I’ve never dealt with business before but it’s always interested me, and I have an idea for an online business, revolving around the casino/bingo corporations. But I just don’t know really where to start, what I’d need to do etc etc. Can anybody offer some advice/tips or even a guide to achieving this goal? I want it to be successful of course. I have a friend whose willing to invest for a percentage. But also it’d be good to know how much something like this would cost?
I presume you started by thinking about your idea offline. An "online" idea is usually the same as any business idea in principle so I am guessing that you did the usual stuff like having an idea, a budget plan and thinking of your USP and so on. If not then do that first. In my experience, this is all about focus and understanding the risks that you are going to take. It is good to dream but you also need to plan for the reality.
If your idea is technology based then one of the things I would recommend is getting good technology advice. I wouldn’t think of just getting some "techie" that you know. You need a genuinely insightful technological mind who can understand the world of business on your team. Why? Because the likelihood is that your business idea is likely to need a reality check for feasibility, costs and time taken to develop it into a live service/ business.
Online businesses have some very specific business dynamics which are incredibly important to grasp if you are going to make a successful business out of them. Think of having advantages in terms of having tiny manufacturing costs, almost free delivery and a global market. Disadvantages are that the world can bite back and improve upon your idea or out-market into oblivion. Think of Facebook and Friends Reunited. Betamax and VHS.
Plus your idea may not work as easily in practice as it does on paper. Stuff like an assumption of "and then I’ll just charge them a fee" leads to "OK do you have a secure site? And what about a payment provider? And is it legal to store those credit card details?" Techies can do all this stuff but go look on a techie blog to see just how odd a bunch they all are.
As it happens our business does actively partner with people who have a business idea but no technical background. We provide the technical side but since I am not touting for work (see my other posts!) I’ll just post my link. I just saw this and thought "interesting…"
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