Bootstrapping Your Way Into Online Business

bybrandonacox

2.9K followers

7 years ago

One of the biggest weaknesses of big business is waste. Corporations waste a lot of money and resources on things they don't need or use anymore, but because the organization is so complex, it's difficult to determine who is doing the unnecessary spending.

The reverse is true too. One of the biggest advantages of being a solopreneur is that you know where every dime gets wasted. And that's because you have a simple structure and an intense desire to earn a profit.

That's good. Use that to your advantage.

When you're building an online business, you need to be a bootstrapper and a hacker. You don't have a lot of capital to waste on luxury tools and training if you want to make a profit, so you have to be selective.

Moving Too Fast

Let's say you're hoping to develop niche sites for a living. It's possible to jump in and spend a lot of money up front:

• $5 to $50 per month on hosting.
• $5 to $50 per month on domains.
• $30 to $50 per month on keyword tools.
• $30 to $50 per month on social media apps.
• $500 to $1500 on custom web design, or
• $50 to $150 on premium Wordpress themes
• $100 to $500 per month on paid traffic.
• $50 to $150 per month on link building.
• $30 to $50 per month on an email list provider.

You get the picture. This isn't necessarily "bootstrapping" the way most of us experience it. It's a luxury approach - an "all in" method.

And it often works. By spending $1,500 to $2,000 per month initially, you're able to get a little further ahead, faster.

But often, you have more tools than knowledge, so you're really wasting money. Some of the tools you'll be paying for don't enable you to do the job better. They just allow you to do it faster, which is a luxury you can afford when you're scaling a growing business, but not in the startup phase.

Moving Too Slow

On the other hand, it's also possible to go cheap and to develop a scarcity mentality, hoping to get rich quickly while investing in tools too slowly. This explains the vast boneyard of abandoned blogs around.

Even in the bootstrapping phase, you need some tools and education.

Finding Your Pace

This is what I love about Wealthy Affiliate. Here, you get the tools you need (Wordpress, plugins, themes, and a domain name or three for a little extra). You also get training (and a lot of it, step-by-step). You get a community of supporters and helpers. And you get to learn from the mistakes of others who are more than willing to share out of both their successes and failures.

Imagine launching a successful online business that started earning revenue in the first month, but which scaled slowly but steadily enough to cover the expenses of your earliest months.

If you break even while starting a business venture, you're already doing way better than most entrepreneurs out there who are up to their eyeballs in debt hoping to survive the early months.

My suggestion for most beginning online entrepreneurs is to spend a couple of weeks researching, then make a small investment for a month, then take another step.

To put it in more practical terms...

1. Create a free Wealthy Affiliate account and look around a bit.
2. Upgrade to Premium, hopefully at a discounted rate, and take advantage of the next level training and support.
3. By the time you pay $49 for a month, you're hopefully earning it back from your business.

Then, over time, your profits grow, which you can reinvest into the business to scale it.

That's bootstrapping - doing it yourself. After you're able to earn a substantial revenue, you can start spending carefully on some of the tools and apps that make things move faster.