Great Options for Starting Your Own Small Business

Ever wanted to start your own business but aren’t sure where to start, or even what to do? I have always wanted to start a small business, and with the Internet, it’s getting easier to make your dreams a reality. We all have walked into a business where you could hint that the worker was not interested in their job at all, provided bad customer service, and subsequently you probably didn’t want to visit that business ever again.

When thinking about the business you want to start, there are many roads that you can take, and making sure that you'll enjoy what you’re doing also factors in to how successful you will likely be. Many people successfully turn their hobbies into careers; if you have the drive and motivation, this could definitely be an option. For example, if you enjoy marketing, you could help businesses gather sales leads. This could eventually lead to starting your own marketing consultancy. Let’s take a look at some small business ideas that you might consider.

1. Web/Graphic Designer

This doesn’t require any school and it’s in high demand. Many business want custom logos, websites, website banners, business cards, etc. and with a lot of practice and tutorials online you can easily become a web/graphic designer. Design communities offer tons of help for beginners so take advantage of this excellent opportunity. Although you’ll need Adobe Photoshop and programming software this is a great road to choose.

Find products that are in demand and find buy from a wholesaler or drop shipper. These could be items like clothing, shoes, technology, juliska dinnerware and fortuny lamps. Then create an e-commerce website and join eBay to sell your products. To create your website I would highly recommend using a content management system (CMS) such as Wordpress. If you have a good amount of money it's always possible to hire a professional web designer to set it up for you. This is a great way to earn money fast and if successful you can see a large profit coming your way. Just remember that it's going to require you to sacrifice time to promote and advertise your business.

Content writing is a great way to make money for a living. If you enjoy writing this will be a great option. There are many companies that will offer you a job to write unique content for them. They also know have crowdsourcing which has become popular for content writers and an easy way to make money. Crowdsourcing is an idea that involves outsourcing tasks to a distributed group of people. If you want to join this crowdsourcing community some examples of crowdsourcing websites are Amazon and Servio.

If you enjoy taking care of pets, babies’, houses, or the elderly people will always need your services. There are many ways to find clients, whether through craigslist, service websites such as sitter city, etc.

Create your own blog and get paid through advertisements and sponsors. Create your own blog and write about things that interest you. Find followers, and build your blog from the ground up. You can use social media and SEO to grow your website. This might take a little longer to get it up and going but it’ll be worth it in the end.

So have you choose a business to start online? Where do you go from here? Well the first thing you'll need to do is think of a good name for your business. This should revolve around the business you'll be entering. You don't want your business name to cause problems in the future or have any type of criticism because of the name. Make sure to choose a name that's easy to remember, catchy, and unique.

Creating a logo

After you choose a name the next thing you'll need is an awesome logo. There are many online websites that allow you to create a logo for a small fee. You could also hire a designer to create an awesome logo. A great site like 99designs.com gathers designers and people like yourself the chance to help one another out. They have thousands of designers waiting for customers that have an idea for a logo. The customer then create a contest for the designers to enter and from their they are allowed to choose from over hundreds of designs that they create. Whatever design that the customer chooses gets to pay for that image and gets the reward.

Find Your Target Audience

No matter what business you're in their will always be a target audience. Finding that audience will require research and surveying. Ask around and see what the demand is for your product or service.

Be Active in Social Media

This doesn't mean creating a bunch of profiles and never using them. There's no point to do that when reputation management is concerned. Instead, you want to create sever authoritative profiles on the bigger social media networks and keep them active and up to date. Making sure that you're active and interactive is important so your customers will know that you value their opinions. Make sure to have a strong audience on these networks, the more connections you create the better.

These are the best social profiles to create and maintain for businesses.

• Google+ – If you want to rank well in Google creating this page might be the most important of them all.
• Tumblr - This is more of a blog but it really is a great site to use for connecting to other bloggers.
• Stumble Upon - This ranks well in search engines.
• Facebook – This is a great tool to connect with your customers. Who doesn't have a facebook?
• Twitter - Easy to use and probably the most effective.
• LinkedIn – Profiles for people, company pages for businesses.
• Biznik – People only.
• Pinterest – Make sure one of your pins includes your name or business name too!

When creating these pages use your business name or your name as the profile name. This will help you rank well in search engines. Also upload a profile picture that has your name or business name in the file name like yourname.png.

Remember to have fun.... You set your own hours now and nobody can tell boss you around, because it's your business. If there are any other suggestions please feel free to leave a comment in the comment box. This will also be updated from time to time to please check back for more tips.

Numbers of Firms: approx. 9,100

Average Sales per Firm: approx. $170,000

Reason for Highest Grossing: Gas is a commodity in high demand and even more so every succeeding year. As well, owners can sell snacks, smokes, lotto and even sell advertisements on their property.

Numbers of Firms: approx. 89,000

Average Sales per Firm: approx. $100,000

Reasons why Highest Grossing: People love their beer, wine and liquor with an average sale of $181,903 per year and about $113,618 per year for foods.

Numbers of Firms: approx. 2.1 million

Average Sales per Firm: $86,000

Reasons for Highest Grossing: Although the housing market is volatile, landlords can still make a decent income as more Americans decide to rent homes or apartments then purchasing them.