Hello dear Steemians, it's a Manic Monday again, how's your day so far?

For the past days, I have been sharing my insights and personal thoughts on blogging. I do hope it somehow helped someone on the other side of the interwebs.

For this week, I will be sharing business tips and insights. If you are planning to venture into business, perhaps these tips will be able to help you out. To kick things off, here's our guide on starting a small online business.

So, you really want to have a business but you want it online. But before plunging into the sea of websites, blogs, bloggers, internet marketers and entrepreneurs, it is important to take a halt first and examine the landscape, the surface.

Yes, it is relevant to take certain anatomical discoveries as well as cognitive abilities prior to engaging a business online.

Check the anatomy

Sound absurd, right? But yes, it is significant to check if we are really prepared to engage in a small business online by checking your physiological abilities. But no, this is not a requirement but it is just a check if you are prepared in doing it and if your body is also ready in taking long hours eyeing the screens, sitting and sometimes experiencing backaches, the mouse syndrome and other syndromes that affect the nerves and muscles of the hands and fingers and other aches. This is not to dissuade you but rather to prepare you because eventually you may experience them.

They may happen if you put your body into long hours plus the stress and pressures. But beat them by balancing the sedentary lifestyle sitting and looking at the screens with daily exercise and nice break and few minutes of napping the rest the eyes.

Stretching before working also helps... a lot!

Hone your abilities

If you are really serious in engaging in business online, harnessing your abilities may be among the first to scrutinize as a sort of self-checking. But again, this is not to discourage you. There are many who succeed online with some disabilities and they have beaten the odds.

But why I opened this? This is to remind you that by honing your abilities, the required characteristics to do business online, you can be on your way to success. However, many discourage themselves because they don't have the required ability to do something online. A friend also told me about this, impeding his desire to make a blog because he does not know how to write.

However, in online business, you don't necessarily have to write although it is a very significant attribute especially when you engage in content marketing. You can still engage in buying and selling on eBay and other sites that would require you to sell online without even have to have a blog. But the success rate for online entrepreneurs with blogs may be greater than those who just limit themselves to eBay and be inconspicuous.

But again, it does not hurt to invest in educating yourself and improving your abilities and even learning new tricks and skills that can help in your online business.

Observe the landscape and the contents

Before I invest in paid hosting and buying my own domains, I first observe the top blogs in the blogosphere and read the contents on their blogs. Most of the tips are learned freely but you need credible sources for the tips and not to be persuaded so much to sales pitch.

It took me three months to observe and from the observations, I have become to make a consolidation of formulas that can help me in gaining success online.

Invest in tools and learning

Get in the know. Always learn new tricks. Invest in becoming literate to certain changes on the Internet.

Even though I recommend not to be convinced too much on sales pitch, sometimes, it helps to buy some tools that can help in enhancing your learning. There are free ebooks but if you'd like to buy some e-books that are really valuable in building a small business online, then browsing around the web for the e-books can help.

Seek help

There are many Internet marketers now and this breed of marketers also extend their help to newbies. Following their blogs can be the first step but if you want to invest in one-on-one sessions with them, contacting them first and asking for a personal mentorship program can be the initial step or the ultimate step.

Participate in the community

However, if you desire to be part of a community with a goal to be mentored by the gurus, then joining an exclusive community can be a worthy venture. There are many Internet marketers who flock together to create a community of A-list bloggers and successful businessmen teaching newbies in blogging, Internet marketing and online business.

Participating in the community can be your ticket to knowing other people as they can be part of your success online. They can be your business partners or perhaps promoters in your product launch. It is also possible for those people in the community to become your customers.

Get a plan, write a business plan.

If you really want to have a small business online, it is initially relevant to have your plans inscribed. Having a business plan may be optional but it is important to have some guidelines to help you gain direction as you start your business.

Having a business plan could also help you have a reference should you want a guidebook as you start the online biz. However, if you take part in the community, the module in the program can be a part of your business plan. But I still say "a part of your business plan" because it is important to have uniqueness. Although you refer to some business plans, writing your own vision and mission and the objectives for your online business will be worth the effort when you recognize the fruits of your undertaking.


Learning from others should be in balance with learning from oneself. Saying "you can" is among the best motivators as this comes from you.

And don't forget to acquire the power of positive thinking as this is the force that can help you beat the odds.

_{Image Credits: Pixabay}