In this video and blog post, I’m talking about my why – the real reason I’m building an online business. Why am I building an online business? It sounds like a fairly simple question, but when you stop and think about it properly, there can be much more behind the answer than simply wanting to make money. Recently, I was asked to think about my own “why” as part of a 30-day challenge that I have been taking part in, and it made me look back at my journey both online and offline.
I have been self-employed for virtually all of my working life. In fact, even before I left school, I was always looking for small jobs and ways to earn money. Running a business and working for myself has therefore been part of my life for a very long time. However, as the years have gone by, the type of business I want to build has changed considerably.
Most of my traditional businesses have involved physical work. They have also required me to physically turn up if I wanted the business to operate. There is nothing wrong with that, and those businesses have served me well, but one of the things that attracted me to the Internet was the possibility of doing things very differently.
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Discovering The Potential Of The Internet
I first started seriously researching the Internet back in 2004. At around the same time, I had my first website built for an offline business. The website itself was designed to bring customers into a traditional business, but seeing what could be achieved online immediately caught my attention.
The Internet was very different in those days. There was plenty of information available, but there were also many products promising easy riches and overnight success. I purchased several different products and courses while trying to understand how Internet marketing worked. Unfortunately, quite a few of them did not deliver what they appeared to promise.
That experience taught me something which I still believe is extremely important today. If you are starting an online business, getting the right training and following a proven process can save an enormous amount of wasted time. It does not remove the need for hard work, but it can stop you repeatedly heading in the wrong direction.
I wrote more about the opportunities available through the Internet in my article, The Power Of The Internet – How People Are Really Making Money Online. The technology has changed enormously since I first went online, but the basic opportunity remains. Ordinary people now have access to tools and audiences that would once have required huge amounts of money.
Why An Online Business Appeals To Me
One of the biggest attractions of an online business is location freedom. With a traditional physical business, you normally need to be where the work is taking place. If you are running machinery, visiting customers or carrying out a service, you cannot simply move somewhere else and expect the business to follow you.
An online business is different. Provided you have a computer and a reliable Internet connection, much of the work can be carried out from almost anywhere. That does not mean you do not have to work. In fact, I think one of the biggest misconceptions surrounding online business is the idea that everything somehow happens automatically.
Successful online businesses still require work, consistency and regular attention. Websites need content, videos need creating, emails need answering and marketing needs to be carried out. The difference is that much of this work is not tied to one physical location.
That freedom is increasingly important to me. My longer-term plans involve spending considerably more time in Greece, while continuing to run my online activities. Building something that allows me to work wherever I happen to be is therefore a major part of my own why.
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The Internet Transformed One Of My Offline Businesses
Although I am now focused increasingly on online business, my Internet marketing knowledge has also been extremely useful in the offline world. I saw this particularly clearly when I started another traditional business in 2016.
I was able to grow that business remarkably quickly using the Internet. From memory, it took around seven or eight months before the business was turning over five figures per month. Without the Internet, I believe it could easily have taken many years to reach a similar level.
The reason was fairly straightforward. Instead of relying entirely on word of mouth, local advertising or waiting for people to discover the business, I could actively create an online presence and make it easier for potential customers to find me. Search engines, websites, business listings and other online marketing methods gave me access to customers far more quickly than traditional methods would have done.
I still use some of these principles today, and I have written about subjects such as using online directories to grow a local business. The Internet is not only useful for people trying to make money entirely online. It can be incredibly powerful when used alongside a traditional business as well.
The Difference In Startup Costs
There is another major reason why online business continues to fascinate me, and that is the relatively low cost of getting started. When I set up my offline business in 2016, it cost me somewhere in the region of £35,000, despite the fact that I already owned some of the equipment I needed.
That is quite normal with many traditional businesses. You may need machinery, vehicles, premises, insurance, tools and numerous other things before you have even earned your first pound. Depending on the type of business, the startup costs can be considerably higher than the figure I have mentioned.
Compare that with starting a website. A domain name can cost roughly £10 to £15, depending on the provider and domain extension. With the appropriate hosting platform, a basic website can then be installed extremely quickly. Obviously, an empty website is not a business, but the barrier to getting started is incredibly low compared with many traditional businesses.
