A Quick, Cheap and Easy Way To Start Your Own Business

It’s a bit scary starting an online business, right?

Wrong.

Look… it might sound like a lot of hard work. It might sound mightily expensive. It might sound time consuming.

It doesn’t have to be.

And over the next couple of issues of the Bulletin, I’ll outline for you what I think is the easiest, cheapest and fastest way to start your own online business.

Ready?

OK. Let’s hit it…

A quick, cheap and easy way to start your own business

Right, if you follow each of the steps I lay out here, I reckon you could very soon start pulling in a pretty reasonable amount each week…

To begin with don’t try to shoot for the moon – what you should aim for here is, say, an extra £120 a week. Naturally, over time that figure will grow.

But the key thing here is that this is cheap…

In fact, you could do this all pretty much free.

The start up method I’ve devised is designed to not cost you much more that a few hours of your spare time.

And it all starts with a strange sounding phrase…

“What you do is how you make money.”

Sounds a bit weird, right?

What you do is how you make money…

What do I mean by that?

Basically, I mean that whatever you enjoy doing, whatever you do in your spare time, whatever your hobby is… that’s what your online business should be based around.

That way, not only will you enjoy your new business making money, you’ll enjoy the actual running of the business too.

Believe me, that’s a big plus.

So, the first stage of starting your own online business is to brainstorm ideas for what the business will be about.

Write a list of things you like. Leave a bit of a space between each thing and in that space, once you’ve finished your list, think about what you could write about that subject.

An example (I’ll keep it simple with a list of just 2 things): let’s say you’ve written ‘playing guitar’ and ‘watching films’.

You could write a bit about playing guitar (different techniques, how to keep your guitar in good condition, etc.) but really you know a lot more about films…

You could write review after review or maybe you have a ton of DVDs that you’ve been hording away and now you’re thinking you could sell them, or come up with a new kind of online film loan system…

The point is, you’re brainstorming and it’s one of your hobbies that’s inspiring you.

Having decided on the subject of your business – in our example, ‘films’ – you’re ready for the next bit…

We’re going to create a website (for free) in a moment, but first we need to get some content for that site.

So, having chosen the subject you can write most about now’s the time to write a couple of pieces.

It doesn’t need to be much for now. Just a couple of short, interesting pieces – say 3 pieces, each between 500 and 800 words.

You could write about the Top 10 overlooked foreign films, a piece about your favourite film star or just stick to simple reviews of the latest movies.

Once you’ve got them, put them to the side and we’ll get back to them in a moment.

Next you need to make something you can sell. (Hey, as your online venture develops you can look into all sorts of affiliate and joint venture opportunities to seriously accelerate your profits but right now I want to get you set up easily and quickly and that means making your own product.)

How to create your own cash generating product

The easiest way to create something you can sell is to write a guide or report of some kind on your chosen subject.

What you’re looking to create here is something you can sell for, let’s say, £20.

That doesn’t sound like a lot, and it’s not. But if you can sell just 6 of those reports a week (and we’ll get to generating the customers to do that soon) you’re looking at an extra income of £120 a week.

That’s an extra £6,240 a year to spend how you wish.

And it’s worth remembering that this is just the very basic starting point for your online adventure.

As you develop the business over the year you’ll be able to generate more reports, sell other people’s products and increase your customer base.

But, in my book, an extra £120 a week is a great place to start.

OK, so your report or guide should focus on one main idea based on your chosen subject. Sticking with films as a topic, let’s say you love romantic comedies…

You could write about how the reader could use the content of the top 20 ‘rom-coms’ of the past 10 years to improve their love life, find a new partner or rescue their relationship.

That’s an idea straight off the top of my head – you’ll easily come up with lots more during a good brainstorming session.

Your guide should contain an introduction that explains what it’s about and you should then go on to explain why they should read the report.

The background dealt with you should go on to the bulk of the report, talking about the main idea and how to put it into action.

Then cover some ‘tidbits’, little nuggets of advice that compliment the main idea of the guide. And then it’s a case of winding it all up in a conclusion that reinforces the main idea.

That done, you’ve got your guide. Give it a front cover and a title. Then turn it into a PDF so that when people buy it you can email them the PDF.

How’d you do that?

No problem. And it’s free. You can visit www.primopdf.com and download a piece of nifty software called, erm, ‘Primo PDF’ that converts Word documents in to PDF format.

It’s what I use, and now you can use it too. Hurrah!

OK. So now you’ve got a few articles (remember we put them to the side earlier?) and you’ve got your PDF guide.

The great news is the majority of the work is now out of the way. Creating the guide is the most time consuming part but once you’ve done it, you’ve got it forever and as you attract more and more customers you can keep selling it afresh.

Right, let’s get this baby online…

But hold on!

I’m going to put the brakes on this here. Why? Because we’ve already covered a fair old whack today and if I hit you with an information overload, it isn’t going to help anyone.

So, we’ll look tomorrow at how to get online (for free) and how to get some customers (for free).

For now, just think about what we’ve talked about today…

Start brainstorming some ideas for what your online home business could be and once you’ve settled on a subject, look to start putting a little guide together as I’ve explained.

Then sit tight and keep an eye out for tomorrow’s Bulletin.

Category: Information Publishing