‘First things first’ and ‘A good begin is half the work’ are two very true sayings. They go for everything in life, whether it’s personal or business. A recent study showed that over 60% of all online entrepreneurs didn’t prepare their business or themselves. This crucial step results in thousands of business owners failing.

Doing business online is no different from business offline. Both need a decent business plan, strategy to compete with other players in the market and a viable business model. In this article I’ll prepare you and your business to guarantee your online success.

1. Don’t see your website as a business. Your website is the place where people can find information about your business and it’s products and services. It may also be a place where people can place an order directly.

When you read the above paragraph again you’ll notice that it actually is a description of the word ‘media’ – a way to reach potential customers or clients. Just like newspapers, magazines, radio and television your website is a media. Start seeing it as a media to reach your market, instead of seeing it as your whole business. There’s so much more to business.

2. Running a business includes dealing with people. Although a lot of entrepreneurs are afraid of dealing with people face-to-face or even on the phone, they opt for running an online business. But even then they’re forced to have regular contact with people, whether online of offline.

And it’s not only your customers, like many online business owners think. Next to customers you got a whole list of people you should care about and work with, without them you can’t ever build a profitable business. Here’s a small fragment of the many people you’ll be facing: affiliates, vendors, JV partners, production firms, PR firms, writers, designers, technical assistants and personal assistants.

You see there’s no difference in doing business online versus offline. Be prepared to deal with people.

3. A business can’t live from just one product. Every product has a limited lifespan and will one day stop selling. Online the time seems to go faster, thus products may become obsolete in just a few months. Most business owners don’t have ideas for new products when that happens, because they’re put under pressure. Their business fails.

Many people who learned about online marketing and online business are confronted with so-called mini websites. Those sites that have one page with a sales letter on it, selling just one product. They think it’s the way to have your own online business – while it’s absolutely wrong.

The best possible solution for online business owners is to have multiple entry-level products, together with an extensive range of back-end products. The various entry-level products can be very ‘niched’, for example a marketing course for Italian restaurant owners who’re based in New York. Have several of those to capture all parts of your market and market the same back-end to everyone of them.

Please remember it’s almost impossible to create 5 different high priced home study courses, instead of just one general – for all kinds of restaurant owners.

4. Business is not only about marketing. There’s so much more to starting, running and maximizing a business then just the marketing. But since a lot of people think they’re so-called internet marketers, they don’t think of it as a real business.

Real businesses also include management of resources, both human and money, product creation, networking, competitive research and customer support. There’s so much more to be done behind the scenes then what we see on the outside. Without thinking of the other important business owner tasks, you’ll never succeed.

5. Finding a gap in the market. Most people are told that you should find a gap somewhere in the market and fill that up. But there’s much more to that. Think of it this way: you’re a chemical engineer and find a hole in the automotive industry. You won’t be able to fill it, at least not without investments of many millions.

There are to other points you should take into account when brainstorming or researching for a potential market to get into. These two points are capacity and passion. First the product or service must be one that can sell enough to build a big company out of it. If there’s only room for around 100,000 a year, the market isn’t worth your efforts. The second is passion. You should be passionate about, or interested in the market you’ll be pursuing. Otherwise you’ll quickly lose your momentum.

6. Change your attitude and mindset from employee to the business owner. There’s lots to be said about this subject. But once you experience the difference between the two different mindsets, you’ll get much better results within less time.