Is doing a business on the internet any different from carrying out a conventional business off line? The answer is that the objectives are the same but the means for doing the business are rather different.

By objectives we mean that a business’s main intentions are to identify and create a market for oneself, find or create the service or products to serve this market and made a profit ultimately for one’s enterprise. In this sense, doing a business whether on the internet (as in Internet Marketing) or with a conventional business is quite the same.

The main differences are in the measure of resources required and in the knowledge and skill sets demanded. First of all, in terms of physical resources, particularly amount of money and risks, a typical offline business would require far more of them than in Internet Marketing. Any conventional business would require one to have an office or a store (if you are in retail) or a manufacturing outfit, staff to man the business, vehicles to deliver stocks and goods, a marketing and sales outfit and an accounting system to ensure that the firm is financially well-managed. It is clear that you would require a substantial amount of money to get the business off the ground and to support the overhead expenses for sometime before the company generates enough sales to take care of its cash flow. The owner of the business has to come out with substantial cash or borrow it from the bank or both.

Learning how to start a conventional business is more often a hit and miss process. Most new entrepreneurs learned it from working for others. Generally, you are a person with a technical skill or marketing skill or both when you start a new business. Most new entrepreneurs lacks financial skills unfortunately and this is often a company’s downfall; the business owner unable to understand the importance of financial management and cash flow. Obviously if you are not good at sales or getting customers you would also fail. The major percentage of start-ups actually does! Thus starting a conventional entails considerable risks!

What about Internet Marketing? Do you have to invest as much resources and learning to make it work? What are the risks of failure? In Internet Marketing, you would still need a certain amount of skills and knowledge to succeed. However, your investment is more in time than money. You would have to put out some money but nothing like in a conventional business. It is mostly money you can afford to lose provided you start the business part-time at first whilst you are still having some form of cash inflow.

The knowledge and skills you can pick by subscribing to a good Internet Marketing course, some of which are available online. The website shown in the author’s resource box would lead to a very good one. Is it as hard to make a success of business online as in a conventional business? It can demand as much of you, though the risk of failure is lesser in that you are unlikely to face a financial disaster; also the skills you pick up would allow you to start again without much problem. These are entrepreneurial skills which are valuable!

Wishing you every success! Louis Lim