As much as it can be a lot of fun (in a twisted sort of way) and it’s very interesting, a lot of things about running an online business are just really hard to wrap your head around.

I have 2 full ecommerce sites, 3 single page sites and a full time job and right now a big struggle I’m having is trying to strike a balance between driving more traffic and improving my site conversion- which frankly are not very good.  I know that until I can sustain a certain level of traffic that has be to where I put my priority, but there’s a catch 22 in there.

One thing that will make it a lot easier to drive more traffic is a little bit more money to buy some help with all the work. But oooops, it would be a lot easier to get more revenue if the sites were converting a bit better,.

Now it’s entirely possible that I’m getting unnecessarily bent out of shape because frankly, business is kinda dead at the moment.  I’ve hear that from a lot of other people lately though, that traffic is down and people are not in any great screaming hurry to part with their money.  Come to think of it, neither am I.

Yet, I don’t feel discouraged.  I get a little frustrated now and then and tired and there are days that I am desperately tired of looking at these monitors when I could be out playing golf or - more likely- pushing a vacuum cleaner around my very messy house.  But mostly there are just so many things I want to do and I wish I had more time, but you know, it’s been a very long time since I woke up in the morning and felt that the day ahead of me was going to be a bore.

I might not get it right the first time but I’m still sure I’m doing the right thing for me.

If you’ve recently started a small home business or an online business, you may not have that much income. In fact, you may have no income and little start up money, meaning you can’t hire a professional marketing expert to help advertise your business. If you don’t market yourself, however, you’re doomed to end up as another small business failure. But what if you don’t know anything about marketing? Well, you can still do some limited advertising to get your name out there. Here are some ways of marketing without being a marketing expert:

• Make business cards. They don’t have to be fancy, but it is helpful to be able to hand someone your card with all of your contact information.
• Use social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. These sites are free and easy to use. Just don’t spam people too much!
• Add a link to your website to your email signature. This way, you advertise your site with every email you send.

One way of ensuring that your business will fail is to create store websites that are not easy to use or are not helpful. Customers shop online because they want to avoid the hassle of shopping in stores, and one of these hassles is dealing with merchandise that isn’t marked or doesn’t ring up like it should. If these customers can’t easily purchase things from your website, they will simply go to another online store and never return. To that end, you need to make certain your store website is easy to navigate, simple to use, and is very informative. Here are some tips to accomplish this:

• Don’t make users click needlessly. If you can put all the information on one page, do so—don’t make them click on several different pages.
• Make certain necessary information—price, size, availability, etc. is very easy to find. Putting this information in a different color font may be helpful.
• Streamline the check out process. For example, automatically fill in the shipping address based on the payment address information, but give users a way of changing this information if they want.

When you create your online store, one of the things you will most likely want to incorporate into your site is a shopping cart. However, it can be difficult to find the one cart out of all the shopping cart solutions that works best for you. There are a couple of ways you can solve this dilemma, however.

The first is to read up on online shopping cart solutions and learn how to do it yourself. You can find some free code and java scripts available on the web, and some web hosts even have their own shopping carts available for you to plug into your website. If you have a bit of HTML know-how, it won’t be too difficult to add a shopping cart.

On the other hand, if you’d rather not take the business risk of setting up a shopping cart system yourself (and since the system will handle your customer’s credit card number, you do want to be sure it’s working correctly), you can pay the extra and go with one of the more complete “idiot proof” systems. You might need to play with it and you’ll still need to integrate it into the payment gateway, but its still another viable option. I’m not crazy about the idea of hiring someone to do it for you and I explain why in “Start Up Mistakes“

The first time a small business owner gets their tax return, they may be in for a shock: they’ll almost always have to pay taxes! Why? Because they may not have set up estimated taxes. Many small business owners, especially those that provide services, work as independent contractors at first. This means no taxes are taken out of their pay checks. Many small business failures come from not being prepared for this. The payment a small business owner takes from the business is considered an advance on earnings, and most owners don’t take social security or other taxes out of these advances. What they need to do is set up quarterly estimated payments. These payments are deposits made to a specific bank account. At the end of the year, this account is used to pay any taxes owed. If you don’t have one of these accounts set up, a CPA can assist you in estimating what your taxes will be and help you prepare for tax season. Most would agree that it’s better to pay a little bit every three months than to be hit with a large tax bill at the end of the year.

When you start-up your own business, there are a ton of things you ‘ll need to spend money on, but its surprising how many of them can be put off for at least a little while.  Sadly, some you have to pay from the get go.

• A computer. If you’re operating an online business, you’re going to have to have a computer. It is a business risk to invest in a new computer when you don’t know if you’ll succeed or not, so if without a business you’d never have a computer, consider leasing on. The write offs are better.  Go for a desktop- they’re cheaper and don’t skimp on the high speed connection.

• If you’re business is online, you’ll certainly need a url, some form of ecommerce software or if you’re working with a different type of template and/or you have a little more online skill you’ll also need an html editor like Dreamweaver.  You’ll need a hosting service as well.

• Finally, you’ll need to be sure to register your business, get a retail sales tax license if you’ll be selling online and set up a bank account

Yes, there are other things that you’ll need of course, but if you want to start a small business, get used to watching those pennies from day one.  It’s a skill that will serve you well.

