How To Start A Online Business From Nothing
5 steps to start & grow your online business
Starting an online business can sound like an impossible task: you might think that you don’t have what it takes, you might think you are not very entrepreneurial.
Starting an online business is actually a step-by-step process.
And if you follow those steps, then actually things can become a lot more manageable.
Let’s start by talking about 3 foundational principles of building an online business from scratch.
And then we will have the 5 steps that build on top.
3 Foundational Principles
1# Build In Public
Build in public in a way that helps build an audience. Now, having an audience of people who know, like and trust you, whether it’s people on YouTube, TikTok or Twitter that’s like a generally useful thing because when you have these people who know, like and trust you, it means you can then monetize that audience further down the line if you really want to.
But it also means that you have like more friends and a network and connections that’s just generally nice and wholesome and friendly.
And the best way of building an audience is to provide value to those people. The problem is that providing value is a bit like nebulous.
What does providing value ever mean ? And how do you figure out what kind of value you provide ?
And so an easy way to build the right sort of audience is to like, when you are starting from scratch and building your thing, to build it in public.
i.e. To document the journey of building your things.
And so if you were to start any new business from scratch. You would be documenting the process and it writing down or may be even making YouTube videos about what it’s like to do that, what resources you are using, what interesting things you have learned.
If you are a book lover, you read a book that helps you with your business, you would be summarising the key insights from that book that really helped you. And putting it out for free out there on a blog, Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or anything that helps get the word out that, “Hey, this is me, I am building in public you can follow along for the journey if you like.”
2# Provide Value First
Provide value first and do not expect quick returns. While building your business, you’d be providing value as we are gonna talk about in the steps, but you’d also be building in public, documenting your journey and all of this would be without the expectation of anything in return.
You would not be trying to sell anything to your audience.
3# Target The Market You Care About
Whatever you are doing, you want to target a market that’s filled with people that you actually care about.
For example: I am YouTuber
If it was me, the market I’d be targeting is YouTubers, the creative entrepreneurial type of people on the internet. And I’d be trying my best to build a business around that specific audience. I wouldn’t particularly try and build a business for new moms because I have no experience of what it’s like being a new mum. But I have got friends who are new moms who are very, very familiar with the audience. They love hanging out with new moms.
And therefore it would make sense for them to build a business around that particular audience.
If you look at anyone who’s kind of successful by society’s definitions, normally they found a way to enjoy the things that they are doing and they loved it so much and that was what allowed them to persevere.
Building a business from scratch, one way to increase our odds of enjoying the thing that you were doing is to target the right kind of audience. To build a business for the people that we already care about rather than for a completely new audience, that you have no empathy or enjoyment with.
5 Steps To Start Online Business From Scratch
1# Learn A Monetizable Skills
You would learn a Monetizable Skills that helps the people that you care about.
Example As A Youtuber
Now, what are the skills that can help YouTubers ?
1. Video Editing
Every YouTuber beyond a certain size needs help with their video editing. And so if you can provide them a service as a video editor for their videos, you can make friends with that YouTuber, make friends with their network. That’s a way of building a business around this idea of creators.
2. Youtube Thumbnails
Every YouTuber needs thumbnails, if you are into graphic design, you can become a thumbnail artist.
If you can be the person providing that service to YouTubers: i.e. a skill that is monetizable, then you are adding a lot of value leading with value, and you are building a business around this niche of YouTuber that you personally care about.
2# Offer Your Services For Free
Once you figure out what this market is that you care about, work for them for free, without permission and while documenting the journey.
If you are just starting learning video editing and you were not that good and you didn’t have a portfolio and it didn’t have a track record — you could not really approach a YouTuber & say, “Hey, I want you to pay me to edit your videos.” Because why would they take a chance on you?
What you would do instead is:
You would email a bunch of YouTubers that you like, smaller YouTubers but also bigger YouTubers just in case. Most of the bigger ones already have editors, but certainly you’d be emailing smaller YouTubers somewhere between the 10k to 100k subscriber range. And you’d be saying to them, “Hey, I love your content. I really like [something very specific] about your content. I want to edit your next video for you completely for free. I will create and edit for you in your style completely for free. And you can use it on your channel and if you like it then we can talk about may be working with me on a paid basis, further down the line.”
So the email or Instagram DM like speaks to them because you have put some thought into this. It’s not just a copied & pasted message.
Now, if you do this with enough people, there is almost no way that someone isn’t gonna reply to you and be like, all right, yeah, this sounds like a good idea.
Now, video editing does require permission you do need to email someone and ask them to send you their raw files because most YouTubers don’t like to publicise their raw files. But there are things that you can do completely without permission as well. And you can do the same with YouTube thumbnail.
These are ways that you can work for the people you care about. work for free for your favourite people like this target market that you care about, do it without permission if you can and document your journey while doing so.
3# Turn It Into A Paid Gig
At this point it’s pretty easy to do to turn it into a paid gig because you have got like decent samples of work and you are actually good at the thing. Which you will be because you are following tutorials on the internet and improving your skills overtime, and you have got decent testimonials from the people that you have worked for free.
At this point, you can now start reaching out to those same people and say, Hey, this is how much I would charge per hour If we wanted to work together, what do you think ?
And they probably say, yes if it’s reasonable, and you can then reach out to other YouTubers and say, or other people in this market that you care about and offer your service for free initially. And then make like a page that has your prices, and you can have different pricing plans. Essentially, you can then very easily turn this into a paid gig because your work will speak for itself.
4# Productize Your Service
Again, if I was a video editor, I’d be putting together some kind of package like, 4 videos a month for X amount of dollars.
If I was a graphic designer, I’d be doing like 3 thumbnails per video, 4 times a month or 4 or 3 times a week for this amount.
And finally that moves us on to step five,
5# Hire People
Once you have productized your services, and now you have got even more money in the bank. At that point, you’d be looking to hire people, and expand, turn this into your own business empire.
So why are you waiting for ?
Apply this steps properly & start from today and build your own business empire.
