WHY PEOPLE SUCCESSFUL IN ONLINE BUSINESS ?

This 19-Year-Old Runs A Successful Online Business With 20 Employees —  And He Has A Message For Fellow Teens

Arya BinaArya Bina

At first glance, discount travel site Cheap Travel Hunter looks like it could be any other online travel agency on the Web.

Here’s how it’s different: Cheap Travel Hunter’s CEO isn’t old enough to drink. He’s just barely old enough to vote.

Arya Bina started the company back in 2010, back when he was 16.

Today, he’s 19, and Cheap Travel Hunter is doing well enough to employ 20 people in the US and abroad.

According to Web metrics site SimilarWeb, Cheap Travel Hunter is the 2,412nd largest site in its category. SimilarWeb estimates that 75,000 people visited the site in February. Travel sites usually convert at least 1% of their visitors into paying customers. So you can figure Cheap Travel Hunter is selling tickets to several hundred people every month.

It’s doing totally OK.

And that’s more than impressive work for a teenager, right?

We caught up with Arya over email and asked him how he got his start (he had to be convinced), what his friends think of his company (they don’t really get it), and what advice he has for other teenagers as they enter corporate America (get ready to work for someone else).

Here’s that exchange.

Business Insider: How’d you get started?

Arya Bina: I got started back in May of 2010 when I was 16 years old when a friend of mine convinced me that it would be a good idea to start a travel agency, I was reluctant to start the venture but he convinced me. We got our start with a build it yourself website, a phone, and an ad in the local paper. After some time I came across the concept of internet marketing, that’s when I decided to rethink our business model completely and invest heavily (both financially and time wise) into the concept of being a completely online travel agency (OTA). Unfortunately my partner did not feel the same way about my expansionary mindset and we decided to part ways shortly after I began executing and implementing the ideas of the new business model. Since then the business has grown to employ over 20 people both here in the U.S.A. and overseas.

Business Insider: What do other teens think of your business? Adults?

Arya Bina: I can say that many of the people I interact with do not know what I do for my income, I try not to show off, but my close friends which I am very open with are very supportive of my business and I’d like to think they are proud of my accomplishments. However most teens do not have an entrepreneurial mind-set and lack some of the general financial knowledge to comprehend the scope of an operation such as mine. As for the adults around me I am very lucky to be surrounded by people who live and breathe business, they are very supportive and I can always rely on them when I need consultation.

Business Insider:What have been your biggest mistakes?

Arya Bina: 1. Hiring the wrong people. 2. Trying to micro-manage. 3. Giving up on new ideas or new concepts too easily. (Which is easy to do when most investments are money-pits when you first start) 4. Focusing on money.

Business Insider: What were some lessons you learned?

Arya Bina: Probably one of the most important lessons that I’ve learned, which is hard for many people to understand (just as it was hard for me to come to terms with!) is that business is not all about the income statement. A lot of times it’s better to set up a system that is a little more costly but is scale-able in the long run. A lot of small business find ways to pinch pennies in their operations but then those methods are not scale-able on a larger scale and that’s how they get stuck being a small business.

Business Insider: What surprised you the most about the world of business?

Arya Bina: I have always been surrounded by people who have owned their own business, large and small so there were not many big surprises, but two things which I have noticed is that the mentality of small business owners, and those of large corporations differs 100% completely. The second is that things in business change extremely fast, and it’s not enough anymore to just try and keep up, if you want to compete and grow you must be not one but two steps ahead of the competition in your industry especially one as competitive as travel.

Business Insider: Have you had much success? Can you quantify it?

Arya Bina: I believe I’ve had a lot of success. I measure success by the exceptional team of employees I’ve built, as well as the growth the business has experienced in customer base, and revenue. We are currently on track to control a respectable amount of the discount travel booking market in the next 5 years God willing.

Business Insider: What can teens expect from corporate America?

Arya Bina: Teens can expect corporate America to turn them into employees, working for the best interests of their superiors, the board of directors, and shareholders. Ultimately everybody works for somebody, even the CEO of the largest company in the world is still held accountable for his job. It’s not a bad thing working for someone else, but if you have other ideas don’t be afraid to invest heavily in yourself and go for your dreams.

Statistically most of us will end up working in some type of organisation. Even still teens should aim to be the best that they can be in their field of interest, and aim for the top, focusing on constantly moving up the chain of command throughout their careers. It’s never a good idea to settle!

