Everybody taking the steps to start their own online business runs into on of these two problems at some point. Either they don’t have enough time or they don’t have enough money (usually because they spent their money in the wrong spots).

Yes, you can actually have too little of both.

The question is what to do about it?

This really depends on what you are lacking time or money.

If you are short of time but have money then it simply takes outsourcing some of your work. There are a lot of online services that will do parts of your to do list for you, plus they can do the technical work that you don’t know how to do.

You can find services that will write custom programs for you, create your website for you, create custom graphics, handle your customer support, etc. The prices will vary quite a bit and I recommend that you use a service that puts the money in to an escrow account until the work is done.

Make sure when you do hire a free lancer either directly or from a service that you find out as much as you can about them. Ask for references, ask to see samples of their work and make sure they have done the type of work you are looking for. There are some people out there that will bid on everything but have no experience actually providing this service. You want to avoid these people.

That pretty much covers if you have more money then time but most people starting out are just the opposite, they have more time then money. I’m not going to lie to you this does make it harder and it takes longer to get established but you can succeed if you are diligent about your work ethics.

This does mean that you will have to learn how to do a lot of things for yourself. You will need to know how to maintain your own website, you will have to write your own sales copy, you will have to do basically everything yourself.

But don’t try to do it all at once. Pick one area that you need to get you to the next step and concentrate on that until you have it done. It doesn’t do you any good to learn about Adsense and SEO if you can’t put the code on your site or if you can’t create your own site.

What do you do if you have too little time and too little money?

There isn’t a lot you can do about this you need to have one or the other to make progress, there is no magic button you can push to be a success.

But, I do have one suggestion; form a Joint Venture (JV) partnership. Most people think of JV’s as just some one that will promote your product or site for you but this isn’t the case. A joint venture is any situation where two or more people work together for the benefit of all parties involved.

Let’s say you have some talent in creative writing, maybe (with a little studying) you could start writing sales pages, email, content for websites and even products themselves.

Another person has all the technical background to put the site up on the server and install the scripts and edit and maintain the site(s) but can’t write a word. Wouldn’t this make a good partnership?

This way you can get the technical skills you need and they can get the copy they need. Or you can go together on one site and split the profits 50 / 50

Where do you meet people like this? Good question. There are a number of places online that you can look for people like this such as www.linkedin.com but the very best place to meet people for any type of joint venture is at live events.

I have learned more from the people that I have met at seminars then I have from the presenters!

Yes, that is true and the reason why is that you see the presenters for a hour and a half and the people you meet you can have a relationship with for years. People that you have a relationship with will be more likely to help you then the guy standing on the stage.

If you get a chance to go to a live seminar GO! Don’t think about it! Just GO! Pay attention meet some people and open your mind and your heart to learning. No, I am not plugging a seminar here I am just tell you the way it is.

This has recently become a personal pet peeve of mine.

If you are selling something or providing a service you need to provide a way for a potential customer to contact you if they have a problem or question.

More important is that you need to have a responsive support system for your customers.

I had two incidents recently that I will recap for you and you tell me if this is the way you want a business you are thinking about becoming involved with to work.

I recently was told about a URL tracking service that was supposed to be the new best thing of free tracking services. So, I decided to check it out. I went and signed up and as I expected I was told I had to confirm my email address before I was provided access to the site. This is all normal and I don’t mind this one bit, I went and checked my email and the confirmation had not arrived yet. So, I spent a little while working on another site and came back to my email about an hour later, still no confirmation email. It was late so I said forget it and went to bed.

The next morning when I got up I did my usual routine of checking my email and still no confirmation email so I went to the site and tried to login. The response I got was, “Username/Password are incorrect. Please try again. Or your member status is waiting for approval”

OK, maybe I made a typo entering my email address, not very likely since I usually use saved data and an auto-filler to enter my information so I signed up again and it told me, “Please correct the following error: Your Email is already registered in our site.”

Since there wasn’t a typo in my signup and I had not received my confirmation email I looked for a link to send the confirmation email and I couldn’t find one.

Then I looked for a contact page or a link to support and guess what I couldn’t find one.

This is a site I was looking at to promote if the quality of the service was good but since I couldn’t test its service I just said forget it because I had already wasted enough time on the site.

But then in my email, later that day, I received an email from them that said this:

You are receiving this message because you are a valued member of (Removed by me). Removal instructions are below.

Hi Randy,

Congratulations and welcome to (Removed by me).

We know you’ve already received your login info when you joined yesterday, but we wanted to personally let you know that you’ve made a very, very wise decision by becoming a (Removed by me) client.

Then it went on some more finally ending in this:

To remove yourself from this list - you must delete your(Removed by me) account.

So, they are telling me that they are going to keep sending me email unless I log into an account that I can’t log into because I never received the confirmation email from their site and they have no contact information on the site. Plus they are telling me, “They know” I received information that I never received. At least this email gave me a way to maybe contact them by sending to the email address it came from but I haven’t received a response yet.

Remember this is a company that is supposed to be able to handle the technological needs of my tracking but they can’t even figure out how to set up a resend on the confirmation link or set up a support desk.

