How To Start An Online Business From Home

If you are struggling financially, you are not alone, but luckily there are many ways to make money online in this day and age. Thanks to the internet, anyone can start an online business from home.

I mean, look around, everything nowadays is being done via the internet.

You can watch movies, shop for anything, order food, ask someone to do a job for your, pay your bills and even find a partner all in the comfort of your home made possible by the internet.

Scams Everywhere…

Yes, making money online can be a dangerous place to be in because there are a lot of scams and get rich schemes sharks out there that are preying on newbies and this might have a bad taste in your mouth.

Or maybe, your friends advise you or, worse, makes fun of you whenever you bring up the idea of working from home with just a computer and an internet, but I can promise you that making money online is a very real!

Opportunity Still Exists…

Think of your favorite Youtuber, your favorite social media influencer or your favorite blog. What do they have in common?

Yep that is right! They all make money online! And they make a LOT of it!

Okay… Maybe you are not into writing blogs or making videos, but believe it or not, you can still do online business.

How?

You can do it by starting your very own e-commerce site or you can sell products to eBay or Amazon!

These examples are just a few but this just shows that there are many ways to make money online!

Work and Perseverance Is Still Required

Of course, popular blog sites, successful e-commerce sites, and internet celebrities didn’t achieve their success overnight and a lot of work has been put to it, but think about FINANCIAL FREEDOM and UNFAIR AMOUNT OF INCOME you will get once things get traction and started to run according to plan.

So if you want to become the next Youtube celebrity or who wants to become an authority in blog space or want to have a very lucrative e-commerce store then keep reading and I will teach you what you should do next to start an online business from home!


Affiliate Disclosure – I am an Affiliate of many products promoted on this website and may earn a commission if you purchase something.


How To Start An Online Business From Home

1. Start With “Why”

In his book, “Start With Why“, Simon Sinek explains that leaders, influencers, entrepreneurs, etc. are able to ins rally others by prioritizing the “why” of their business ahead of their how and what.


As with any other business, starting an online business should start with why because you want to define what is the purpose of your online business and why your online business exists.

Many people wrongly believe that the “why” of their online business is to make lots of money, but making money is actually just a result or incentive for doing “why”. Without a strong why, your business will not strive and you will most likely be going to give up when things get hard.

That being said, you should figure out the why of your online business before starting one, print it and frame it so when times are tough then you can go back to it and push forward!

Below are some tips that you can ask yourself when figuring the why of your online business.

“Why are you starting an online business?”

First, ask yourself why you are starting an online business!

Is it to share a unique solution to a problem many people are experiencing? Are you passionate about something and you wish to share your knowledge with others? Did you experience some sort of hardship, figure out the solution, and now you want to help others who are experiencing the same thing you experienced? Maybe, you want to help the marginalized but you need cash flow to support your life purpose!

Your Why Should be Bigger Than You

Okay, so you figure out your why, the next question that you need to ask is, “is it bigger than me”. If your why is to just make money and have a lucrative life, then there is a great chance that you will fail.

Why?

Because it takes time before you make money online and a lot of hard work must be put it!

If your “why” is only to make money, then there is a higher chance that you will give up before you succeed especially if it is taking longer than you have anticipated.

I cannot tell you what your why should be. It is totally up to you. You know your skills and talents and your experience and hardships are unique to you. But one thing that I ask you to do is don’t make “making money” the why of your online business!

But imagine…

If your “why” is to give your kids a better life or to help others avoid what you’ve been through by giving them helpful advice, etc. then even if you are not making money as quick as you are hoping for, you will still be empowered to keep going even if you don’t earn at first because money is just secondary to you!

2. Educate Yourself

Now that you know your why, the backbone and foundation of your online business, (again, let me reiterate this… the more solid/ stronger your why, the higher your chance yo will succeed) then your next step is to educate yourself.

Nope. I’m not asking you to go back to college/university and get a degree in business or marketing, instead, go… well speaking of online business… go online because there are others who were already successful in this type of business and they are willing to teach others to become successful in this field as well.

Resources that I Personally Used To Educate Myself

Wealthy Affiliate

When I started my online business, Wealthy Affiliate (WA) is the one that helped me get started. I really love Wealthy Affiliate because it provided me the resources that I need to get started as well as the community that is there to support me with my online business journey.

They offer step-by-step affiliate marketing training, web-hosting services that allow for your sites to be hosted, 25 profit-ready WordPress websites, hundreds of thousand members that are ready to help (I’m not even making a sales pitch here. This is very true), and many many more.