The Real Secret of Running a Successful Online Business:

Friends, fellow entrepreneurs…lend me your eyeballs. For just a few minutes, and then you can get back to biz.

This hasn’t been an easy post to write. Not by a long shot, but it’s weighing on me. Literally nagging at me day after day after day. So here we go.

Something is seriously broken in our industry. I’ve written on this before and  shared my feelings about six figure talk, and it’s not about the money talk or sharing results, but rather, the fact we’re being conditioned like a bunch of mice in a science experiment to use that as our yardstick of success.

Don’t get me wrong, making six figures in your biz is a big deal. I know exactly how it feels to see it happen – having done it myself and for my clients.

But it’s a number. A number that may or may not work for you. Maybe your version of success is a $50K year or a $350K year. Whatever you want, decide for yourself and own it. This is your business, so don’t let it become a shorthand for how you measure success.

The truth is my six figures isn’t your six figures. I live in a town in rural Ontario, Canada. I likely have higher taxes, but an overall lower cost of living. I have socialized medicine by virtue of being Canadian and a husband with the Cadillac of benefits plans to cover the rest.

What’s worse than the fact that six figures is all relative is the fact that the six figure obsession in our industry has a dark side.

Cue the dramatic music. (I’m thinking some Star Wars Darth Vader type music would do nicely.)

There’s a laundry list of dark side issues, but here’s a few worth considering:

1. Six Figure “Success” is Quickly Becoming Meaningless

If you’re on Facebook, you know exactly what I’m talking about. When you do the newsfeed scroll you are inundated with promises of six figure success all day long.

Build your six figure social media business.
Create your six figure sales funnel NOW.
Learn how I made over $100K with this one marketing trick.

The list goes on and on and on. The real issue here is that even if you have real six figure success, this steady barrage of six figure promises devalues it. It makes us think that we can all ride in our our unicorns and party it up on our piles of sweet six figure cash that we made while we were sleeping.

This is SUCH a big challenge that as I’ve been writing a sales page for my new course (more on that coming soon), it took me days to be okay with pointing to some big client successes I’ve been a part of that are in the six figure zone. Quite frankly, it pisses me off that I need to labor over what are simple facts because I don’t want to be one of THOSE people.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m very proud to have been a part of these successes but owning that for my own marketing made me feel icky. Because six figure success is now a tired cliché.

I did decide to include them, but I crafted that copy with painstaking thought and detail so it made sense. This type of marketing preys on people and I’m unwilling to be a party to this. (We can see if I hit the mark when I launch in late August!)

There’s proof and then there’s promises. Often, I follow the trail to check out these people running ads with big fat promises and find out that they’re extremely thin on legit examples of who they’ve done this for.

 

2. Real Success is a Pattern

Success isn’t one six figure year.

Or even creating your own six figure business.

What the true pattern of success is being able to do it again and again. It’s having the experience and skills to replicate that for your customers.  And six figures aren’t mandatory.

What’s more important than the money made is the concept of mastery. So much of our industry is based on the concept of “you need to only be a few steps ahead” thinking.

Sure, for some things that makes perfect sense, especially when we’re talking a new social platform or something that’s evolving all the time.

On the flip side, I’ve always had problems with this concept. And not because I think we need to know everything, but rather how this idea is taken to extremes. Being a step ahead doesn’t meant you can take a course or read a blog post and then turn around and regurgitate it all as an expert.

I’m all for moxie and being bold, but proclaiming to be the expert when you’re as fake as they come and sliding on shit does no one – most of all you –  any favors.

The intent behind being a few steps ahead is for you to internalize what you learn, then apply it, test it, tweak it and refine it over time, then share it.  And not just do it in your own biz. That’s too small of a sandbox to really figure out how to make something work, and it takes a narrow view of what success really is.

Do you need 10,000 hours? Probably not. But you need a lot more than 10 hours to be selling it as a service. If you’re new at something, get practice clients, beta your offering, then test and test and test some more.

Then you can point to consistent results. And consistency is the sweet spot in a world where half of small businesses fail.

As someone out there spending your money in this industry, pay attention to consistency as the mile marker.

Not the new person on the scene with one big launch that everyone’s celebrating, but the coach with 5 launches where you’ve seen them improve incrementally. Or the person with multiple successful businesses that’s quietly doing their thing in a way that’s to be admired.  Or the consultant you’ve been following forever that shows up in your inbox every Wednesday without fail.  Or the graphic designer who’s been creating amazing brands forever and is so good that her business is 100% referral based.