I have also written about how to start making money online with a zero budget. I am not suggesting that nobody should ever invest money in their business, because I believe good tools and training can be worthwhile. The point is that you no longer necessarily need tens of thousands of pounds simply to test an idea.
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Low Cost Does Not Mean Instant Success
This is where I think many people misunderstand online business. Because it is easy and inexpensive to start, people sometimes assume that results should also arrive immediately. When that does not happen, they become discouraged and start looking for something else.
I recently had a conversation with someone who had been building an online business for around five weeks. He had already achieved his first sale, but he was considering giving up because he felt things were not happening quickly enough.
Personally, I think getting a first sale within five weeks is encouraging. Five weeks is hardly any time at all when you are creating a genuine business. If somebody opened a shop, started a landscaping business or launched a new company, nobody would seriously expect the entire operation to be fully established within a few weeks.
The same principle applies online. It takes time to learn new skills, produce content, attract visitors, build trust and discover which methods work best for you. There may be setbacks along the way, but that is simply part of business.
I discussed this subject in more detail in A Message For Anyone Building An Online Business. One of the biggest advantages you can give yourself is simply being prepared to keep going after the initial excitement has disappeared.
Consistency And Action Matter
Over the years, I have seen many people join online platforms, purchase training programmes or start websites with the best of intentions. Unfortunately, some spend far more time talking about what they are going to do than actually doing it.
Information is useful, but information without action achieves very little. You can watch hundreds of training videos, read every book available and join every online community you can find. Unless you take that information and put it into practice, nothing is likely to change.
This is one reason I have enjoyed taking part in the current 30-day challenge. Having regular tasks encourages you to do things rather than merely think about them. Some of the tasks have also encouraged us to look more deeply at what we are doing and why we are doing it.
Consistency does not necessarily mean working from early morning until late at night every day. It means continuing to move the business forward and doing the things that matter. Small amounts of genuine progress carried out regularly can add up to something substantial over time.
Finding The Right Training And Community
Another lesson I have learned since first researching Internet marketing in 2004 is the importance of being around people who are genuinely building businesses. There is so much information online that it is very easy to jump continually from one idea to another without ever giving anything enough time to work.
I currently use several different platforms and training resources as part of my online business. These include Wealthy Affiliate, where I have been a member for almost 12 years, the OLSP Academy, which I joined more recently, and YouTube training from Sean Cannell and his team.
I do not believe any platform can build a business for you. A good platform can provide the training, tools and community, but ultimately we still have to do the work ourselves. That is why I normally encourage people to test a platform where possible, go through the training and then decide whether it is suitable for them.
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My Why Has Become Clearer Over Time
When I first became interested in Internet marketing, I was fascinated by the possibilities. I could see that the Internet was changing the way businesses operated, and I wanted to understand how I could use it myself. More than 20 years later, I am still learning and still fascinated by what can be achieved.
However, my reasons for building online have become clearer as I have grown older. I do not particularly want to spend the rest of my working life carrying out heavy physical work. However I would much rather use the knowledge and experience I have gained over the years to build something that gives me greater flexibility.
I also enjoy sharing what I learn with other people. There is plenty of hype in the online business world, and I would much rather talk about what actually happens. Businesses take time to build, mistakes happen, strategies sometimes fail and there is always more to learn. At the same time, there are genuine opportunities available to people who are prepared to learn and take consistent action.
So, What Is My Why?
My why is not one single thing. It is about creating greater freedom, reducing my dependence on physical work and having the ability to run my business from wherever I happen to be. It is also about continuing to learn, building useful online assets and hopefully helping other people avoid some of the mistakes I made when I first started.
I am certainly not suggesting that building an online business is easy. If somebody tells you that you can create a serious business without effort, I would be extremely cautious. However, compared with the opportunities that were available when I first became self-employed, I believe we now have an extraordinary range of tools at our fingertips.
The Internet has already played an enormous part in my businesses, both online and offline. I believe it will play an even greater part in the next chapter, which is why I continue to build, learn and take action.
So let me finish by asking you the same question that prompted me to write this post. If you are building an online business, or thinking about starting one, what is your why? What are you really trying to achieve, and are the things you are doing today moving you closer to that goal?
Please feel free to leave a comment below. I would be interested to hear what motivates you and where you would like your online business to take you.