Is Online Business and Entrepreneurship Only A Website?

I have been working online for more then 5 years now and when I started my online business I thought that it was only about creating a website and then linking a number of products and services to sell. There were so many things on my mind which proved futile over time.

I had actually started with a number misconceptions which resulted in a really deep learning curve and took a number of costly mistakes to recover and get these concepts right. Some of them were:

• A Website Was All That Was Required : I had learned about this from several sources and may be from sales copy which are circulated all over the internet and are used to attract new entrepreneurs and people who are interested in an online business. I didn’t knew that a website required a number of resources, technologies and maintenance skills which cannot be learned in one day.
• Very Small or Negligible Investment : I was made to think that an Online Entrepreneur can start his/her business with little money. Anyone who cannot even think of a business or his own independent work can easily start a online business. Now I found that it wasn’t true for every one as there were many other things that were specifically required here and those who do not have the right information learn this thing from costly mistakes.
• A Business with Global Presence : Definitely an online business has a global presence but we cannot call it a global business unless we transact in each and every part of this globe. Reaching global customers and then doing business with them has a number of obstacles to overcome like language, custom, legal issues, currency etc. We need a separate strategy and plan to cater to customers from a different region.
• Round the Clock 24/7 Operation : Although we can have a website with a number of automated tools but in order to be fully functional we need an active 24/7 cutomer support. Keeping such a support round the clock can be very costly if we are just starting our online business.

These are some of the facts that took years to understand, we all try to learn things from our own experiences and that is how we waste a considerable part of our life and this is also true for a budding online entrepreneur. Internet is a frequently changing marketplace and things that do not adapt to changes get buried, if we don’t move with time and learn new things right at the beginning then we are sure to lag behind the others.

A business which can take years to get profitable can take a day or hour to get in doom, a website is an identity of a business, an online entrepreneur and if it stops functioning or is lost in a legal battle then there is no way to reach same place in ladder of success immediately. People who are your customers, fans don’t know anyone individually they know about there website, web presence and believe in this identity. So, this is again a risk factor which was hardly considered by me a an online entrepreneur but was learned over time.

Tags: entrepreneurs on web, myths associated with online entrepreneruship, online business and entrepreneurship, starting an online business, website for online business