Would you want to do business with them?

Now on to number two. This is a product that I purchased but my access didn’t work to the product. Not an extremely expensive product but it was $197.00 and I couldn’t get to the download. They did have a support desk and I submitted a ticket, make that a number of tickets and I never did get access to the download so I requested a refund for the product I never received.

Guess what, I never received the refund and I never received the product. They kept telling me that it was a problem on my end. Now anybody that has know me for any length of time will tell you that if the problem is on my end I will fix it. I know for a fact the problem wasn’t on my end because I tried to get to the product from a number of different computers (Windows and Macs) with a number of different browsers and I never got to it. I wrote this off as another internet marketer that is more interested in their wallet then they are in their product or their customers.

But guess what that wasn’t the end of it just recently I was billed for annual support on the same product that I never received! Now this is just insulting. They did refund the support payment and gave me access to a downgraded version of what I purchased but so far I haven’t received access to the actual product I purchased.

So what is the major take away from this?

For me it is never do business with these two companies again.

For you it should be:

Make sure that prospective customers can contact you either through a contact form or a support site. If you don’t you might be losing customers and you could also be creating a bad reputation for yourself.

If a customer asks for a refund give it to them. What would you rather have another couple of bucks in your pocket with someone calling you names and blogging about how bad you are, or a customer that just might purchase from you again?

If you are looking for the steps to starting an online business there are some things that you should definitely think about before you get started.

Decide what type of online business model you want

There are a number of businesses you can run online. This could even be an extension of your current business. You need to choose a business that suits you.

For example one of the biggest online businesses is selling information, sometimes called the info product business. This is an ideal format if you get into the correct niche because the overhead for online delivery digital products is next to nothing. But if your niche is purple alligators you might find it difficult to sell many products.

Other business models include but aren’t limited too:

• Software
• Services – such as copywriting, advertising, etc.
• Programming – creating scripts for websites
• Web Design
• Graphic Design
• Affiliate Marketing
• Adverting – this includes revenues from projects like Adsense and other advertising networks.

There is more on this in my free ebook Getting Started

Treat your business like a business not a hobby

What do I mean by this? It is simple if you are trying to run a store in a mall you need to be open the hours you state. If you are running your own business online you need to follow this pattern.

No you don’t need to be “open” from 8 am until 8 pm or even answering your support for that time period (but the support does help) but you need to have a schedule of when you are working your business.

This is actually pretty simple to do but can quite often be hard to follow. Let’s say that you have a full time day job and you want to start your own online business. You schedule should be a regular schedule that fits you. Write on your schedule work Monday through Friday 5pm until 7pm, Saturday 10am until 2pm, Sunday off.

Make a list of what you need to get done and try to accomplish this in the time period you have allotted. It is OK for you to work extra hours on a specific day but don’t talk yourself in to a compromise where you say you will work an extra hour everyday and then take Saturday off. If you want Saturday off then take Saturday off. If you have ever managed a business you will know that when the schedules start getting changed, without a good reason, productivity drops.

Do make sure you schedule time off because if you don’t you will probably end up “burnt out” and never finish what you started. I can tell you this from personal experience; you need to recharge your batteries every now and then.

Don’t quit your day job.

I will repeat this one Don’t Quit Your Day Job!

Any one that believes they can make $5,000 in the next week with an online business that they are just starting out shouldn’t even attempt to run their own business. It will take time to get your business going and income arriving on a regular basis, so unless you are independently wealthy or have a large nest egg put aside, don’t quit your day job.

You can get started working part time until you develop some type of income and there will come a time where working your day job will cost you money but until that time arrives keep your income coming in and use any you can to help build your business.

Don’t try to do everything for free

Yes, it is theoretically possible to run a business using only free services BUT I have seen a lot of online businesses over the last 10 or 11 years and I haven’t seen one that makes a regular income using only free services.

You definitely need to pay for a few things, for example your own domain name and hosting for your site. These are two things you should never try to do with free services and the cost is nominal. You can register a domain name for under $10.00 per year and you can get good quality hosting for under $10.00 per month. Let’s face it, if you can’t afford to spend $130.00 per year on your business (less then $11.00 per month) then you shouldn’t be trying to run a business. These are mandatory, non-negotiable items as far as I am concerned.

Here are some other items I recommend you pay for:

An autoresponder service – if you are emailing anybody in your business this is worth the cost (see my post on autoresponders)

A script to run your site – no matter what you are doing there are scripts that will make it easier for you to run your site. These will automate a lot of the routine jobs that you have to do.

Advertising – yes there is a ton of free advertising available online but there are even more paid advertising services. Why are there more paid then free services? Because paid advertising is more targeted and usually will have a higher conversion rate which means more money in your pocket.

Test everything

If someone tells you something don’t blindly believe it. Even if it works for them in their business model doesn’t mean that it will work for you in the exact same way. Track all your advertising, test all your sales copy, test the copy on your opt in forms, test your price point, test the graphics on your site and test anything else you can think of.

You need to know what works best for you and your business.