Business
Things You Need to Start an Online Business in 2020
Have you been thinking about starting a small online business? Before you move forward, there are four important things you’ll need before anything else.

In the past months, we have seen the COVID-19 pandemic impact our world in ways we might never have imagined. With several industries furloughing many of their workers, many people have been without a job. As such, many people have been seeking alternative ways of making income.
Even if you’re lucky enough not to have been laid off, you’ve probably also thought about other ways to earn money. And given the need to follow social distancing regulations, you probably want to do business remotely too.
Because of the need to follow social distancing measures, more people have been turning to e-commerce for their shopping and businesses. If you’ve been thinking of starting an online small business, here are just a few of the things you’ll need.
Table of Contents
1. Web design and digital marketing tools
If you’re serious about starting a business, you’ll need tools like e-mail marketing, web design, and SEO, apart from just social media.
Perhaps you think you can forgo building a website for your brand because social media exists, and it’s a great marketing tool. You’re mistaken. Social media platforms are great marketing tools, but it wasn’t made for e-commerce.
If you use Instagram, for example, as a makeshift website for your brand, you’ll be limited to the confines of the platform’s interface. But when you design a website for your brand, you’ll have a range of customizable tools for all your needs.
You’ll also need digital marketing tools. Digital marketing is a way to spread awareness of your brand using the internet. It makes use of tools such as search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
As compared to traditional marketing – such as TV, radio, and print advertisements – digital marketing is cheaper. It also can reach a wider audience, whereas traditional marketing is usually confined to a particular region.
Another great thing about digital marketing is that it’s personalized and measurable. It gathers data about consumers, their demographics, and their shopping habits. Doing this allows you to personalize the content you send to each consumer based on these data.
Through analytics, it will enable you to see whether the marketing content you’re posting is effective – i.e., if it’s getting your brand attention.
2. A niche
The Little Lebowski is a store in New York City dedicated to selling merchandise based on the 1998 cult classic filmThe Big Lebowski. Co-owners Roy Preston and Nicholas Dollak originally intended for their shop to be a children’s bookstore, but that endeavor didn’t do them any favors.
Eventually, they got around to selling the Big Lebowski-themed shirts. Seeing that these sold more than the books, their suppliers sent them more and more Lebowski merchandise. Today, their shop has become a popular destination in Greenwich Village.
Co-owner Roy Preston’s advice for aspiring entrepreneurs is to find their niche. This is a crucial part of starting a business. Focusing on a niche market will pinpoint your target and help you adjust your marketing materials accordingly.
Trying to serve as broad a market as possible may stretch you too thin, especially when you’re just starting. You can’t please everyone, so don’t try to. Instead, focus your efforts on serving a specific group of people.
Once you find your niche, do your research. Know the consumers, their habits, and what they want. Then get to know the competition; if you know what kind of products or services you want to sell, check Google Trends. This will help you to see how many people have been googling those keywords.
3. Hire a bookkeeper
Many small business owners will say that they can manage their bookkeeping. Unless you’re a skilled accountant yourself, it’s still best to hire an expert. Having an accountant from the get-go can help you with planning your business. An accountant can help you plot your finances, secure the proper permits and documents, and prepare for your business in both the short and long-term.
Once you’ve started your business, you also have the option to use an accounting software tool such as QuickBooks for your bookkeeping needs.
4. Capital
Of course, you’ll need money to pay for all these things. You have to spend money to make money. Perhaps you have some money saved up that you can use to launch your startup, or maybe you’re thinking of applying for a loan. Take advantage of the e-commerce trend. Find a niche
There are many other things you’ll need when starting an online business, but these four things will give you a good foundation. Even if you’re lucky enough not to have been furloughed – or perhaps you’ve bounced back and found employment – it’s still worth it to look for other avenues of income.
Find a niche market you’d like to serve and study them. Gather some money from your savings or a loan and enlist an accountant to help you plot finances.
Business
5 Mistakes To Avoid If You Are Going To Self-publish Your Book
To help you address any potential questions you may have, we’ve put together a list of 5 mistakes to avoid if you’re going to self-publish your book.

Self-publishing your book essentially means being your own editor, designer, proofreader, and marketer, not to mention the fact that you also have to write your book. There are many tasks and it will be the first time you face any of them.
