10 Things You Need to Start an Online Business

1. Start With What You Already Know

You obviously need a business idea, but it doesn’t have to be a brilliant idea nobody has ever thought of before. In fact, I’d stop trying to come up with something completely original.

Instead, look at what you already know how to do. What have you learned through your career, hobbies or life experience? What could you talk about for an hour without needing to research it first?

Maybe you’re great at meal planning, decluttering your house, shopping with coupons or points, practicing yoga, organizing family travel or helping your friends figure out their workout routines. These things might not feel like “business ideas” to you because they’re already part of your everyday life.

Your business idea might be hiding in something that feels completely ordinary to you simply because you’ve been doing it for years.

And don’t worry if someone else is already doing it. When you bring your own experience, perspective and personality to what you do, certain people will naturally gravitate toward you over someone else.

There are thousands of photographers, bookkeepers, fitness coaches, food bloggers, designers and business educators making money online. You don’t need to invent a new industry. You need to figure out what you can bring to one.

2. Figure Out Who You’re Here to Help

Your products are naturally going to appeal to a specific kind of person. Sometimes this is easy to figure out, like homeschool moms purchasing an online math program for their kids. Other times, it can be a little trickier.

When you’re first starting, you don’t need the perfect answer to this, but having a good general idea is important. Why? Because knowing who you’re talking to makes it much easier to figure out what to say and how to connect with them.

This is one of my biggest tips for beginners: Instead of trying to appeal to everyone, start by becoming useful to someone.

I’m not too big on creating a detailed customer avatar because it’s never really worked for me personally. If you’re not sure what I mean, many business strategists recommend creating an imaginary customer with a name, age, interests and an entire fictional life story. Every time I’ve done this exercise, I’ve put a bunch of work into creating this imaginary person and then never looked at it again.

But you do need to understand the real person you’re trying to help. What do they want? What’s frustrating them? What are they trying to figure out, and how are you going to help them?

The clearer you are about who you’re helping, the easier everything else becomes. Your messaging gets clearer, which makes your social media content, emails, website and products feel much more cohesive.

3. Decide How You’re Going to Make Money

A business needs a way to make money. This sounds obvious, but it’s surprisingly easy to spend months working on branding, websites and social media without deciding what you’re actually going to sell.

Your first offer doesn’t have to be your forever offer. You could sell a $19 ebook or online workshop just to get your feet wet, or you could go bigger and create a $997 signature offer. There are so many ways to help people online, including courses, memberships, workshops, digital products, coaching, services or even physical products sent in the mail.

Most businesses evolve over time, so start with one thing you think could work and expand from there. Your first goal isn’t to build an entire product suite. It’s to create one useful thing that solves a real problem for the person you want to help.

4. Make Your Business Memorable

Personally, I think this is one of the biggest steps people get wrong when starting an online business. They glaze over the branding and rush straight into marketing. Yes, marketing is important, but getting more eyes on your business won’t help much if people land there and don’t understand what you’re about.

Your brand is your first impression. It’s what helps someone quickly understand who you are, what you do and whether what you’re offering is for them. A strong brand also makes your business easier to recognize and remember when they come across you again.

And your brand is much more than a logo. It’s what you want to be known for, what you believe about the work you do, how you talk about it, and the overall look and feel of your business. All of those pieces work together to tell people, this is who I am and this is what you can expect from me.

That doesn’t mean you need to spend six months perfecting your brand or hire an expensive designer before you can start. You can absolutely create a simple brand yourself in the beginning and refine it as your business grows.

But I wouldn’t skip this step altogether. Before you worry about getting more people to find your business, make sure they’ll understand it when they do.

5. Give Your Business a Home of Its Own

I think too many people are getting this step wrong. They’re treating social media like their business home base, and I completely disagree with that approach.

If you’re already using social media, you know that not every follower sees every post you share. The algorithm is always changing, and you have just a few seconds to compete for someone’s attention before they scroll on to something else. Social media can be an incredible tool for helping new people discover you, but I don’t think it should be the place your entire business lives.

Your website gives people somewhere to slow down and actually get to know you. They can read your story, explore what you offer, look through your content and decide whether they want to stick around. You simply have more space to make a connection than you do in a five-second scroll on social media.

That doesn’t mean you need a complicated website with dozens of pages before you can start. In the beginning, a homepage, about page, contact page and a page explaining what you offer can be plenty. Later, you might add a blog, resource library, shop, podcast, portfolio or anything else that makes sense for your business.

And please don’t make your website one giant resume filled with accomplishments and accolades. Yes, some of that can help establish that you know what you’re talking about, but most people are really trying to figure out something much simpler: Do I like this person? Do I trust them? Do I want to hear more from them?

I like to think of it as the could we be friends? test. Your website should feel like a comfortable place where someone can get to know YOU, discover what makes you YOU, and understand exactly how you can help them.

6. Build an Audience You Can Actually Reach

If I were starting an online business today (which I am! Right here at Hey AndiAnne), I would start building an email list as early as possible. I’ve learned from my other businesses just how valuable it is to have a way to reach people directly instead of hoping an algorithm decides to show them what I created.

