Building an online business - You need to branch out - Part 5

Building an online business - You need to branch out - Part 5

Building an online business is never an easy thing to do, but it's possible with dedication and drive.  You need to know what you're doing and when to do something.  If you're attacking 100% of the time then you're likely to fail most of those times since it's not always a smart idea to go in full blown every time.  What you'll need to do is strategically attack certain parts of your business' growth and those parts are: Sales, Partnerships, Expansions and R&D.

With these 4 sectors being focused on when you want to branch out, you're going to cover your own back if something does end up going wrong.  You need your profits to come in before anything else, you need a good partner to help you out when the going gets tough, you need to expand in order to target different markets and you need to be running some sort of research and development as early as you can in order to get the ball rolling on another profit stream later on down the road

In this discussion I'll be covering the reasons why you'll need to branch out if you want to be even more successful when it comes to running your online business.

So let's get to it


Your Sales:
When it comes to building an online empire, you need to be making money first before you can bring on a good partner, expand and get into R&D.  I say this because you simply can't afford the other 3 things that you need to attack if you're not making any money.  Sure, there are some people out there that are at different stages of their business and are saying "I can already do R&D so this doesn't pertain to me!" and that's great and all, but we're talking about building a business, not one that is already built lol.

Building up your sales is the first thing you need to work on before you go on to the next step which is bringing on a partner.  Sure, you could start with a partner, but that doesn't always work because you may have different ideas.  So I always recommend that someone start off by building the online business themselves at first, then bringing someone in.

So back to sales...  If you don't have the money coming in, don't go to the next phase because it will start to eat into your profits and you could eventually go under.  Focus on how much money you're putting into your inventory, design, services, etc. and figure out how to increase your conversion rates as much as possible.  If you have done everything you possibly could have and you're still hitting a wall, try bringing in a consultant to let you know what else can be done.  It's always good to have an outside perspective on your business because they will usually see something you've missed.


Partnering:
When it comes to bringing on a partner, you need to be very selective since you'll be sharing everything with them.  You may not do a 51/49 split or even a 50/50 split with them, but if they're partnering with you and your business, they will own some portion of it.  You can actually work something into the contract saying that they will get 10% of the business in the beginning and 10% more for hitting certain milestones.  You can cap them at 49% so that you still keep controlling shares, which is what I would suggest to be the highest percentage you give away.  If you give away 50% of your business, your partner can call the shots or stall you out in your own decisions.  If you give them 49% of your business, they can't argue or stall out your decisions since you own the controlling shares.  They will still have to come to you to make a business decision, but it won't make it feel like you're their boss.

When selecting a partner you will need to fill some voids within the business.  If you have a background in programming, design and databases then you will need to bring in someone that has a background in marketing, sales and business management.  This will allow you to focus on the website itself and your partner can work on the business side.  It's a great partnership to have when someone fills the voids, which are skills you don't have, to make the business better


Expanding:
A good business can turn into a great one by expanding.  This could be moving to a bigger space and bringing on more help to setting up new sectors of your current business in order to target different sub-niches of your main niche. 

If you're moving to a bigger location, you will need to have a need for it.  If you simply want to move to a bigger location just so you can hear your voice echo off of the walls, don't do it.  You'll just be wasting money that could have been better spent in other areas of making your business more successful.  If you're expanding your website to target different sub niches, make sure you're not over extending yourself and doing every sub-niche you can think of.

A good example of a sub-niche would be if you had a website that focused on dog nutrition and then you started to expand into dog clothing.  They're related, but dog clothing doesn't relate to anything close to dog nutrition.

I would only expand into 1 or 2 sub-niches at a time and build them up.  If you do more, you'll have more work piled on top of what you're currently doing, and you may just burn out quickly.  focus on a couple sub-niches and make them profitable.  Bring someone on after they are profitable and expand again to new sub-niches.  Rinse and repeat until you have every single sub-niche bringing in money, and you'll be a happy camper


Research and Development:
When it comes to building your online business, or your online empire, you will definitely need to focus on your own R&D.  You will need to be working on side projects that are at least semi-related to your main business and then building them up until they are profiting.  At that point, you can then bring on new staff members in order to help you build your new projects even further. 

After you have a few different projects that are successful and running under you main business, you will have multiple revenue streams coming in.  This is the best case scenario of course, you won't always be successful with your R&D projects and they might crash and burnt.  The few that do make it to profits will need to be nurtured in a way that you can build them like independent businesses, but they are actually all sending profits to the same bank accounts lol   Eventually you can make them independent businesses and have the main employees run them as partners, but that's up to you.  You can keep them under one business name or you can branch them off even further to make their own companies, in which you'll be controlling partner of



In Conclusion:
You can't take many chances when you're starting off, so don't.  Wait until you have profits coming in from one steam and then start taking steps forward.  Find a good partnership for your business, which could take some time to do but worth it.  After you get a good partnership up and running you will need to work on expanding your business to make it easier to run.  When it's easier to run, you'll want to focus on some R&D projects and see what takes root and brings in some profits.  The ones that bring in profits can be built up and turned into their own entity or you can keep them running under your original business name



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Razzy