What Can You Expect From An Online Business?

By Nancy Kraska

Four years ago I decided to start an online business, never knowing what that would entail. I truly believed the hype of a business running 24/7 by itself. How utterly naive I was.

Essentially an online business does run by itself, once it is set up. However, an online business is constantly changing. New challenges await the unwary behind every website. Not only does it keep changing and challenging you the business owner, but as your business evolves so do the challenges. How you adapt to these challenges and changes will determine whether your online business will succeed.

From my personal experience, once you decide on the home based business you want to involve yourself in, allow at least three months to learn new strategies, for some a new language (computer speak), and to improve the multitude of new things you will be learning to enable you to run your home business. Have patience these first three to six months as they will be over in a blink of an eye; you need this learning curve to succeed. You need to know what you are doing and how you are doing it to start to grasp the concept of your running a home based business, and not chasing the dream of owning one.

Throughout the first year you will be learning every day, but within six months you should start seeing some award for your work in the form of cash! After months of trying and seeing little or no results that first big sale is like manna from heaven. It usually happens around the six month mark, but there are no guarantees in online business, to some extent it is sheer luck and perseverance. For me it was people telling me I could not make a living online. Something about being told I cannot do something has always struck a nerve with me.

If you have reached this turning point you will know that you have chosen the right home business for you.

This is also the time when you think you can sit back and reap the rewards. Not So! You have started building the business, now you have to add on. Much like you build a building. You have started the foundation, now move on to the upper floors. You need to take a close look at what you have built, and decide what you are doing that is working and what is not. Get rid of or refine what is not. Continue and refine what is.

I check my website daily, to see where my sales are coming from. If one product is doing better than another, that product gets more exposure. Do the same with advertising. If you use only free advertising as I do, check your sites several times a week to make sure your ads are getting the exposure you need them to get, if they are not getting any hits, rewrite them. I am constantly looking for new and legitimate work at home opportunities. Many of the opportunities I try out first before I put them on my website to make sure they are what they say they are, if it is something I cannot check out I enlist the aid of a trusted group of people who check the offers out first. There are a lot of scam artists out on cyberspace, unfortunately.

Owning your own home business is a continuing learning experience. It really never ends. Look into automation and programs that will help you improve your home based business. The business forums on the Internet are a good source for this type of information. As your profits increase the excitement of that first sale remains, but remember why you wanted a home based business. You need to take some of the profit and put it back into your business either in the form of better advertising, better software, whatever you need to make your business run smoother and faster.

Your home based business will give you the freedom and flexibility to enjoy life. Once you succeed in automating your business, you will be able to choose when you want to work and when you want to play.

Within the first year you will have set up a daily schedule which will give you a routine to your working days, while still maintaining the flexibility you longed for when starting. You won't be rich yet, but you will be your own boss. At the end of the first year you have made it past the ups and downs of owning your own business, you should be seeing a profit, and you are on track for where you want to be.

Most online marketers who are within their first five years are still working for someone else, but they, unlike their counterparts, see the end in sight. They know that they are where they want to be, and within a short period of time, they will be working only for themselves.

__________________________
Nancy Kraska has been involved with internet marketing since September, 2004. For more information visit her directory of Work At Home Ideas and Opportunities at Home Work For You http://www.hmewrk4u.com/ View all articles by Nancy Kraska