Practice is a consistent driver of success, especially for ecommerce success

by Stephen Steinberg (@SL_Steinberg)

Yes, we’re going to talk about practice.

Practice is obvious way to improve nearly every aspect of ourselves — we practice for sports, we practice the SATs, we practice parallel parking.

Then when an aspiring business-owner asks me how they can go down the path of starting their own business, why do I get blank stares back at me when I ask them if they’re practicing? Why does this mindset not transcend into the business world?

Is it because people don’t realize that it’s possible to practice starting a startup for free? Do they not know the abundance of amazing (and usually free) tools for startups at their disposal?

How to start a practice startup (that could actually be profitable):

1. Sign up for a free trial at BigCommerce. Choose a nice free theme, populate it with your product. Don’t have a product yet? Run your own quasi-kickstarter by collecting pre-launch orders.
2. Grab a facebook, twitter and instagram account and engage with your audience as much as possible in a non-spammy way to get noticed on a budget.
3. Use Optimizely to split-test your website and try to get it profitable before your trial period is over.

Read more on how to launch fast >