Lessons Learned

  This week I learned lots about the legal requirements behind starting a business. There are many fees, forms, and requirements that you need to be aware of before starting your business and they are different for each of the different business models. Because the business model I have chosen is affiliate marketing, I will only be discussing the legal requirements I have to be aware of for my business.  Some terms I learned about this week are LLC's, Sole proprietorship, and nexus.  An LLC stands for a limited liability company which is a business structure which protects the owner's money, assets, etc. from any lawsuits and unfair legal action. This makes it one of the safest business structures.  A sole proprietorship is another type of business structure where only one person owns it and there is no real legal distinction between that person's money and assets and the business's money and assets. This makes it a little risky. Nexus is when you are living in one s...

  This week was focused mainly on preparation for our upcoming projects which are choosing a business idea for the rest of the semester and actually creating our websites.  When choosing a business idea it is best to start off by weighing your time, passion, budget, and goals. It is important to also try and get an idea of how successful this business idea will be. It was helpful for me to go to google keyword planner and type in different keywords related to my top business ideas. This helped me to get an idea of how often people search for those things and how profitable this business idea could be. Everything else related to your business generally builds off how successful it looks like it will be so make sure you pick a good idea.  When looking at our second project, building our website, it was important to consider different site builders and hosting. I chose to build my website on WordPress and have Ionos as my host. I then had to decide how I wanted to format my ...

  This week, the things that really stuck out to me were the differences between affiliate marketing and drop shipping. This is because these are the business models I am thinking about doing for my web business.  Affiliate marketing: There are many ways that you can be an affiliate marketer. You can have a blog, a YouTube channel, a website, etc. The main thing you need to ask yourself before becoming an affiliate marketer is one, how will I market this, and two, is it something that interests not only me but others too? Affiliate marketing is nice because it is low risk, but it also has a downside which is that you don't always get paid since you only get paid if someone buys the product you are selling and when you do get paid, it is usually a small percentage. Drop shipping: Drop shipping is great if you want more of the traditional business model of selling a physical product but don't want to store or ship anything. With drop shipping, you have a supplier that stores the...

                         Things to keep in mind when starting an online business      This week I have learned so much about how to create and run a successful online business. There are many positives to running an online business but there are also many hardships. But if you know keep learning, you will be successful.  One of the things I learned this week was the importance of being aware of competition and demand for the specific product or service you are wanting to sell. Competition is good because that means that there is a demand for your product or service, but it can also be detrimental to your business if you don't know what you're doing. When starting off your business, weigh the amount of time you have with your passions and goals. This will keep you on the right track. You also need to be open to different ideas. Stepping back and really looking at your goals for the business will be incre...