools and private jets. You become blind to adverts showing cash on the screen.

You become like a hungry person who knows that the food they show you is made of plastic.

You try a couple of things and you either don’t make money or actually lose.

After some time you come to a conclusion that all online business is a scam.

You become bitter and you decide never to touch it again.

Let me tell you one thing here:

An online business is like a traditional business - just more scalable.

If it brings value to people they will want to pay for the goods or services it provides and it will live. If it’s poorly designed, badly calculated or downright fraudulent it will die. The same is true for a brick and mortar business.

It’s no different in this respect.

Scalability changes the game though. Automation gives you a great leverage that is hard or impossible to replicate in the traditional way of processing tasks.

Let’s say you make handmade jewellery from lava. You make it after work and it’s sort of a hobby. You sell it all in your hometown as it is good quality and people really enjoy it. Through word of mouth you get new clients. One day you decide to make a brave move and you open a store with your own jewellery. Suddenly it’s not extra money anymore and you realise that half of your profits are eaten by the rent. Now you have to sell a lot more just to break even. You do what you love but you struggle.

Now compare it to selling online.

You have to pay for your domain and hosting. This cost however is likely to be an order of magnitude smaller than renting a physical shop. Before that happens you can actually start selling on eBay or even through Facebook (no domain, no hosting). Sooner or later you will want to have your own store anyway. 

Your physical store has opening hours.

Even if you are crazy enough to keep it open 24/7 living there and selling at night and making your wife or husband or children doing daytime, most people will not go shopping for your necklace at night.

The same people for whatever reason however will go online at midnight and buy your jewellery. You wake up in the morning and you see you’ve got some orders waiting to be fulfilled. (I know that firsthand - I run an online store and have orders waiting when I wake up.) Your customers are no longer only people from your own town - any person who has access to the Internet can buy from you. There are billions of them. That’s a scale!

Over time it becomes mundane and you do it as a routine.

The first dozens of orders however are magical.

They are the proof that you’re onto something.

So yes - there are many advantages of running an online business.

There are disadvantages too of course. With today’s technology you cannot touch, feel or smell the things you are buying online. It may change in the future but for now it’s in the realm of science fiction.

This website is designed to help you make a better informed decision about what you want to do.

My premise is: question everything and everyone including me.

A wise man once said:

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.

I am building my reputation here.

If you want to join me on this journey sign up for the newsletter and you’ll be getting what I find out in your email directly.