career

How Women Make Money Online:  Why New Businesses Fail

Here's the next post in our How Women Make Money Online. These Are Three Reasons Why New Businesses Fail

Making money online isn’t easy, the truth is a lot of new businesses fail.  According to Forbes ” 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs who start businesses fail within the first 18 months.”  That’s not always due to lack of a good idea, sometimes it’s just mismanagement and lack of preparedness.  Sometimes people are creative entrepreneurs, but not ready to run a business because they don’t know how.

Taking business courses at a local school or night classes at a community college can help women learn how to become business savvy entrepreneurs.  Some others may prefer to learn how to do it on their own.  That’s how I did it.

You May Also Like:

How Women Make Money Online: Getting Started

I started my first business in 2009 and it was an epic fail – as far as the business goes.  I spent a lot of money to get the business started and because I knew nothing about starting or running a business it lasted less than six months.  However I don’t consider it a total loss because I learned a lot about myself and about what it takes to be in business.

Now seven years later I’m happy to say that I run a profitable consulting business.  As a woman entrepreneur myself I love helping other women learn the basics of running a business.  I’m happy to share my story if it can help someone else succeed.

Here are three reasons why new businesses fail:

No need in the market

You may have a great idea, but if there is no demand for it then there’s really no point in putting your blood, sweat and tears behind it.  One could argue that any type of business can have a target market because there are all types of people in the world.

That may be true, but it takes both time and money to test a product or service in the market to find out who (if anyone) wants to buy your product, how much they are willing to pay and how often they need to repurchase/use it.  Before spending a pocket full of money to launch a product or service test the market first to determine the demand.

Expanding too fast

One of the biggest mistakes I made with my first business was trying to start out as if I was already an established business.  Yes perception and reputation are a big part of a business’ success, but don’t pretend to be something you’re not.

It’s O.K. to start small.  My advice is to find a niche and focus your efforts from there.  Once you are successful with a specific product/service to a small target audience you can expand to include other services and products, but don’t try and do it all at once.  That only leads to lack of focus on your part and confusion on the part of potential clients.

Outsourcing instead of DIY

Learning new skills such as website development, the importance of SEO, how to take good photos and how to create content can all help your business succeed.  Starting a business is expensive and doing most of the work yourself can help save big bucks.

It will prolong the process, but it will make you a better entrepreneur because you’ll understand the ins and outs of absolutely everything.  If you eventually need to outsource tasks due to workload you’ll be able to give direction on exactly what it is you want and you’ll make sure you aren’t taking advantage of.

 

+ posts

Leave a Comment