The one piece of advice you wish you knew starting out

I am hoping that as a community we can make a very focused thread with one central idea.

Now that you have gained experience in a few different areas of your business what is the one piece of advice you wish you knew when starting out and can you give a practical example of how you have implemented this advice yourself in your business?



I don't want to restrict the conversation but when people start listing 6 random vague things with no examples the thread goes off the rails quickly so if we could stick with your one single best piece of advice that would be great. No doubt someone else will cover the other points that you want to make and you will get to see how they implemented that.

As always, a practical example lets us understand better what your advice is and how it can be used in a real world example.

Thanks folks.

 

Something that I wish I learned earlier is a quote I've recently heard that says "the best way to start a business is to be in business". So only when you're actually in the business building process do you figure out what works and what doesn't. Say you are selling an ebook and you aren't making much sales. You then look at your sales page and realize the call-to-action wasn't there so you add it and make more sales. Then you go back and change some more stuff including adding more products and customer service. Now you have grown your business all because you were in business and continually changed things to get a bigger profit. Hopefully someone can relate to how important this quote is.

 

Absolutely Durell. You really only learn by doing. Get your minimum viable product out there ASAP and iterate and innovate.

You will probably change the design of your website countless times but you need to get away from the rough draft on paper and get that website up and running.

If you are going to make a website do it right - purchase hosting and a premium wordpress theme at a minimum and start rooting through the back end (settings) and in a few months you will have something that you didn't think was possible with no web design knowledge now.

 

Well I wish that i should have know that "If you know how to do something, never do it for free". I was really generous to some of my initial clients and always want to help them for free.

Example: I was managing a client SEO campaign. He was in need to get help with his servers and hosting.

At that time i was under the impression that everyone in this world is nice and If i help someone out for FREE, it help building up strong relationship with them.

I helped him out with customizing his new server, setting it up in a co-location, installing and configuration all of his server requirements and much more for FREE. I spent almost a week teaching him and setting up everything for him.

Later, after a month he was like. "Now i learn everything from I dont need you! etc" That was my biggest mistake i think.

Well, I later realize that he already took advantage of me and that i should have made good money by charging him for my consultation services.

From that onward, I was always careful and always remember this that "If you know how to do something, never do it for free"

Hope you guys like that

 

I like it Very true, never under value yourself!

Its much easier to decrease your price or give some added value than it is to increase your price!

There are excel templates available where you can figure out how much to charge for your hourly rate when providing a service to achive your target level of income.

A good one will factor in all aspects such as travel, training, holidays, marketing spend, overheads, sick days, ect

 

Thanks for your unique idea!! In 26 January, 2006. I lost above $50000 in my shipping business and then I took decision to leave all business and online activities. On that time I created a thread in Blackhatworld. Then Mr. tomas send me PM and interested to know about the cause. I told him that and then he took my cell phone number. After few days later he called me and then we discussed about our business. At the last moment of discussion he told me '' if you loss first then you will count for better income''. Just these sentence changed my life. It's so much amassing that new he is my best friend and my honorable business partner.

 

I actually have some great advice that I learned from the mistakes I made...

1. If you are a developer and creating an extensive web site it's much better to use existing libraries, frameworks, and classes to get your product functioning and live ASAP than it is to build everything internally and prolong the launch. I wasted months and months of time reinventing the wheel by creating my own internal framework, css grids, layouts etc. I would drive myself CRAZY making sure my front end was cross browser compatible and my backend was extendable. Looking back now I burnt out on a lot of projects spending too much time on creating something that already existed for me to use. Moving forward, Laravel and Bootstrap are my friends.

2. Use your resources. Even though you may be able to do everything by yourself it isn't productive. Hire others to do tedious work for you. With web sites like Fiverr and even forums like DP you can easily recruit low cost help. Outsourcing content writing or any leg work is smart. I wasted tons of time trying to do it all myself.

3. Time management. Make it a priority to work on your projects X amount of minutes or hours each day and also have set days off to avoid from getting burned out. Less sometimes equals more.

4. Have goals and reward yourself when milestones are met. For instance, once you launch your next web site promise yourself a gift and treat yourself to it. It will help keep you motivated.