Those are the people to look to: the quiet leaders, the unsung heroes, the super solid people you’d be proud to call your friend. Not the latest overnight success story, IT girl or fast talking guru, as they will come and go.

The consistent ones may not be sexy, but they’ve mastered their craft and are the right people to help you create success that sticks for the long haul.

And if you’re not sure about where to invest your money, remember that…

3. People Tell Big FAT Lies on the Internet

You’re shocked, right? We all know that people lie on the Internet, which is why you can bet your bottom dollar that many of these people shilling their six figure fix/solution/magical potion to you via Facebook and other mediums are full of shit.

Don’t believe me? I had a rather eye-opening conversation with some entrepreneurial friends not that long ago. (Places and names obscured as I’m not here to out people or point fingers.) More than one example of trumped up success stories and promises were discussed and this is NOT the first conversation of this nature I’ve had. From grossly exaggerated income to out-and-out lies, it’s happening out there. ALL.THE.TIME.

There’s many reasons people lie about stuff, from a serious lack of integrity right through to feeling that this is how it’s done. Whatever the reason, it’s not okay. Any time you feel the need to stretch the truth or push beyond the limit of what’s actually true, please stop. (And if anyone tells you to do this – fire them immediately.)

The goal should always be the strongest verifiable claim. That is, the best evidence you have that you do what you say you’re going to do. Sure, polish it up and make it look good, but don’t cross the line.

For those of you that are now questioning your faith in the online business world, this isn’t meant to be alarmist.

It’s the Internet, people lie all the time – so it’s up to us to turn up the BS radar and figure out what’s what.  You’d do the same if you were online dating, right? So do yourself a favor and get a healthy dose of skepticism to protect your bank account and biz.

Embracing the dark side and being wise to it may seem unpleasant or negative, but the reality is it exists. It’s real. And it’s not going away.

If you’re going to succeed and do it on your own terms with an online business, you need to be aware of the dark side. That gives you the power to consciously choose to create something genuine and true as you work on running a successful online business. For you to not fall into the lure of those that choose to play this way.  The online world needs MORE people with high integrity and low BS.

9 Prime Rules For Running A Successful Online Business:

The 9 Golden Rules For Running An Online Business

1 – Keep Your Website Design Simple and Well-Organized

People have a tendency to want to over-design their website in an effort to make it stand out or look cool. They may add flash animation, sound in the background, and load the site up with large graphics. This is a huge mistake, especially for business-oriented websites. It is much more important to make sure your design is organized in a way that visitors can easily find what they are looking for at a glance. Music blaring out is actually a pet peeve of many internet shoppers, especially if they are surfing at work as many do. You also want to make sure that the text is easy to read. Dark text on a simple light background is the safest way to go.

Apple.com is the perfect example of a well designed website. Apple.com has some of the best web designers in the world who develop their website, check them out and also other big company sites for ideas if need be.

 

2 – Respond To Your Visitors Promptly

When a visitor, a potential customer, emails you or fills out your contact form, it is imperative that you get back to them as soon as possible. People always take mental note of how long it takes an online business to get back to them. Even if you are on vacation, you should either have an employee answering the emails in your absence or take your laptop along and answer the emails while your out-of-town.

There is way too much competition out there now for you to let potential clients slip through the cracks because you weren’t diligent enough to follow through.

 

3 – Engage Your Visitors

If you can turn your visitors into active participants on your website, you will increase loyalty and sales. The simplest way to do this is to add a blog and open it up for comments from your visitors. Advertise your posts in your newsletter and ask for comments. For larger sites, you may want to add a discussion board where your visitors can create their own topics.

Set yourself up on a number of Social Media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest or LinkedIn and conversate/share/inform your customers with high quality answers and content. Also make sure that you have a follow, Fan Page ‘Like” widget or a Pinterest badge on your website so that people can follow you through their favorite social media platform and stay in tune with your progress and updates.

Checkout Gary Vaynerchuk’s advice on growing your business using social media, Gary is an Ace! and definitely someone you should look up to in the Online Business world.

 

4 – Give Your Visitors a Reason To Come Back

Repeat visitors to your online business will increase sales for sure. You can give your visitors a reason to come back in many ways. For example, you can let them know that once a month you post a one-day only sale. Another example might be to write an article and let the readers know there will be a follow-up next month. Make the topic of the follow-up something that people really want to know.

