When you finally make the decision to start your own e-commerce business, so many thoughts float through your mind. You know the product/products you want to sell and who you want to sell them to, the thing that has you stuck is the execution of it all. You know there’s a lot more that goes into it than just having a fancy website for people to go to and in knowing that, you that it’s going to come with its own set of challenges as well… the question is, are you ready for those challenges.
In order to start your e-commerce business, you, of course, will first need to determine your business name so that you can then create a relevant domain name to match. From here, this is where people jump the gun. Entrepreneurs get so eager to put their all into their business (which is awesome!) but the idea of how to get started are full of holes and major inconsistencies. The commonality here is that entrepreneurs first starting out tend to have all these wonderful ideas for the future of their business without fully understanding and coming to grips on how to actually get there.
Are You Up For the Challenge?
Creating an online business is definitely not an easy task, and creating a successful one is even harder. To help lighten the load of challenges, a lot of “newbie” entrepreneurs will seek advice from other successful entrepreneurs, and that’s actually a great way to learn the do’s and don’ts that come with the business. In fact, allbusiness.com states that surrounding yourself with the right people is actually one of the key factors to overcoming any self-doubt you may have about starting your own business. The key thing to keep in mind in this situation is that everyone’s success story is different.
The way one business owner gained success won’t be the same as another business owner. To add to that, yours will be different too. Although you may seek advice from others, your success story won’t be like theirs… you’ll have your own story to tell in due time. Now, you also have to keep in the forefront of your mind that its tough competition out there.
There are tons of people out there with businesses offering the same type of products and services that you offer but luckily, Google gets around 4 million queries every 60 seconds so, there is still room on the world wide web for your business to flourish. But in order to flourish, you have to get acquainted with some harsh realities of becoming an e-commerce business owner. Take a look at some of the biggest challenges that business owners face when starting their own e-commerce business.
Challenge 1: You’re Going to Have a Painful Start
Going into your business knowing that you’re going to have a rough start is going to lessen the blow when it actually does hit you. Having this mindset is what will keep you motivated, essentially but you also need to come to the realization that growing your business and profiting from it is not something that just happens overnight… To be quite honest, most entrepreneurs, even the successful ones, didn’t see any type of return on their investment until the end of their first year.
*A word of advice: if you can make it 60 days with your business, your business has a high chance of being successful because the 60-day mark is the hardest and it’s when the real challenges start to come into effect.*
Challenge 2: You’re Going to Doubt Yourself
As mentioned earlier, when you finally made the decision to start your own business, you probably had all types of thoughts flowing through your mind like will your business be successful? And when is the right time to start your business?
It’s completely normal to have those feelings of doubt but the key thing to remember is that you cannot let those thought consume you… if you do, you’ll never get your business off the ground; because you’re too scared. Now, as you know, everything isn’t for everybody, just like becoming an entrepreneur isn’t for everybody. True entrepreneurs have a different type of mindset and specific qualities when it comes to their business mainly because they know the business is cutthroat. These mindsets and qualities include:
- Confidence in their product or service
- Knowing that failure is a learning experience
- Success isn’t achieved overnight
Those are really typical qualities and mindsets for true entrepreneurs but what people fail to realize is that not everybody has those aspects about them… those are things that come standard within true entrepreneurs but for some people embarking on an entrepreneurial journey, those qualities don’t come as naturally for them.
Challenge 3: Getting Your Name Out There
One of the biggest challenges new entrepreneurs face is getting their business out there. How will people know about your business if they don’t know it even exists? The answer to that question is that they won’t know and that’s why you need to consider certain marketing efforts to push your business above your competitors.
For your online business, you need to shift your focus momentarily from the products and services to figuring out what will make people consider your business for their needs, what is going to stimulate them to buy your products or services, and what will make them continue to buy from you?
Doing your proper amount of research is definitely going to be a big contributing factor in determining your business’s success in the digital marketing area. Here are some digital marketing tools to consider for your website:
- Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.)
- Blogs
- Google AdWords
In using these tools for marketing your business, you must also keep in mind to use it wisely because these tools can make or break your business. So, as long as you know your products or services are good quality and you firmly stand behind your products, you should have no worries in this area.
Always Remember…
Just like any job, whether you’re employed or self-employed, you’re going to face your own set of unique challenges that you must overcome, but especially so being a business owner. But even with those challenges, if you have the right mindset, products and services, and the right marketing tools and strategies, your business truly has great potential to be the success you know it can be.