When I sold handmade leather bags on Etsy, my email list was the #1 reason new collections would sell out within hours. Today, my food blog has more than 30,000 people on its email list, and I use it to let readers know whenever I have a new recipe to share. I’ve seen firsthand how valuable an email list can become when you build it over time.

And you really don’t need to make this complicated. Choose an email platform (I use Flodesk), create a signup form and give people a good reason to join your list.

Usually, that means creating something useful you can give them for free in exchange for their email address. It could be a checklist, guide, template, mini training, resource list or something else that helps solve a small problem related to what you eventually want to sell.

But please don’t think you need 10,000 subscribers before your email list is worth anything. I’d much rather have a smaller list of 100 of the right people who genuinely want what I’m creating than a huge list of people who don’t really care.

7. Get People to Actually Buy From You

You can have an amazing product, beautiful website and perfectly put-together brand, but at some point you need people to actually buy something. This is where marketing comes in.

Marketing is really just how you get your business in front of the right people, help them understand why they need what you’re selling and give them a reason to trust you enough to buy from you. You might do that through Pinterest, Google, Instagram, YouTube, a podcast, email, paid advertising or a combination of a few different things.

But please don’t try to do all of them at once. Choose one or two marketing strategies that make sense for your business and give yourself enough time to actually learn how they work. It’s very easy to try Instagram for a month, Pinterest for two weeks and send three emails, then decide none of it is working.

I’ve learned that marketing takes consistency. You need to keep showing up, pay attention to what’s getting a response and do more of that.

And remember, the goal isn’t just to get more followers, pageviews or likes. The goal is to get your business in front of the right people and eventually turn some of those people into customers.

8. Set Up a Way to Sell Your Offer

Now we need the technical piece: how is someone actually going to give you money? Thankfully, you don’t need to build any of this yourself. There are plenty of platforms that will handle the checkout, payment processing and even delivery of your product for you.

What you need depends on what you’re selling. If you’re selling a digital download, you can use a platform like Gumroad or Shopify to take payment and deliver the file. If you’re selling an online course or membership, platforms like Kajabi, Teachable or Circle can host your content and give customers access after they purchase. If you’re selling coaching or another service, you might use Calendly for booking and Stripe or PayPal to collect payment.

Don’t get caught up trying to find the perfect tech stack either. Choose something that can do what you need right now. You can always move to a more sophisticated system once you’re actually making sales.

At minimum, you need somewhere people can learn about your offer, a button they can click to buy it, a secure way to pay and a way for them to receive whatever they purchased.

Before you launch, go through the entire process yourself. Make a test purchase, click every link and make sure the confirmation emails and product delivery actually work. Then you’re ready to send people there.

9. Make It an Actual Business

This is the less exciting part, but once you’re planning to make money, you also need to treat what you’re building like an actual business. That means getting some of the behind-the-scenes pieces organized.

Exactly what you need will depend on where you live and the type of business you’re starting, but this might include registering your business name, purchasing your domain, setting up a professional email address, opening a separate bank account and figuring out how you’re going to keep track of your income and expenses.

You’ll also want to understand what you’re responsible for when it comes to taxes and whether your website needs things like a privacy policy, terms and conditions or other legal pages. This is one area where I wouldn’t rely on random advice from social media. Check the requirements where you live and talk to an accountant or other qualified professional for more help.

Don’t let this part scare you into putting off your business for another six months either. You don’t necessarily need every possible system set up on day one. You just want to make sure that as you move from “I have an idea” to “I’m taking people’s money,” you’re also putting the basic business pieces in place.

10. Be Willing to Build Version One

This might be the most important thing on this entire list. At some point, you have to stop researching how to start a business and actually start one.

I know how tempting it is to want everything figured out first, but that’s just not how business works. Your first website won’t be your best website, your first offer probably won’t be your best offer, and the way you talk about your business a year from now might be completely different from how you talk about it today.

I like to think of everything as versions. Build the best version you can with what you know right now, put it out into the world and pay attention to what happens. Once real people start visiting your website, joining your email list and buying what you’re selling, you’ll learn things you never could have figured out sitting at your computer researching.

Then you take what you’ve learned and build Version Two. The goal isn’t to get everything right the first time. The goal is to get something real out into the world so you finally have something to learn from.

What You Don’t Need to Start an Online Business

There are also plenty of things you can skip in the beginning. You don’t need a huge social media following, a perfect logo, an expensive website or five different offers.

You don’t need to post content every day or show up on every social media platform. And you definitely don’t need to know everything before you start.

Keep the first version of your business smaller than you think it needs to be. Start with one person you want to help, one clear problem, one simple product, a basic website and one way to grow an audience.

You can build the bigger business once the smaller one actually exists.

Your Online Business Doesn’t Have to Start Big

I think one of the reasons so many women stay stuck in the planning stage is because they’re trying to build the perfect finished version of their business before they’ve built the first version. They’re thinking about everything they might eventually need instead of what they actually need to get started.

You don’t need to know what your business will look like five years from now. Or heck even a year from now! You just need to know what to start with.

Start with what you already know, create something useful and put it in front of real people. Pay attention to what works, learn from what doesn’t and keep building from there.