What You Need to Get Started

Although the Internet has made it a lot easier for people to make a start in business, it is still worth making sure that you maximise your potential as a businessperson by having all of the possible tools you could need to get things up and running. In order to start, you need comparatively little compared with a bricks and mortar business – but the better equipped you are, the more possibilities you can turn into definites.

A computer and an Internet connection are obviously the base minimum. As you are reading this, you have access to those at least. It is then a matter of what you need to add to these. If you want to put photographs of yourself or things that you are selling onto the Internet, you will need either a digital camera (preferable) or a scanner (just about acceptable). You will also need somewhere to put the photographs – a website (which requires you to buy webspace) or a blog (which does not). A website is more customisable, so if you have the know-how to do this, it is preferable.

To sell things at the click of a button you can ask your bank to set up a business account with scope to take electronic payments, or you can open an eBay account. Using eBay you will be able to auction items or services off to the highest bidder, and receive payments almost instantly through PayPal. The benefits of having the Internet mean that you can do all of this from a chair just in front of your computer.

Getting into Business

Beginning a career in business is now a lot more simple than once it was. The outlay of capital that was once required to get a business going is now no longer necessary. Rather than having to spend potentially thousands of dollars on getting premises into operation, buying supplies and getting various governmental clearances to operate as a business, you can set up a basic website and potentially be trading mere hours later. This means, essentially, that the only thing holding people back is the lack of a concrete idea of what they are going to do. If you want to attract external funding, you will still have some hoops to jump through – but that is optional when your premises are in cyberspace.

You do not need to be a cyberspace genius to make money from the Internet. Things can get up and running with a very simple site. The best way to do this is to set up a blog. Sites like LiveJournal.com started the blogging boom, but others like Blogger and WordPress have taken up the baton and made blogs a more customisable entity, meaning that even multi-page sites are not beyond even a novice. A page of information on the services you provide, another with a price list, and another with other pertinent information – customer testimonials, for example – can reach the Internet within less than an hour. And that is when you begin promoting your business in earnest. As you are on the Internet, this should not be hugely problematic.