How They Started A Successful Internet Business & How You Can Start Yours

I have just finished reading an inspiring Internet business successful story article from independent newspaper of the UK.

The story was on how to start a successful internet business. What I liked about the businesses was they were simple ideas of home based internet businesses.The main ideas were obvious, have a business plan, know your niche and market your idea. It was the interviews of successful internet entrepreneurs that touched me. Their opinions were very enlightening. I have picked up a few gems for you:

Online business Success Story of Hampers Gift UK

"It's all about finding a niche," says William Berry, a self-made internet millionaire. "Hampers, for example, are a niche of food retailing, but there are already market leaders in this area, so you either need to aim for a niche which doesn't already have a market leader, or attempt to become even more niche – by offering Christmas hampers, say. "

Nick-james.com on How to Build a Trust-able online Brand

Nick James, a small-business consultant and the founder of Nick-James.com, an online club for entrepreneurs says. Keep the site clean and simple: people will buy from you if they trust the site and can find what they want.

"Make sure you update your website's content constantly, as innovation, imagination and invention are essential if you are going to succeed in the longer term," he says. "Also make it easy for people to get in touch: your business needs to present a human face."

A long and rough road to online success - Story of Photobox

Graham Hobson started photobox in 2000 after he noticed the lack of online storing and printing websites in the UK, compared to the vast number of similar sites in the US. PhotoBox now has 2 million members.

"I'd always worked in technology but I'm an accidental entrepreneur," he says. "I wrote a business plan, got financial backing and a partner to join me in the business."

Graham gave up his day job in 1999. The first three years, he admits, were "painfully slow."

"We expected it all to happen quickly, but in reality, it was about steady growth," he says. "We were naive about marketing in the beginning and had to learn a lot of lessons."

Viral marketing has helped PhotoBox, and last year it merged with Photoways, a French firm.

"If you want to set up an internet business, you have to convince all the people around you it's a good idea," Graham says. "Put in your own time and energy, but other people's money – and take as much advice from other people as you can."

There you have it, now go to work and build a successful internet business. And I will feature you at small business web hosting.

Website Case Study : Petflow.com That Sells Online Pet Food

Petflow.com is a successful small business website that has shown you can make money in pet food niche. The pet food website was founded by Alex Zhardanovsky in 2010. In its first month, July 2010, the online company shipped about 60 orders; by January 2012, that number had leapt to 27,000. In 2011, PetFlow exceeded $13 million in revenue — with 60 percent of its sales coming on a subscription basis — and it projects revenue will exceed $30 million this year.

Petflow has changed the economics of operating a small business online. Instead of selling single items he has gone for a subscription based model.

How Did Petflow Achieve this Rapid Success Online

In a New York Times interview, Alex shared business ideas on how to create a successful website.
Before he started the pet store website, he first did online market research to gauge whether the idea would fly.

Mr. Zhardanovsky and his co-founder, Joe Speiser, set up a Web page in 2009 with a form that asked customers if they would be interested in signing up for regular deliveries. They then placed a few ads online and waited to see what happened. “We had an overwhelmingly positive response from our customers who wanted to sign up for the service,” said Mr. Zhardanovsky, who lives in New York City and who proceeded to introduce PetFlow in 2010.

The success of petflow is a good example that thinking out of the box can pay dividends. If you had asked me whether you could sell pet food via subscription I would have said it will never work. When Alex came up with the idea he did not do the the number one mistake most people do, ask friends and relatives whether they think an idea will work. He went and asked the target consumers.

That is the key to this story. If you have an idea of starting an online business, first ask your target consumers if what they would be interested in your product or service. The target consumers are 99% likely to give you an honest opinion.

You can ask your target consumers for their opinion by doing what Alex did. Setting up a web page and asking visitors to answer a short survey. To attract visitors to the web page, Alex advertised on Google Ad words.

Go to where your target visitors congregates. Check out forums and popular websites. The best tool is social media. Social media is becoming an important research tool for small business. Join an established Facebook page of your target niche and ask members what they think. Be tactful when doing this, you don't want to appear spammy or worse a stalker.