The Internet has opened huge possibilities for small entrepreneurs to start their online businesses and earn money from the Web. Whether it is an information website or personal blog monetized by advertising or an ecommerce store, the Web has become a critical business medium for small entrepreneurs.
While the Web has the power to expand your business beyond your zip code, the number of risks associated with this global exposure also grows significantly.
Many home-based entrepreneurs start a business without thoroughly understanding the risks involved. Like the traditional businesses on Main Street, an online business faces a number of risks. Some of these risks have the potential to severely damage, if not altogether, kill your online business. As an online entrepreneur, you must understand these risks and take them into account when making business decisions. Your goal should always be to minimize these risks so as not to adversely affect your Web business.
For example, as a web-based business, you will face a number of technology risks. As technology changes quickly, your web business must be able to catch up to these changes, which may sometimes require resources way beyond the means of a home-based entrepreneur.
Web-based businesses are also vulnerable to security threats and risks — from malware infections to hacking to security breach that compromises the credit card information of customers. And of course, there are also market risks that you need to watch out for. There may be changes in the business environment that could potentially wreak havoc to your business.
In this series, I will discuss the top 10 risks small business and home-based entrepreneurs face when starting and running an online business:
- The risk of losing your main income source.
- The risk of getting your website hacked
- The risk of displeasing Google
- The risk of getting infected with malware
- The risk of getting penalized by a Google algorithm change
- The risk of losing traffic slowly but surely
- The risk of downtime
- The risk of not earning money
- The risk of crappy web host
- The risk of getting your website copied and contents plagiarized
Great article. Thanks for the detailed information. Your blog is by far the best source I’ve found. Thanks!
To enhance your shot at success, try and avoid these 10 common mistakes when starting an online business. You don t need to have a formal business plan — but you still need a plan. People regard the business plan as homework they don t want to do but planning helps me — whatever my success is, says Tim Berry, chairman of Palo Alto Software, which produces business-planning software and author of
I was wondering if you ever considered changing the page layout of your blog?
Its very well written; I love what youve
got to say. But maybe you could a little more in the way of content so people could
connect with it better. Youve got an awful lot of text for only having one or 2 pictures.
Maybe you could space it out better?