For many first-time authors, this process can seem a little overwhelming. After all, how can you be sure you’re on the right track to making your book a success? To help you address any potential questions you may have, we’ve put together a list of 5 mistakes to avoid if you’re going to self-publish your book.
Table of Contents
1. “What matters is the inside”
Well, you’re not wrong. Content is king, and it will be what determines the long-term success of your book. However, we often see that authors who make this their mantra end up severely neglecting the more superficial but vitally important elements such as book writing service, formatting, and well-written descriptions. The irony is that if you don’t put effort into the outside of your book, people will never see the inside. It’s really a bit like going on a date, what’s important is the inside, but you have to fix the outside so that people are curious about the important things.
You may not have all the necessary skills in your pipeline, but it is definitely possible to self-publish a professional-quality book (both in terms of content and exterior) without necessarily having any experience. We’ll tell you more throughout this article, and of course, you can always browse our Help Center and blog for more tips, tricks, and guides for self-publishing your book.
2. Ignore criticism and/or comments
One of the best things about self-publishing your book is that you have the freedom to write about topics that tend not to have been explored in mainstream literature. Many publishers do not dare to touch on these topics for fear of not getting a return on investment or because they are niche genres with few but very passionate fans. This can sometimes lead authors to be a little overprotective of their ideas and dismiss any criticism or comments, constructive or otherwise, usually to the detriment of the final product.
Don’t get us wrong here: we’re not saying you should sell out or compromise your creative identity. If you’re not happy with the book, there’s no point in writing it in the first place. However, self-publishing also means self-publishing (for the most part), and that requires a certain objective perspective. That’s why we always recommend that at least two people you trust to read and comment on your work before publishing it.
This is especially true if you want to sell your books once you’ve published them. Getting a couple of people to read and review your book before publication can help eliminate some of the errors you may have missed, plot holes, or undesirable story elements.
3. “My target audience is everyone”
We hear this a lot. There seems to be some widespread misunderstanding about the topic of the target audience, what it is for, and why it is important.
First, let’s eliminate the most common misconception: having a target audience does not mean that said audience is the only one who will buy your book. If you define your target audience as young adults between the ages of 15 and 20, it doesn’t mean you’re actively discouraging people outside that age range from buying your book.
All it means is that you are adapting your writing, your themes, and the aesthetics of your book to make it more appealing to your chosen demographic. It is to ensure thematic focus and aesthetic coherence in your work. This is important because it gives your book its identity.
4. Thinking that you don’t need marketing to self-publish your book
Marketing is usually one of the topics that authors who are going to self-publish their book have the most problems with. After all, most writers don’t want to become authors for the love of marketing. However, it is one of the essential components to the success of a self-published author.
Unfortunately, we often see writers who only make a token effort to promote their books, or worse, ignore it completely and think that interested readers will find it. While that may be the case for some of them, the vast majority of your potential readers won’t be able to find your book amid all the noise on the Internet these days. Plus, even if interested readers found your book on their own, do you really want to waste the opportunity to sell hundreds of copies with a well-designed marketing campaign?
If you don’t know anything about book marketing, we suggest you check out our guide on how to promote your book. We also have an article on our blog memoir ghostwriting services dedicated to book marketing on social media that you might also be interested in.
Don’t waste time and start promoting your book before its publication! Do some research on your target audience and choose communication channels accordingly. There are several different approaches you can take depending on the context, but the three articles mentioned above will help you get off on the right foot.
5. Assume that people don’t like your book
Sometimes, even if you have put all your soul and love into self-publishing your book, the sales of your works may not go as fast as you expected. Many writers mistakenly interpret this slow start as an indication that their book is a failure, universally hated by everyone, and then give up on writing.
It’s a shame when this happens because most of the time it takes very little to see almost instant improvements in sales numbers. So don’t give up! We are here to tell you that this is perfectly normal and that you should not feel defeated by it. Your book, in all likelihood, is not the problem here. Instead, the problem is often that people simply don’t know your book exists. If you read the previous points we covered in this article, you should already have a pretty good idea of what may have happened and what you can do to fix it.
Usually, the answer is that you need to spend more time and effort on marketing. However, it might be worth asking more people to give you feedback on your book, both in terms of the content and the cover, to see if there is anything you can change to make it more appealing to a wider audience. However, it’s not going to happen overnight, so don’t be discouraged by a slow start. Keep up the good work and spread the word!
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