Starting up a side business is an increasingly popular idea for many people, especially since it’s now so easy to achieve business goals from home or remotely. If you’re planning on starting your own side business, here is a checklist to get you started.
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Plan Your Hours of Work
If you’re starting a side business around a full-time job, then you need to best plan how you’re going to work your second job without it affecting the first. This may take a large amount of compromises when it comes to your free personal time, so it’s a good idea to also speak to your friends and family if it’s going to significantly affect how much free time you have.
It’s also important to understand how you personally best work. Is it going to be more productive for you to work on your side business first thing in the morning before you go to your other job, or will you still be productive enough in the evenings after work?
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Choose Your Business Name and Product
Before you can work on developing anything or work to promote it, you need to decide on the basics. Think about what your business is going to be, what the product or service is going to be, and how you’re going to sell it. Choose a business name that best reflects all of this so that you can begin planning marketing and business steps.
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Set Up Your Website
Setting up a basic professional website is a must for any new business. You’ll want to register your domain name and begin building your website. This could be a basic business profile website, or it may be an eCommerce store, depending on what your business is. What matters is that you have something there to work with and develop.
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Manage Your SEO
A proper search engine optimization strategy is going to be a boon when trying to get your side business off the ground and optimize your new business website and online content. Experts like Click Intelligence can help you strategize for your SEO so that you can ensure your SEO is up to scratch from the very beginning, giving your business the best chance to thrive.
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Be Honest About What You Can Achieve
As a small side business, you need to operate as such. It’s important to avoid making promises to consumers which you can’t keep. If you are selling a product or service with a specific lead time that works around your own schedule, then you need to be upfront about that.
Most consumers understand that side businesses may take a little longer to deliver and may not be as quick to communicate, but a lot of this can be forgiven if you put your own personal touch and honesty with everything. This is better than promising to deliver the next day when you simply can’t do it while working full-time, too.
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Set Your Goals
It’s important to understand what you want your side business to be. Are you setting it up in the hope that you can eventually leave your day job and concentrate on it full time? Or is it simply for extra income on the side? Are you looking to produce and sell a product casually, such as your own small shop for handmade items, or are you thinking of bigger growth? It’s important to set realistic goals.
Planning is crucial for your own side business, so bearing in mind the above checklist is a great starting point.