5. Recognize that your projects are hobbies. This is NOT a source of income. Make sure you have steady and a consistent flow of income coming in from a REAL job. This will take the pressure and stress off from you when you aren't making any money with your projects. There is nothing wrong with having a real job. The biggest mistake I made early on is trying to depend on my projects for my income. Now that I am back to work full time my quality of life is a lot better.

 

NetStar that is fantastic advice.

To echo one or two of your points:

A lot of people make the mistake that they get good at something and then focus a lot of time on improving something they are not good at. In the vast majority of cases this is a mistake. Focus on the things you are really good at and excel at them - outsource the things you are not good at. Fiverr is a great resource and I have had a lot of projects done there and the quality of the work in most cases is top quality for a fraction of the cost of hiring someone in your own city who has to factor in a lot of overheads into their quote.

Point 3 time management is the thing that results in a lot of people failing at business. They are working long hours and telling people how hard they are working but they are not working efficiently or effectively. At the start do 2 things. Decide WHY you are doing what you are doing. Make To-Do lists but have timeframes for each activity and break each task into smaller tasks - for example don't simply have 'Write new article for website', instead have 'Write 3 paragraphs for an article, one hour per paragraph, paragraph 1 focus point, paragraph 2 focus point, ect'. Also, your morning hours will be your most productive even if you think you are a night owl so don't waste them checking email, use them for projects that require a lot of mental attention and that are tasks that you might not particularly like doing.

 

Get a reliable web hosting. Make sure your site is up 99% of the time. Overpay, but get a reliable hosting. You have to expect growth. If you're on some dinky shared hosting and want to make a living - forget about it.

 

Don't put all of your eggs into one basket. As you become successful attempt to diversify. Perhaps you might dabble in real estate or the stock market, Forex trading, own another or invest in another small business on the side etc.
This way if things go south you would have something to fall back on.

 

This is actually solid. It also should be applied to the goals you set. Instead of setting a goal of "1. Make money off from web site" a goal should be "Milestone 1 - Generate $250 from product sales in one month".

Also when creating a web site make sure you meet your deadlines and remember it's ok to launch a web site and build off from it but it's NOT ok to delay the launch because you are trying to finish every add on first.

 

You are correct Spoilt. I learnt this after i lost my only one client. It was a big lose for me and nearly made me homeless. thanks for putting this up here

 

For me, I think the biggest mistake was that I didn't start earlier. I first started working on my website in 2012. And I haven't been consistent with my website. I changed it every month or so. I was trying to do the best I can to build a website that I liked and the user too. I didn't launch the current website until 2015 January. And started working on SEO in February. And now I only get 2 to 10 visitors a day, that's pretty low.
And also, I haven't build a lot of content because every time I build some I change my mind and change the website and the whole database.

So my advice is:
1. Be consistent and don't change the website every other month.
2. Build content on a daily basis. Building content will let your website target more keywords, thus bringing more visitors.

 

I really wish I known that in the last 2 years, My experience like FarrisFahad is be consistent but most importantly be consistent with your fan base. Change what your fans and your clients want changed. This most likely will make them like your company better but never change if the masses of your clients or fan base doesn't want it. Only change if most people want something to change. It also depends on how much work it will take just to make that change happen.

"The most important thing to do is to market your business to get a fan base. Then you just need to keep it"

 

Took me 2 years before I understood the real power behind optimizing your existing content.

You send traffic get nothing and move on. Thats the poor guys way of doing it.

We need to optimize and make small changes. If your direct linking today expect to have to work around 5 times as hard.

 

Hi "To start a new business" my advice is, understand what your interest is, try to learn to increase your knowledge and to polish your skills. Set your goals and try your level best to achieve those goals. Try to do research what others are doing and how they are doing then try to find a different a smart way to your goals. You can start your business as an IT Consultant (for guidance on IT consultancy visit Unlimited-it) , Digital Marketer, Graphic Designer or as a Teacher. Share what you learn.

 

for me it is all about marketing, I underestimated how difficult it would be to drive traffic to my site, especially without a huge budget. The best way to market for a low price is through some kind of viral campaign, but of course this is easier said than done!

 

To pick a simple system that doesn't require me to bring a lot of traffic myself...I started to make a lot of money when I started to sell ebooks on Amazon. Quit my job in Finance after only a few months because I was making enough money online. This is in my opinion the best way for a baginner to start because Amazon brings the traffic for you.