Is Competition Amongst Online Businesses Killing the New Start-Up Business Before It Starts?

In my opinion, it could be the other way round. Real reasons for starter failures are explained at a later stage but. first, let me explain to you why competition is not killing new start-up businesses before it starts.

Never underestimate the power of the internet. Reach of the Internet is huge and is growing everyday. E-commerce is a commerce on the internet. It brings many possibilities that conventional brick & mortar stores can never do without online presence.

1. 24 x 365 days open: all conventional or traditional businesses cannot imagine keeping store open 24 hour and 365 days. Even if they want, city bylaws may not allow them to do so. Where as at ecommerce store customers can purchase at their convenient time and from their own location.

2. Tapping into nationwide and worldwide markets: Customers from any part of the nation and world can buy from you on ecommerce store otherwise that is impossible for conventional or traditional businesses without ecommerce. They just need to find your ecommerce business therefore customers first response would be to search on internet search engines such as google, Bing or yahoo.

3. Price Reduction: Ecommerce store has very low overheads like no hefty rents or commercial mortgages, No building maintenance charges, No electricity and other utility charges. All of these add up to the monthly operating cost causing massive overheads. Therefore, by having very low overheads ecommerce can share the profit by cutting down the selling price. Which is a biggest attraction for most of the buyers.

Despite above four big plus points, some new starters fail because they probably jump into ecommerce business by seeing the positive side of it and without preparing adequately before getting into business. Below are seven steps everyone should read and analyze their situation and decide whether they are fit and if not then how to prepare for the ecommerce business.

Systematic approach - Successfully start an ecommerce business.

You must evaluate and judge yourself whether you are a good fit for business before jumping into the ecommerce field. Otherwise, you are likely to fail in business. Follow below simple steps to evaluate your abilities and skills.

Step 1: First and most important is ask yourself why you want to start a business. Evaluate the following qualities in you for running a business.

1. Passion: You must have a high passion for doing a business. Never jump into business just because you are not finding a job or you want to utilize free time between two jobs. This is simply because most of your time goes into looking for a job. Business mindset is way different than job mindset. At a job you are responsible for 8-10 hours which is good but at business you are responsible for all the decisions you make and you need to devote a lot of effort and time for bringing up the sales.. When you will not be able to devote time, mind when you get back to your job and your brand reputation starts declining, and no customer likes to buy from a store where they do not get good products and services. Remember business is not only about selling but also providing good services to customers.

2. Marketing and sales skills: Evaluate your marketing and selling abilities. Do you like selling anything to anyone? Please not even your previous background is employment. Every time you were interviewing, you were actually marketing your skills and selling yourself to the hiring manager. Similarly, in business you sell products and services to strangers. Therefore, marketing and selling should not be a new field for you.

3. Can you improve your patience level? Patience is one of the most valued things in business. If you know fishing then you probably know what I am talking about. Patience is not usually practiced at a job because when work is given to you your supervisor expects fast results and over the time, you are habituated to provide or seek quicker results whereas in business you have to have a great patience level because things work slowly and your haste can change or damage the end-results. Sometimes, instead of gaining you end up paying.

4. Do you like to mingle with all levels and categories of people like intellectuals, corporates, blue-collar workers, white-color workers, Male, Female, youngsters, seniors etc?

5. Are you a practical person and self-learner? You are responsible for most of the business plans and decisions; often you have to find ways to solve problems by yourself. You need to be self-learner and practical because such things are not taught in any educational institutes.

6. Are you a good organizer: You being the business owner, you will mostly be surrounded by demands? Therefore, you need to learn how to prioritize and provide resolutions to the demands. In addition, you should be able to delegate work effectively and encourage others to follow your instructions.

7. Can I manage accounting or do I need external help? Taxation, accounting, income statements, profit & loss calculation, loan repayment etc. requires a high degree of accounting knowledge.

Want to read steps 2 to 7 click here to read more.