With tax season upon us, many small business owners may be facing one of the most daunting tasks: their taxes. This is actually one of the biggest areas where small business failure occurs. There are a lot of deductions that many small business owners simply don’t know about, and missing them can end up costing a lot. You want to deduct as many expenses as possible, of course, so here is a list of some commonly overlooked ones.

• Gas. If you’re using your own car to run business errands or to go on a business trip, you can fill up your tank and deduct that expense. Just be sure you’re only doing business-related errands.
• Postage. If you mail a lot of things for your business, be sure to deduct the cost. If you have a PO Box for work-related mail, deduct the cost of renting it as well.
• Office space. If you have a room in your home solely dedicated to your business, you can actually deduct a portion of your rent or mortgage. You have to figure out what percentage your office space is, then figure that percentage of your rent.

Small business failure is something that happens to more new small businesses than you may think. However, unless you plan out your business risks and investments, you may find yourself running out of money. Here’s some small business advice to keep in mind to avoid small business failure.

• Make a detailed budget. You need to cover every expenditure, no matter how small, and you should ideally list everything you may spend within your first year.
• Know what you need to buy to get your business up and running. If you don’t have a list of what you need, you may either forget to purchase necessary items or purchase things you don’t really need right away. Make certain each item on the list is truly necessary to get your business up and running.
• Get organized right away. Keep all business receipts in an easy to find folder, and make certain you have some form of tracking invoices. Likewise, you’ll want some kind of database for your products so you’ll be able to figure your total and net income.

Are you looking to start up your own online business? If so, there’s one thing that you’ll absolutely have to have: a website! However, some people are terrified of the idea - they know nothing about how to start a website, and they’re afraid that they won’t be able to create one. They may pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for someone to make a website for them,- a typical start-up mistake but that’s not really necessary. Making a website is much easier than most people think. The reason is that there are many templates out there. While your site may not incredibly unique by using one, you can very quickly and easily get your information online by using a template.

Many online business owners will use a website template to get their site up and running. Then, after a year or two, they will either take a class in web design to learn how to customize it or pay for a professional to help you. Once you have income from your business, the cost of hiring a professional may not seem like such a huge business risk

In my day job, I sell a marketing service to Information Technology companies who market to businesses in the US.  It’s impossible not to be a little uneasy if you’re involved in marketing these days because with the steadily eroding economy, anyone who has spent any time in this field knows that the spending is going to be way off at least for the next 6 months.

The last few months have been a pretty rough ride for a lot of people and not just those who are in fear or losing their jobs.  Consider if you will the huge swell of boomers who have played by the rules. They’ve been stashing money away for their retirement all their working lives only to watch the bottom fall out of the market and their retirement savings in the last few months.  I have many friends – technically between 5-10 years out from their retirement who have in one move lost between a third and half of the retirement savings they’ve been building for 30 years.

But say what you want about the baby boom generation, the truth is we have turned the world on its head since we hit our teens and we haven’t finished yet. Welcome to the age of the almost senior online entrepreneur.  Why do I say that?  It’s quite simple really, unless my friends and I want to work for someone else until we’re in our late 70’s, it’s time for ‘Plan B’.

Just you watch! In the next few years you’ll see many more people turning their attention towards supplementing their incomes/savings with their own businesses. They won’t be creating businesses that they expect to make millions on.  They’ll be setting things up to help them simply live a life where the ends have just a chance of meeting.

For the first time in the history of history, we have a tool at our disposal that makes it relatively easy to get a small business up and running and make it work where it never could have before. Obviously, I’m talking about the internet and these are just a few of the reasons why it’s the magic tool that is about to save a lot of retiring boomers.

The internet supports a myriad of different business models.  You can open an ecommerce storefront, or start a club or create an information product in a one-off format or as a series. You can hunt down collectables and sell them on Amazon or auction them off on eBay.

The internet opens you up to a virtually unlimited range of interests and ideas. It’s what makes the unique experiences or obscure hobby of any one person infinitely more marketable than ever before.  You’re not restricted to the interests and attitude that will sell on Main Street where you live. You can reach out to the whole world.

As there is a virtually unlimited range of interests you can tap into and market to there are millions and millions of people you can try to sell to.  What that means is that the tiny niche product that could never have supported you before can find a big enough market to make a financial difference in your life.  Maybe it won’t make you rich, but who’s talking about rich? Been there- done that – sort of.

Relatively speaking, many internet business models have what is described as low barriers to entry.  What that means is that you don’t need a lot of money, a massive infrastructure, a building, or a workforce.  You can get a business up and running – literally in your spare time. Yes, you always have to spend some money, but in this instance, depending on what type of business you choose, you’re probably looking at between one to five thousand dollars. It’s not free, but it’s workable and there are opportunities to do it for less.

That’s just the first hand full of reasons I can spit out off the top of my head.  There are many more.  OK not everyone has a computer and a high speed connection, but they are not insurmountable obstacles for most people – and if you have a computer- and some time- and a little bit of money and the gumption to try (and if you’re a boomer – you’ve already proven your up for anything) you can start a business on the internet.

Do not despair. It’s time to make some lemonade!