Starting an Internet Business is Simple, But Can be Hard
When my brother and I decided to share some comedy sketches that he and I had written a few years ago, we knew exactly what we wanted to do. We wanted to give people a sample of what we had written for free, and then charge a nominal fee for subsequent sketches.
We both agreed that starting an Internet business would be the best way to do go about accomplishing this goal, and also expose it to the largest number of people possible.
Neither one of us had any experience with e-commerce or what went into starting an Internet business, so we contacted a local web designer and found out that obtaining a domain name and setting up a PayPal account was half of the battle.
We created drawings of our two comic characters and submitted them to our web designer, and she placed them on our brand-new web site along with a little background on my brother and I, as well as a way for viewers to contact us for feedback.
Starting an Internet business was the simple part; but then, we started to realize all of the work that went into it's upkeep.
When we first started up the site, our web designer told us that how successful our business became depended upon hard we worked. We quickly found out that starting an Internet business was the easy part. Maintaining the site, marketing our product, and continually providing fresh and interesting content required more effort than either one of us had anticipated.
We made some money for a while, and it was a lot of fun, but ultimately, we both had other jobs and just could not put in all of the work we needed to to keep it up and running.
Neither one of us knew much about how to market our product or who to contact that could, and were somewhat naive in assuming that simply starting such a business meant that we would be on our way to financial freedom and success.
Starting an Internet business, like starting any business for that matter, requires thought, research, planning and knowledge about the market into which you are entering your product or service. Once it has been started, it requires a lot of work to maintain and grow the business.
We decided earlier this year to throw our hats into the ring once again, starting an Internet business that provided sports content to consumers, and have been much more successful. I have covered sports in the area to which the site caters for five years and have many contacts, and my brother learned a lot about the business end marketing aspect of the endeavor.
If you have a clear vision for a company, and do not want to deal with such things as substantial start-up costs, location, employees or other factors that go into a brick-and-mortar company, starting an Internet business is definitely the way to go.