Online Business

5-Step Checklist to Start Making Money Online

Published

6 years ago

November 6, 2017

Times of Startups Staff

Let’s assume that you’re new to the concept of entrepreneurship. You know that you have the potential to make money with your own business, but you just don’t know where to start. You read all of these success stories and wonder how these individuals managed to earn their fortunes so easily.

First of all, they didn’t earn anything “easily.” They followed a very specific process. This post is going to lay out that process in an easy-to-follow five-step-plan. Are you ready to get started?

Step 1: Research and Gather Feedback BEFORE Launch

One of the mistakes that most people make is they launch their new business while relying on affirmation from friends and family – or worse; they don’t bother researching it at all! Better to do your homework before you launch. Get feedback from your target market before asking them to pull out their wallets. You might even consider starting a crowdfunding campaign to see just how many people are interested in your product before you invest in it for the long-term. In fact, I highly recommend crowdfunding for anyone launching a new business.

Another great way to get feedback is through surveys. If you’re just starting out, then surveying potential customers is a great way to ensure that your product or service will solve their problem.

Step 2: Develop a Website

Entrepreneurship requires you to have a website to be successful. Furthermore, you must refer potential customers to your website. It will serve as your brand’s digital footprint.

Here are three mini-steps that you need to take to develop a website with a limited budget:

2A: Use a content management system like WordPress. That way, you’re not constantly fighting to keep your website updated manually.

2B: Register your own domain and hosting account. Don’t use free options because they are horrible. Go ahead and invest in a domain and hosting.

2C: (If applicable) customize your website with impressive graphic designs and ecommerce plugins that allow users to make purchases directly from your website.

For example, you can create a Shopify dropshipping platform and use online marketing platforms such as Facebook and Google ads to sell products directly to customers

Step 3: Define a Target Market

If you have not defined your target market, then it’s time to get this essential step out of the way. However, you don’t want to stop at just your market. Go ahead and define your competition too!

Put yourself in the shoes of individuals who might be interested in your product or services. Ask questions from their perspective. Are you able to solve their problem in a way that your competition does not?

Your target market is going to be the backbone of your entire business so make sure that everything is about them.

Step 4: Develop a Marketing Plan

To be successful in entrepreneurship, you’ll have to lay out an effective marketing plan. First of all, set a budget so that you know how much you can spend every month. Then create a plan based on that budget that focuses on your target market. Sure, others might use the product or service, but all of your marketing should be focused on your target market as defined in the previous step. Here are some effective ways to market:

Social Media
Blogging on your Website
Guest Blogging on Other Websites
Google AdWords
YouTube Video Marketing
Write a Book
Email Marketing

Step 5: Know When to Seek Help

Finally, most entrepreneurs have a DIY mindset, and that’s okay in the beginning. But as you start to grow, it becomes necessary to seek help. The problem is that there is a point where you will need help but won’t be able to hire employees. That’s where outsourcing comes into play. Be sure that you start slowly delegating non-core tasks to other individuals to free up your time.

Author : Catherine Park

Online Business

Is Dropshipping Still Relevant and Profitable in 2020?

Published

4 years ago

July 21, 2020

Times of Startups Staff

Is Dropshipping Still Relevant and Profitable in 2020?

Have you ever heard about dropshipping? Or, in other words: print on demand platforms? It is very likely that you have, but maybe you did not know how it is really called. It is the online business model where you find a third-party company that produces, packs, delivers, and stocks items like t-shirts, mugs, caps, and similar for you.

But recently people have been talking that the dropshipping market is pretty much dead and there is no use to expect to earn big sums of more from a business platform that does not ask for you to invest anything at all. So is it really dead, or can it still be profitable and effective?

In this article, we are going to discuss this topic about the dropshipping market in more detail. Therefore, if you have recently learned about dropship custom printed products and would like to try it out, but you’re not sure if it is worth it, we hope this article will help answer your questions, so read on.

Why Is Dropshipping Not as Popular as It Used to Be?

Even though all of the internet and all of the online businesses are based on fast technology development, the whole eCommerce world is also very organic. It is because it naturally reacts to many outside factors that can affect it. Therefore, the world of online business is constantly changing, new business platforms appear, and the old ones become outdated.

The same is with the dropshipping businesses – some time ago, it used to be very popular, effective, and successful. But now there are many other forms and ways you can easily make money online, and often – faster and more effectively. Given all that, people who want to begin a startup, choose other types of platforms, then dropshipping platforms have a lower budget, and as a result, can offer less appealing conditions and pricing.

What Does Google Say About Dropshipping and Its Relevance in 2020?

One of the most popular platforms to dropship your goods used to be AliExpress. If you did not know that it is one of the biggest platforms for dropshipping, you definitely know AliExpress itself. So one of the best ways to see if this platform is finished as a dropshipping platform is to search its trend on Google Search to know the truth.

Google Trends is a specialized feature that lets you search and see how popular a certain search term is on Google. This way, you can figure out if your chosen trend is declining or rising at the given moment. Google Trends will also show you related topics, demographic insights, and related queries that could be helpful for your research.

So if we look at the AliExpress dropshipping trend, we see that it had its moment of declining, but it is still a pretty solid and strong trend at the moment. The data also shows that dropshipping via AliExpress is more popular in the USA than it is in the rest of the world. This means that according to Google Trends, dropshipping is still very relevant, especially in some parts of the world.

Is It Worth to Start a Dropshipping Business in 2020?

We would say that dropshipping is worth starting if you want to have an online side business for additional income. Let’s say – if you already have a full-time or half-time job, if you are currently studying, or raising a baby, and want to make some additional money.

Surely it will not bring millions of dollars each month. Have it in mind that dropshipping takes up to a few weeks to deliver the products to the customer, which is very inconvenient for today’s modern customer who knows that he can have the same item the same day that he ordered it somewhere else.

Of course, you can always juggle with the quantity and the price. If someone wants to order a huge amount of mugs for a company, it is very likely that no local shop will have such an amount of mugs in their warehouse to print the company logo on them. It is normal because nobody wants to keep their money frozen, sitting in a warehouse, especially when such big orders do not happen every day.

So this customer might turn to a dropshipping business because the waiting time will be similar, but the price will be much lower.