Just adding quality content on a regular basis is a good way to get repeat visitors.

 

5 – Do Not Over-Sell To Your Visitors

No one likes a pushy salesperson in a brick and mortar business. Online business are no different in this aspect. People hate to feel like they are being overly pressured to buy something. You can point out the advantages of your product or service but try not to over-sell. Watch out for superlative spammy language too. It will usually backfire on you!

 

6 – Do Not Over Optimize Your Website

You have probably heard of the term, “search engine optimization” or SEO. This is where people design their webpages with the intent of ranking higher in the search engines, particularly Google. Many online businesses push this way too far. Their sites end up being demoted or even banned from the search results because the search engines view their efforts as spam. Over optimizing pages also makes them less likeable and readable by real human beings.

 

7 – Do Not List Your Website In Bad Neighbourhoods

For a long time, it has been well-known that Google and other search engines look at how many links there are to a website as one important factor in determining how to rank that website in the search engine results. This has prompted online business owners to want to get as many links as they can. Sometimes they even pay for links in directories and blogs. However, in most cases, these paid links are sites that are known as bad neighborhoods by the search engines. In other words, they are spammy sites and having your website listed in them can actually hurt you, not help you!

 

8 – Maintain a High Quality Mailing List

Ask your visitors to sign up for your newsletter when they come to your online business site. Give them an incentive to do so such as a free report or free e-course on a topic related to your business. Having said this, respect your visitors and their time. Be sure not to send out your newsletter too often, perhaps once a month and occasionally send a special announcement. Also, make sure to put quality content in your newsletter and give your subscribers an easy way to opt out.

 

9 – Remember At The End Of The Day Your Customers Are STILL Real People

A lot of people forget this, they are not treating their customers as real human beings and are not putting themselves in the customers shoes. Customer service will always be around, that’s why we need to stay good at looking after our clients. If you can’t help them with their request, get back to them and let them know that you have exhausted every avenue to find a way and maybe even refer them onto someone who can help them. Even though you may not be able to help them at that very point in time, they WILL remember you went the extra mile for them and will tell their friends via word of mouth or by social media (which would be great promotion for you), either way, you can rest your head at night knowing that you are doing everything you can to hold a good name for your business and that every one that deals with you is satisfied. Tony Hsieh has his staff at Zappos practice this commitment with their customers and he has managed to build his online retail store to a $1.2 Billion Dollar company.

This is how you secure yourself as the “go to guy in your industry”, and as time goes by and all these “short attention span, new comers” are so use to ONLY dealing with their customers over a keyboard and text conversation, they will be skimming over life long customers and potentially huge clients for the future.

HOW TO HAVE A SUCCESSFUL ONLINE BUSINESS:

An online business is a business that can reach the rest of the world by leveraging the unlimited power of the internet. It can open doors to a completely new segment of marketing and promote your product at a minimum cost. But like any business, you must first understand who your market is, why or how your business will attract them. Whether you decide to hire someone to build your website or online store, here are seven tips to help you build a successful online business:

1. Understand Who Your Customer Is.

• Do extensive market research in advance of launching a new company or taking your current company online. This market research will help you understand who your customer is, where they currently shop and decide what makes your business better than the competition.
• Speak directly to your customer using internet tools like e-mail marketing, website, social media and squeeze pages.

2.  Solve Your Customer’s Problems.

• Ask the questions. What are their needs?
• Customize your offering
• Offer the extras, upsell, offer the other items they need.
• Then tell your customer why you are better or how you solve their problem.
• Be clear on your boundaries concerning where you will ship and what you will charge.

3.  Get Traffic to Your Website from as Many Places as Possible.

• Search engine optimization (SEO) is not hard, but is time consuming.
• Social media is your voice and method to connect with newcomers.
• Develop a valuable offer like a free e-book containing information; this entices people to sign up to your e-mail list.
• Send traffic to your offer as many ways as possible. Repeat your offer everywhere!
• List your website in directories, this increases your web presence.
• Advertise your business where your customer is found.
• Use your e-mail list to market your business, educate and create a relationship with customers.
• Create a website that is scalable and will allow you to sell additional products and up-sell to bigger offers. Once you figure out how to sell online, you can pretty much sell anything if the right systems are in place.

4.  Add an Easy Payment Method.

• Make it EASY to buy and offer multiple opportunities to pay.
• Use a proven payment method, cart or website like Shopify or PayPal.

