Having your own business, from my point of view, is very important. Working to make something out of (and for) yourself as opposed to making someone else wealthy. There are a few fundamental steps to take when building your own business, which I will chronicle here with some detail.
1. Have An Idea
First off you need an idea, whether this is a truly unique idea or just a unique take on an existing idea is fine. Your business ideas can range from the fantastic to the mundane, and be anything from a service to a reusable or consumable product (I’d recommend service or consumable product if you want to have recurring income). Ideas don’t fall from trees; some of you may be very creative and some of you might not be. Either is okay.
For those of you who are a bit creatively stunted right now, I’ve found this nifty idea generator online.
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You can use it by pressing the arrows to turn the dials, or by clicking on the intertwined arrows to generate a random idea. It does generate some pretty cool ideas by themselves, or aspect of ideas that can really get your creative juices flowing. Thanks to our friends at The Directors Bureau Special Projects for providing this amazing widget free of charge. It almost makes me want to compulsively try every idea it generates.
2. Market Research
This is the next and probably most important step you can do. It’ll allow you to decide if an idea is worth investing your time and (possibly someone else’s) money on. There are several ways to go about doing this. You can go the fast and easy route and do it online, or you can hire somebody to do it for you.
If you go about it online, you can use an awesome program like Market Samurai which comes with a 12 day free trial that is SO worth it, or you can join the 30 Day Challenge to learn all about marketing and building an online business and Market Samurai will come with a FORTY DAY free trial. Cool stuff!
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You can also use a program called Micro Niche Finder to do similar research. This ingenious program has a lot of overlapping functionality with Market Samurai, but like its Samurai cousin it has independent features too. It’s also much more user friendly for the newbies out there.
Both programs are excellent tools that truly make market research super fast and super easy. They also both have AMAZING free tutorial videos to not only teach you how to use the programs, but how to use them to make some quick, easy money by generating affiliate income streams.
Next you can do manual online market research. The following an amazing Youtube video from the 30 Day Challenge training about doing manual market research online.
There are more videos that expand on these principles both manually and using software, so I’d recommend just joining the 30 Day Challenge to see what they have to offer, it’s free and amazing.
Finally you can go the government route, like I can with Small Business BC which has free market research tools or a paid service where they do it for you. You can also go through an online market research firm like Tab House, or Google it.
3. Product Development
If your market research proves that your idea is something workable, the next step is to make your product viable by developing it. If you have the personal know how to build your product, go for it. If you don’t, you can hire a service to do it for you.
Elance.com is perfect for this. You can find TONS of freelancers from every walk of life. Programmers, engineers, etc. and all of them looking for work. You can also post a job you want done, and professionals will bid on it for the right to work for you. This is usually much cheaper than finding a lab to do development for you. Although you can do that too, using Google. One place I found is called Sunrise Labs.
4. Mass Production
Once you’ve had your product developed to the point where it can be made as small, cheap, and safe as possible, it’s time to go into mass production. Many times when you outsource development to a lab, you’ll find that they may even have the facilities to mass produce your item. Either that or you can take the prototype (or chemical formula etc.) they’ve made for you to a company that exists specifically to mass produce the type of product you’ve got.
Wikipedia has a great list of manufacturing companies from all over the US. This will require some additional research on your part, but Google can also help you if you search for the topic relevant to your item and manufacturers e.g. “Ski pole manufacturers”. You can then contact the companies you find and ask them if they’d be interested in either licensing your product (earning you a percentage of every one of your items that they sell) or producing it for you in bulk for a fee up front.
5. Marketing
The final step to this wondrous process is marketing. This is the process of advertising your product and getting it out there for people to buy. You can do this yourself in a limited fashion i.e. taking internet marketing courses, learning how to use things like Search Engine Optimization (S.E.O.), Google Adwords etc. or you can hire a marketing firm or advertising agency which can get your product out there and advertised online as well as in the real world.
If you’ve done proper market research, made a good product, and done good marketing that adapts in real time to your market’s changes, you should start raking in the dough.
This is all a pretty vast simplification of the process, and will require you do a lot of your own research, but I hope it’s opened your eyes to how you can build yourself a successful business.
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