Shaw Academy

I discovered Shaw Academy because of a promotion sent to be my cellphone service provider. I did the free trial and took the Social Media Marketing course which taught me a lot about how to use social media to market your contents to others.

I also took Blogging and Content Marketing, Business and Leadership, and Digital Marketing Courses from Shaw Academy!

What I like with Shaw Academy is it gives you an EQF Level 5 diploma once you finish the course!

uDemy

One day, I got an advertisement from uDemy (most likely, I got ad-targeted because I used Shaw Academy – you will learn more of that once you are in the online business).

uDemy is a platform where is sells online courses made by individuals (Another online business model that is very suitable for a person who is good at teaching and has a knowledge/skill to teach). You can buy online courses for only $15 or less compared to $200 to $300 when you bought it directly from outside.

I used uDemy and bought courses about blogging, online course creation, fulfilled by Amazon, how to sell on eBay, and many many more!

I like uDemy because the online courses that you can buy from it is well made, informative and very professional provided that you bought the right one. Fortunately, buying the right one is easy because all you need to do is to get the one with the highest review and the one that has most feedback!

Pinterest

Later on, Wealthy Affiliate introduced me saying Pinterest is a powerful tool that can be in bringing traffic to my blog. I started using it but I quickly learned that its benefit for my online business is tremendous.

The primary use of Pinterest Business account is to create boards that are related to your business and to stuff it with Pins (ideas) so people who are interested in your topic will find your account.

It is also recommended that you create your own pins and put a link to your website in it so, hopefully, people who re-pinned your link will click the link to visit your website.

Another use of Pinterest is to direct them to Amazon or eBay by creating an affiliate pin. In this online business model, you skip the hustle of writing a blog just to promote a single product. Of course, the downside of this is your ability to build trust between you and your customer is less and trust is important in making a sale!

My favorite use for Pinterest is to save ideas for myself. These ideas help me improve my digital marketing and my side-hustle literacy so not only I’m using Pinterest to attract people that are interested in these areas but I also use those pin to better me, therefore, my business. You can check my Pinterest account to learn what I mean by that!

Again, let me remind you that in this step, you do not need to specialize on what online business you will going to do. Just learn as much as you can and get familiar with the ins and outs of different types of online business.

3. Have a Computer and Internet Connection

After having a bird’s eye overview of the online business world and increasing your online business literacy, your next step is to test them out, but before you do that, you have to ensure this step first!

It is pretty common sense but you need a laptop or desktop if you are going the route of affiliate marketing, social media marketing, blogging but you might need a more powerful computer if you decide to do Youtube because of video editing.

4. Try Out as Many Online Business as Possible

As I have mentioned in Step 2, I tried to learn and do as many things as possible, but at the same time, I tried to keep my operational cost to zero!

What do I mean by keeping my operational cost to zero in the earlier stage of doing online business?

Well, if you are starting out, always use a trial or starter account versions of the software/platforms that you need for your online business whenever possible. If you need to pay for services, always choose the most economical pricing tier, and always look for free alternatives!

You must remember that you WILL NOT MAKE MONEY for the first couple of months so please do not buy or subscribe to products or services that promise to give you income in just a few weeks! They are most likely just marketing schemes.

Online Business Models that I Personally Tried

The following are the online business models that I tried to learn/tested out: Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA), How to Sell on eBay, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest, Fiverr for Online Freelancing, and many more.

For the most part, I save blogs/pins on my Pinterest Business account to read and learn how to do different online business, but sometimes I go and buy a course ($15) from uDemy for a more comprehensive training.

5. Focus on 1-2 Online Business Model at a Time


Okay… finally, once you tried out as many online business models as you can, it is now time to decide where to focus first.

What do I mean by this?

Going back to my example above, I am now only focusing on Pinterest for Business, blogging and social media marketing.

Why am I doing this?

That is because I want to make sure that the quality of my work is great. It is also impossible or inadvisable to do many things at the same time because every single activity that I do will compete for my time, therefore, I will just end up overwhelmed, or at the very most, my job will be substandard.

Questions?

That’s it! I hope you enjoyed reading this article and I hope that it guided you on how to start an online business from home.

If you have questions, feel free to ask them on the comment section. If not, then let me ask you which step did you like the most? Do you have an experience using Wealthy Affiliate? What online business model that I have shared caught your attention?

I would love to read your answer on the comment section down below!

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