5. Use Webmaster Tools to Determine How Your Site is Actually Working.

• View Google Webmaster guidelines
• Be consistent with your address, either use www or don’t, but be consistent.
• Do your keyword research.
• Create high quality content.
• BLOG.
• Create a sitemap to be indexed by search engines, and allow your viewers the ability to find something quickly.
• Use your existing web address where possible. A new web address may take months to be recognized by search engines.
• Verify your site with Google.
• Keep an eye on your reputation by using scraping software to see how people are talking about you on the internet (some companies’ offer this services for free).

6. Understand Conversion Testing.

• Test different ads, offers, squeeze pages. Find out what your rate of conversion is (how many people land on the page and actually sign up or buy your offer or product).
• Use tools like Facebook Ads, which allow you to run multiple ads at the same time, with different images and/or copy to test what works, which ads do people respond to?

7.  Use Tech Support.

• Not everyone is a computer programmer, and nor should you expect to be. Is your strength the creative, customer services and sales side of the business? No one expects you to do it all. Hire help in building your website and SEO where needed. These days you can do a lot by yourself, but when you are stumped, pay for piece work to get the more difficult challenges managed. I recently had a stubborn back end problem on a website fixed within a day for $5. My time (and sanity) is worth more than that, and so is yours

5 Ways to Launch a Successful Online Business:

1. Decide and Do

All five of these entrepreneurs discovered a problem that needed a solution. Instead of letting their ideas slip through their fingers, they decided to create solutions. Ryan French, founder of GameKlip, was frustrated with the controls on his smartphone.

“I set out looking for a solution to a problem I had, instead of looking for a product to sell,” he says.

For SkinnyMe Tea Founder Gretta van Riel, a business idea came to her in sleep. “When I woke up, I knew that I had a great idea,” she says. “I started building my business literally the same day.”

When Debbie Sterling first started Goldie Blox, advisers told her to ditch the idea of a toy entirely and just do an app. She decided to stick with a physical toy because she felt the tactile experience of building things was a better way to introduce mechanical engineering principles to girls. “Screen play alone just doesn’t do it justice,” she says.

2. Test and Test Again

A big reason why so many entrepreneurs fail is because they invest lots of time and money in their products before evaluating whether there is a market for them. The winners of the Shopify contest all tested their products extensively before making them available to consumers.

Sterling met with neuroscientists and teachers and visited more than 40 homes and three schools to study the difference in learning styles between boys and girls. Before she approached her manufacturer, Sterling designed the Goldie Blox toy in her living room using parts she bought at the hardware store.

When first starting out, Sterling kept her ideas to herself because she didn’t want anyone to steal her concept. But when a friend asked if she wanted to be an inventor or an entrepreneur, she reconsidered her tactics. An inventor works alone in a lab, but an entrepreneur needs to inspire and be inspired by others.

 

Decide if you’re an entrepreneur or an inventor,” Sterling says. “I probably spent a total of $250 on the prototypes. It’s important to prototype everything beforehand and then test the prototype on your target demographic.”

Fresh-Tops assumed fancy packaging would increase sales. They quickly — and expensively — discovered that it’s better to focus on fast delivery and high-quality products rather than packaging, which eats up profits. “Keep experimenting until you find something that works. Be versatile and flexible, and you’ll learn and grow as you go along,” founder Nella Chunky says.

French, of GameKlip, stayed up all night bending plastic until he arrived at an efficient and presentable design. He then posted a video of his prototype and started pre-orders. He realized there actually was a demand for his creation and used the pre-orders to fund his first batch of plastic.

3. Ace the Manufacturing Process

GameKlips’ manufacturing motto is to keep things local. To find a manufacturer, French searched Google and found an injection molding company right across the street from a restaurant he frequented.

“Try searching for a rapid prototyping shop in your area,” he says. “Most will have connections with companies that can handle the manufacturing when you’re ready. It costs a little more to manufacture things here instead of overseas, the added convenience of being able to drive over and talk to people is incredibly valuable.”

For Fresh-Tops, finding a manufacturer was all about networking. “Getting to know people in my industry played a huge role in developing my company,” Chunky says. “We found all our manufacturers through referrals from personal relationships.” It’s important to get involved with the market of your specific products. So if you’re in the fashion industry, go to every runway show, magazine release party and shopping event that you can.

Canadian Icons founder Aaron Slipacoff searched for a place where he could add value to the manufacturing process. He quickly learned that customer service was the answer.

