Starting Online Businesses Advice guys!

lawtz04

Hey all

I dont know if this is the right section but my logic is "i wana" start my own online business!

I have all of my idea in my head and am well into my researching, upto the point of im waiting on a company to come back to say how much the site is going to cost.

It's going to be quite a large (national) business which I hope you will all know of soon enough. However, it is my first business venture and I am still quite short of the level of knowledge I would like on starting my own business.

I have been told I should be a limited company, this way I am not liable myself should it go wrong - is this correct?

Anyone any advice on anything at all from their own experience (from buying a suitable computer, to running a website, to business insurance etc etc) please help me!!!!
Thanks
Si

hel8itch

i have run quite a few online business sites.but im one of those people that has a head filled with idea after idea and have changed site after site trying new things.
from mobile accessories online shop,dropship,and now iv decided to stick with my fav pastime web and graphic design.
i done alot of searching etc,to get pricing information etc,then brought my domain(1&1)
then purchased hosting(cheapest is meirhosting)
then i designed my sites and uploaded them.once done i just advertised in anyway i could.obviously being a designer i saved mega amounts of money on the site design.and being a computer engineer(a rare female one lol) i knew about php etc so i didnt have to pay for anyone to code my installations.
without having knowledge of exactly what you are planning its hard to advise.
heres a couple of links that will help you out
this one i would recomend as your first port of call
http://www.startups.co.uk/

http://www.roninsoft.com/llc.htm
http://www.bytestart.co.uk/

if you come across any ebooks that interest you please dont pay silly money for them,email or pm me and ill see what i can do i have thousands on my hdd covering every subject possible

MalcolmCooper

I run a fairly large online retail business that I started 2.5 years ago. The best advice I can offer at your stage is do your research and then "set your stall out right" and stick to it.

Be very, very careful about site design and acquire some knowledge of it. If you get it right it might take a year or more to get quality search engine traffic depending on how competitive a sector you intend to operate in. If possible, don't give up your day job until your site is on page 1 of Google's results for your primary key word/phrase.

When planning the site make sure of the following:

If it's primarily aimed at the UK market make sure it's hosted on a UK based server or has a .co.uk domain name. The reason is that a .com hosted on a US server for example will be seen as a US site and this will be detremental to your UK business.

Database driven sites are dynamic. They generate pages on demand and search engines are unable to spider such sites fully. Insist that your web designer uses ModRewrite or some similar technique to generate static HTML pages. If they don't know what you're talking about find one who does.

Whatever advertising and promotion you do make certain that it's targeted at potential buyers. You want traffic that is interested in buying your products, not traffic for traffics' sake. 10 buyers a day beats 1000 visitors a day.

Don't be a busy fool. Set your price(s) carefully and competitively but remember that you have overheads to cover.

Forget the expression "build it and they will come" because they won't. Unless you're in a highly specialised niche market you are going to face established competion. You need to find unique selling points, real benefits over your competitors and then deliver astonishing service to your customers.

Very best wishes,

Malcolm

hel8itch

i totally agree.the longest part i think when i was starting up was the pricing and competitor comparison.
web design is a you know very common and extremely competitive.so i had to get countless quotes of different rated designers different aspects of design then build my pricing.
research as much as pos and make sure youve read up everything and when you feel ready then begin.

lawtz04

Hey

Some terrific advice. Thanks guys. I have sent you private messages (I never check mine so thought i'd mention it here!)

Si x

manhattan

great advice there,i am too considering an online business

Pink.

Hi lawtz04,

As firespire has mentioned, we do have a small business board where you should get some more help, so I'll move your thread over there to see if you can get some more suggestions.

Pink

Seraphim

lawtz04 wrote:

I have been told I should be a limited company, this way I am not liable myself should it go wrong - is this correct?

Not strictly true.
A limited company is in itself a separate entity. If the company goes under for any other legitimate reason (bad luck, whatever), then no, you will not be held liable for the debts etc. However, there are special circumstances whereby as a director, you can be held responsible - for example if you run the finances and there is some underhand book keeping going on. For most intents and purposes though, you won't be held liable and you are more protected than as a sole trader/partnership. The best thing to do is speak to an accountant (regardless of whether you will want one to do your books or not) who can work out for you what the most tax efficient way of working is - there are advantages and disadvantages to sole trader/partnership/limited company.

lawtz04 wrote:

Anyone any advice on anything at all from their own experience (from buying a suitable computer, to running a website, to business insurance etc etc) please help me!!!!
Thanks
Si

Computers can be charged back to a limited company as a 'director's loan' If you are just running basic software, a basic package will do. Insurance will depend on what area of business you are in - we can't really advise unless you tell us what area you will be operating in.

Websites....um, don't know where to start on this one! Will it be purely an information website (this is what we do, where we are etc etc ) or will the users be able to buy through the site? Is the content dynamic, or fairly static? Incidentally, I sort of disagree with the .com/.co.uk advise given above. For a UK company, you can have either a .co.uk or a .com address - I don't feel it really impacts either way (if you have a choice of buying both, IMO I'd get both). If you were a US company, I would say go for the .com and ignore the .co.uk. I don't think having a .com for a UK company would really hurt your business - there are enough .com UK companies out there

Agree with the SEO stuff that Malcolm has mentioned - if you aren't going to make yourself an expert, hire yourself one. It's tough to get yourself to the top of the listings with good traffic coming to your site, although there are quite a few things you can do to make it easier on yourself - Adwords, good site design, knowing what the spiders like, back-linking....etc

One of the biggest choices and decisions is what hosting provider to go with. There are many out there - go with word of mouth/personal recommendations. Think realistically about how much traffic you will get and how much bandwidth each user will 'use' and plan accordingly.

Anyway, good luck with it

MalcolmCooper

For a UK company, you can have either a .co.uk or a .com address - I don't feel it really impacts either way (if you have a choice of buying both, IMO I'd get both). If you were a US company, I would say go for the .com and ignore the .co.uk. I don't think having a .com for a UK company would really hurt your business - there are enough .com UK companies out there

Just to add to that Seraphim it does make a difference depending on where your hosting server is based. For example if you host a .com on a US server but you are aiming at the UK market Google will see you as a US site and this will be detrimental to UK searches. However, a .co.uk hosted on a US server will be seen as a UK site. In short, if you have your site on a .com and your're after UK traffic make sure you are hosted on a UK based server.

Yes, it's good to buy both the .com and .co.uk versions of your domain and park one on the other so that no matter whether someone types xxx.com or xxx.co.uk the site xxx is returned. You still need to decide which holds the site files and which is simply pointed at the other.

Regards

Malcolm

MalcolmCooper

Interesting, as I own various domains in a couple of countries and they are all hosted in the UK and I haven't noticed a detriment to the non-UK sites in terms of Google....something to look into I think

It was something I didn't find out about for a long time. To keep it in perspective it may only be of minor detriment but given how difficult it is to get good search engine positions it's worth being aware of. A combination of such tiny things can stack up against you.

There is a great forum on SEO. Just Google search "ihelp you forum"