A wise person almost always learns from their mistakes. I like to think that I now fit into this category after making many mistakes with my online business start-up. I wish I had gone online to find sites like Salesforce to help me out in getting started. Perhaps sharing these may help you avoid them if you happen to be embarking on a new online business venture.

The Wrong Business

My first mistake was made even before I got started on the internet. What I did do right was the research to determine what type of business would meet a need. I came across several ideas. None of which were anything that I knew much about, but I figured I could learn.

While I had some business ideas something was lacking. It took several weeks of trying to make myself buckle down to learn about this business before I realized what was missing. It was passion. I didn’t have a personal interest in the business category I had chosen. For example, I had discovered that selling car electronic items could be a lucrative online business. However, I don’t have any knowledge about electronics and I have very little interest in them. As a female, I tend to leave all our electronic needs up to my husband. I now realize that I had just lost several weeks trying to learn about something that I had no interest in. I realized with this lack of interest in would be a real challenge for me to be enthusiastic about selling these.

• Lesson Learned? If you are going to start an online business pick a niche that you are passionate about.

-Setting Up The Website

I consider myself to be fairly knowledgeable about computers and assumed that I would have no difficulty starting a site. After all, I did know the basics. I knew I needed a domain name, a hosting company, and a platform for operating my website. How hard can it be to launch a business website? This was my second mistake and I realize now a should have had a look online for assistance in developing my website.

• The wrong domain name

I was so excited about choosing a domain name that I barged right into this without giving it any real thought. Then I realized something. If I were going to pick a name for a brick and mortar business, I would put a great deal of thought into the name and the signage. The domain name is equal to this. It is just as important. This is the name that people were going to recognize my business by.

I choose the first domain name and it was charming and memorable but had absolutely nothing to do with my business. Fortunately, I only paid a few dollars for this, and I soon set out to purchase a new domain name that was much more appropriate.

• What is hosting really about?

Moving onto my third challenge was assuming that I knew everything I needed to know about hosting. It is just a matter of choosing one of the more well-known companies that offer the lowest prices. Wrong. There is a lot more to it than that. Learn from my mistake and take the time to understand what the different packages are and exactly what they will do for you. I am the type of person who tends to go with the biggest and the best. In this case, I wanted the biggest package the hosting company had to offer, which of course, was the most expensive. Later on, when I became savvier about an online business, I realized this was not necessary. I could have started with a much smaller hosting package and upgraded when needed. I would have saved myself some money had I done this.
Thinking back on it, I could have made some smart choices with my internet plans as well. I do get a feeling that there might have been better packages and bundles like the ones from AT&T, Verizon, suddenlink internet plans (among others, of course) who have partnered with third-party service providers like HighSpeedOptions.

• Global payments

Honestly I didn’t really put a lot of thought into this one and mostly assumed that the hosting platform would do a lot of the conversions and processing for me. However a friend later told me about the software found here https://fastspring.com/global-payments/ that helps you to process global payments that will allow you take your business to an international level. Isn’t hindsight a beautiful thing…

• Lesson Learned: Walk before you run.

Launching The Website

In this segment of starting my online business, I felt quite proud that I didn’t make too many costly mistakes. I made several that were time-consuming and delayed my business launch for about six weeks.

The Biggest Mistake Of Them All

By the time I launched my online business, I had realized that I had made a lot of mistakes. With the most important ones being the ones I have just discussed. However, at the time of launching, I didn’t realize that I was about to make the biggest one of all.

Thinking that now that my site was live, traffic would flock to it. I hadn’t even considered any form of marketing. I soon discovered that this wasn’t going to happen. I set out on the next segment of my business journey to get my brand known.

Hopefully, now that you know about these common mistakes you will be able to avoid them.