“We decided to offer the best possible service to our customers,” he says. This meant overnight shipping in Canada and 90-minute delivery within 30 miles of their office. They also decided to offer a full return policy, no questions asked and no postage required. It was a risky strategy, but ultimately worth it for their company.

4. Find Untapped Resources

Using social media and finding mentors aided the Shopify winners immeasurably

Using social media and finding mentors aided the Shopify winners immeasurably in their paths to success.

SkinnyMe Tea used Instagram — on which the company has more than 180,000 followers — almost exclusively to build its brand. “We don’t just talk about the product, we talk about everything in the health industry and emphasize our product as a part of a healthy lifestyle, not a ‘just another diet,’” van Riel says.

GameKlips used forums to learn about customers’ experiences with shipping and fulfillment. “The amount of information stored on forums is incredible,” French says. For shipping, GameKlips uses ShipStation, an app that automatically pulls orders from the online store and creates shipping labels. Before finding this app, shipping was a huge headache, and French was manually copying and pasting addresses into the U.S. Postal Service website. Now, he says, “I click one button and the invoices come out of one printer and the shipping labels come out of another. The order processing efficiency still amazes me.”

Sterling tapped into entrepreneurship organizations and her personal network to bring Goldie Blox to the market. The biggest was StartingBloc, a social entrepreneurship fellowship program. She then got involved with Pacific Community Ventures, who connected her with a pro-bono adviser, Sam Allen (founder of ScanCafe), who has been instrumental to her business. Later, Sterling was able to pitch Goldie Blox on the main stage of the Social Capital Markets conference, making great contacts in the social innovation space.

5. Create Big PR Wins

Canadian Icons developed its public relations approach right away. It wanted high search engine optimization links and mentions in respected publications to drive traffic and build brand identity. The company hired a firm to help with PR and received positive media mentions in Canada as a result.

In addition, Canadian Icons curated a collection of high-quality content. They wrote stories about Canadian icons like the canoe, the snowshoe and the Group of Seven. Then, Slipacoff approached national cultural organizations and got them on board.

 

“Once I had these great partners and stories in place, I presented an idea to some iconic brands, suggesting that Canadian Icons would be the most authentic Canadian place online to tell their brand stories and offer iconic Canadian products in a new way,” he says. “For brands like Canada Goose and Manitobah Mukluks, it was clear early on that they got it.”

French was an active member on Reddit and Android forums like XDA Developers long before he started GameKlip, and he used his reputation in those communities to his advantage. When he launched the company, members of both online communities helped spread the word about his product. “I couldn’t have done it without them,” French says. Since then, GameKlip has been featured on websites like Gizmodo, ABC News and Ask Men.

French didn’t have to make any pitches or hire a marketing firm to get those mentions — they all picked up his story on their own.

Goldie Blox’s PR win happened months before the company even launched. The product was still in the earliest prototyping stage, but Sterling created a blog to share the stories of building it. Writers for The Atlantic and TechCrunch found the blog, and Goldie Blox gave them the exclusive story for its launch, which created a ton of buzz for the brand. But the biggest PR win came when the website Upworthy posted its Kickstarter video about a month after the campaign had ended. It instantly went viral, spiking to almost a million views within a few days. Goldie Blox had so many orders, they sold out of their first shipment and had to push back the delivery date.

Ten Tips to Starting and Running A Successful Online Business:

Starting and running an online business shares many of the problems, risks and issue inherent in any business. Here is my hit list of the ten most common mistakes online sellers make that lead to failure.

1. Have a Plan – I am always amazed when I learn how many people buy a book or a training program and just dive right into it without thinking about what they are doing, setting goals and taking the time to work out a budget and a list of tasks they will need to do.

2. If you want to start your business –you have to start your business –This is the opposite of the first tip, Have a Plan. I cannot tell you how many people plan and plan and plan and never get started. They are perfectionists and simply will not dive in until the water is at a perfect temperature, and they are wearing a life vest and there is a lifeguard standing ready. At some point you just have to dive in. Yes take the time to write a basic plan, but every online business that I know about takes some experience. It really is a question of learning as you go. Starting an online business is the ultimate in on-the-job training.

3. Set up Your Business Correctly – If you want to sell the occasional garage sale item on eBay you don’t have to worry about this, but if you want a real business then you have to take the time to set it up and organize it correctly.

Most communities do not require a business license for people operating businesses out of their homes, but some are starting to do this as they see it as a source of revenue. So first check with your local community to see if you need a license.

