Starting a Business: Pros and Cons

byHarrisA

85 followers

Updated 9 years ago

Hello Affiliates, this is going to be my first attempt at writing a blog, ever. I am hoping that if you are here reading this that it will give some insight and value. I have been thinking for a few days about what I could possibly write about and I thought I would start with how I became interested in creating my own business, the pros and cons of my experiences thus far, right up to the point where I found WA. By sharing the good experiences I am hoping you will feel inspired or encouraged and by sharing the bad, I am hoping you can avoid some very expensive mistakes.

Still here? Awesome! Let's get started.

First of all, why did I decide to do this? Well, it is probably a very familiar reason to some of you. About two years ago, I was going through some budgeting difficulties and wanted to find a way to make that right. My girlfriend had just recently lost her job and was having quite a bit of difficulty finding work. I kept seeing ads on the net about online businesses and the success stories and it set my wheels turning. I went to her with the idea, first, but she showed no interest. I figured, ok fine, and unfortunately our relationship did not last. But the idea was still sparked in me, so I started looking around for ideas to get something started. I found a few:

1. The first thing I tried was binary options trading, of all things. Yes, you can trade the stock market and tie it to your business. You can find dozens of these online brokers or platforms all over the net. A lot of them are overseas, where there is no regulation like in North America(be very careful if you try this). The videos looked so easy, how you could put down $10 and turn it into $18 in 30 secs, and ANYONE could do this even if they had no stock market experience. So I gave it a whirl and lost my entire investment. I could get into more detail, but that can be a whole other blog. My advice: Stay away, this is basically gambling in all but the name. Not even the real traders do this, as a rule. If you were to have an interest in this sort of thing, stick with North American based platforms/brokers.

2. So binaries didn't work, so I switched to the forex(foreign exchange) market. I did much better trying this out, but not good enough to get anywhere with it. I spent countless hours learning from webinars and reading books. I am still involved with this and I would highly recommend this to anyone, BUT until you get a good grasp on how it works and to be consistent, then do not risk your business or personal capital. If in doubt, stay out.

3. This third one actually came looking for me. I received a phone call from someone claiming to represent an agency that could setup a startup for me; I am not really sure how or why they got my information but it was certainly up my alley. They register you in a state(I can run a business in the States even though I reside in Canada) with a resident agent(for business nexus and tax reasons) and boom, you are now CEO of an LLC, and they also help you find a niche and set you up with your own website/e-store. Yes, I admit I can be a little gullible at times; the smarter person would have hung up the phone. But it turned out this was not one of THOSE calls because they really DID set up an LLC for me. Now, this sounds pretty good, right? Well, yes and no, this is almost like a legal scam. The problems started soon after. My phone would ring almost every day with a salesperson on the other end trying to sell me this or that. They are sneaky, you need to be careful. They may quote you a price of $500 and by the end of the call it has gone up to $3500. How did that happen? If anyone like this ever calls you, DO NOT tell them how much money or credit you have, they will MILK YOU DRY. I have to say I got suckered a few times until I just said, "No more!" and the calls stopped... for awhile...Now, when the website finally got going, I was ecstatic. It was really neat to see something like that and it was mine. However, once I started poking around with it, I noticed that it wasn't entirely complete. I was not getting any hits and all support would tell me is that it "takes time". Well, as I was digging around the back office dashboard I noticed that they hadn't even registered it with the search engines! The sales tax I was supposed to charge was not correct. Quite a few other problems as well. I think the final straw was when I received a call one day telling me I needed to pay $7500 for the press release. They managed to get about $500 out of me to get the blog started and then they didn't contact me again. Meh! I cancelled my subscription to their agency and let the hosting run out. I still have the LLC, though, so at least I can still use that.

Ok, this is getting long as I rant. I think it may be pretty clear what one should do when starting up. DO IT YOURSELF :) It is much cheaper if you just invest the time to find out what needs to be done and then just do it. I went to a local Chapters and bought one of those Starting Online Business for Dummies.Cost about $40CDN, a far cry from the thousands I have kissed goodbye trusting someone else. Finding WA is a huge boost as well. I have found that this site offers more just on the free account than for what I have been paying for, and I am glad I opted in on the premium.

Ok, I will now draw this to a close. Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, I really really hope this was informative and useful for you. If you have already been burned in a similar matter, then we can relate.