Why Starting an Online Business is One of the Best Things You'll Ever Do

With the advent of the Internet the opportunity to earn a living from home has never been easier to seize. There are countless stories of self-made millionaires who earned their real world fortune in an online world. Furthermore, the decision to start an online business is something that anyone can do; no matter what your age, race, gender, background, or creed is, success in business is within everyone's grasp.

However, just like any valuable or sought-after thing in life, finding success in an online business is going to take hard work, dedication, determination, and the will to win. Success isn't easy (otherwise everyone would have it), however, it doesn't have to be difficult either. In fact, starting an online business is easier than you think and the road to financial freedom is a bit wider on the internet as well. Speaking from personal experience, I've been writing content and creating graphics for a variety of web properties for more than six years. While I haven't been able to quit my day job yet, the income has definitely helped to increase my net worth while also diversifying my income portfolio.

In the remainder of this article I will discuss the top five things that I've learned over the years on why starting an online business is one of the best things that you'll ever do.

Low Risk of Failure

If you work hard to create an online business there is a high probability that you will succeed (not much luck is needed either).  Of course the definition of success is subjective, however, earning money from websites and other online ventures (whether you own them or not) is not that difficult. The challenge is to scale your business upward in order to bring in a reliable income that you can live off of and then eventually retire on. For most online entrepreneurs, growth in an upward spiral is simply a by-product of the smart investment of resources, knowledge acquisition, and their monetization strategy. The take away here is that you will likely not fail if you work at it; it's easy to earn money online but its challenging to scale it up enough to quit your day job.

Low Investment of Capital

One of best things about starting an online business is that you don't have to invest a lot of money to get things started. In fact, there are plenty of opportunities to earn money without investing any of your own money at all; only your time and knowledge is needed. Nonetheless, most entrepreneurs find that they'll eventually have to invest money into their online ventures in order to "kickstart" an upward spiral of growth.  Webhosting costs money (though it's cheap) and eventually you may need to pay for other services like security, email hosting, content creation, graphic design, etc... Let's also not forget about marketing neither. Although social media can make marketing easy (and free) running advertisements to drive traffic to your web ventures may cost money. However, the best part of this is that you get to decide what investments are needed to make your business grow to accomplish the mission that your business was designed to fulfill.

Even though you won't need to invest much money to get things started (or even growing) you'll find that developing an online business will require an incredible investment of time.

The Potential for High Profit Margins

Because it only requires a small investment in capital to get an online business going there, is a massive potential for generating a high profit margin.  One of my friends runs a search engine optimization company out of his house and he found that there is very little overhead in is business. Since businesses are taxed on net income (profits) he was looking for a way to increase his overhead costs to reduce his tax liability.  That's certainly an interesting problem to have.

Furthermore, with large profit margins you can afford to do many things that other businesses can't.  Having more money to play with makes scaling your business easier. Reinvesting profits back into your business has the potential to grow it exponentially faster than other businesses that operate on a thin margin. Taking risks also seems less risky as well resulting in the ability to capitalize on new opportunities faster than other businesses can.

The Ability to Work for Yourself

This almost goes without saying.  There's nothing nicer than being your own boss and working on your own terms. Building an online business gives the freedom to set your own hours and work as hard or as little as you want.  Without a set schedule you can work hard when you want to and relax when you don't.  In his book, The 4-Hour Work Week, author Timothy Ferris says “By working only when you are most effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It's the perfect example of having your cake and eating it, too.”  You find Tim's great book on Amazon here: The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (affiliate link).

Being your own boss and working on your own terms will ignite a spark within you that you didn't know existed before. It will give you the supernatural ability to get more done in less time then you've ever been able to do. Thus, the result is freedom, independence, success, and happiness.

The Ability to Earn a Passive Income

The ability to generate an income that continues to earn a profit even after you have turned off the computer is one of the greatest benefits to starting an online business. Whether you are creating content, developing web properties, or promoting other peoples products, the revenue will keep on coming day in and day out.  I've spent the last six years creating online content for a variety of websites.  Even the first article I ever posted online still generates income for me today; in fact, most things I've produced (except for those done on commission) continue to earn today just as they did when they were first created. World famous Investor, Warren Buffet, put it this way: "If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die."

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