Next get a sales tax number. Whenever you sell an item that is shipped to someone in the same state you live in, then you need to collect and pay sales tax. To do this you need to register and get a number. that explains more about this and has links to the various state taxing agencies where you can apply for a number online. The other reason for getting a sales tax number is that a lot of wholesale sourcing companies will not deal with you unless you have one.

Lastly get an IRS Tax ID Number. You can get this online at IRS.gov. This is just an ID number in the name of your business. This way you are not always giving out your social security number to people you don’t know. And once more –a lot of companies will not deal with you unless you have one of these numbers.

4. Invest in Your Success – This is a common problem, especially if you’re not used to taking risks. Ask yourself where you want your business to be in three, six or twelve months. How big do you want your business to be and invest accordingly? If you are just looking for a part-time income then you don’t want to invest in expensive services and tools. However, if this is the way you hope to make a living, then you have to take some risks and invest in your success.

5. Guard Your Time – Time has a price tag and its easy to overspend. Years ago I used to run a large commissioned sales force. Our sales people had two tasks; Prospecting & setting appointments and making the sales presentation. I showed out sales people that assuming they closed half of their sales the time spent in front of a client was worth over $200 hour. So why not pay someone $10 an hour to prospect and set appointments for them. I even pointed out that our top three salespeople were doing that with great success. Yes almost none of them would invest the money to hire someone. That is like walking down the street and stepping over a $20 bill to pick up a $1 bill.

There are two types of tasks: high value tasks and low value tasks. Doing miniscule tasks that you could easily farm out or that you could subscribe to an automation service to perform is just silly. It wastes your time and therefore hurts your income. Spend your time on the high-value tasks that make you money

6. Stay on Top of Your Business – Nothing in the business world is static. Things change all the time and this is probably more true in the online business world where change can happen quickly. Once you get your business up and running and you are making money, it is easy to put your feet up and relax. That is a crucial mistake. You should always be on the lookout for new products, new services that can help your business and new methods of marketing. I was guilty of this when it took me two years to recognize the marketing value of Twitter and Facebook. That mistake cost me thousands of dollars.

7. Take your losses early – Believe me I have been there. You purchase some inventory knowing you are going to make a killing and then it turns out it just won’t sell. Or maybe you set up a new venture and no matter how hard you work or how much you spend you just can’t get it to work. There is a time to be persistent and a time to quit. If you have inventory that is not selling, drop the price and get rid of it. You can use the money to invest into inventory that will sell. If you start a new venture give it a fair amount of time to become successful. As long as you see improvement and growth –even if it’s slow, then you should keep going. But if you are not seeing a light at the end of the tunnel –take your losses and move on.

8. Get help when you need it – I never had any formal training in writing. When I started writing my eBay books it showed. I would get email from readers pointing out mistakes in my books. Finally I realized that I needed help.

Fortunately my son had recently married a British lady who was a very good writer. I hired her to do edit and format my books. I still never got any formal training, but my writing improved just by looking at the corrections she would do in my books. Over time, she was making fewer and fewer corrections as my writing improved. Do I still make the occasional error –of course I do (and my readers still point them out). But now my books have a professional, yet personal look and feel that I strive for.

9. Network – Networking is nothing more than making friends and acquaintances with others who work in your field or related fields. I have even made friends with a few of my competitors. These are folks I can call on for advice. For example, my friend Jim Cockrum has become an expert on outsourcing. I was reluctant to try outsourcing because of all of the horror stories I had heard. Recently I was looking for some help with some web tasks and I reached out to him and he put me in touch with the perfect person. Had I not had that relationship there is no telling how many people I would have had to go through to find the right person.

10. Understand your expenses — I see this all the time. People go into business and start spending money and they have no idea if they are profitable or not. Experts claim that most new businesses fail because they are undercapitalized –that may be true for brick and mortar businesses. But I am willing to bet that most new businesses fail because they don’t understand their expenses and have no idea hot to track their cash flow.

At first you can track your expenses on an Excel worksheet. Just put down the money coming in, in the left-hand column and list your expenses in the right-hand column. When the total of the left hand column is greater than the right, then you are making money. If after a while you are not making money, start looking at the expenses in the right-hand column and figure out which ones you can eliminate or reduce.

After a while you may wish to invest in a bookkeeping program like QuickBooks. It is easy to learn and can be a very powerful tool to help you understand and manage expenses.