It is likely you have thought about starting your own business before – off-and-on, over the years. Maybe it is when you realize how sick you are of your routine; maybe when you want to buy something and then realize you are not making enough money; or maybe when your boss looks down his nose at you.
The only problem with fantasies is they are not real; not until you make them real by taking action. Fantasies are good up to a point because they may compel us to do something to make them happen in real life. It is a pretty individual thing how long it will take you to really have a realistic plan to start a business. By the time you actually ‘just do it’, it may have taken several turns and twists.
One really good rule of thumb is to find a business that has a market. Great to be innovative and unique, but what you want is a mass response. Being different is great, but unfortunately it is what is the status quo that generates business for the most part – what ‘everybody’ wants.
You may first need to learn the ropes. A great way to do that is to start with something that you know is popular and build from there – diversifying you products with services, etc. For example the easiest thing of all is to start with affiliate programs since they give you everything you need to get started as part of your membership.
There is really no winding road (maze) where you must learn A to do B, before you can do C and D. Maybe this is not your cup of tea for what you envision your business to be, but again, you need to learn first, and the best way to do it is the easiest, fastest and most inexpensive way.
At ‘the end of the day’ you can either be a super-affiliate making big bucks with lots of followers or you can take what you learn and start something completely different. The things that it will have in common are for example the Internet, online communications including advertising and marketing, membership programs, etc.
It is really important that you know how things are from the user’s standpoint (as in your potential customers). Being an affiliate yourself will show you lots of things you might not otherwise know even if you are the most technical engineer or programmer. To really have a ‘user-friendly’ business you should see things from both sides of the fence and to actually use the tools and resources and to see what happens.
At this point it is possible to get creative and start to build on the foundation you have built for yourself. To improve the process and experience for everyone concerned you should truly need to see how it has been working so far. This is kind of like ‘beta testing’ where people use every function and try to break it. If it breaks then they fix it, and if it doesn’t break then it is ok to launch the product.