When Do You Need To Start Treating Your Side Gig Like A Real Business?

 

• Author Sajith Channadathu
  

Even before the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many people used their free time to engage in their passions. Whether knitting scarves and selling them on Etsy or doing home repair work for neighbors, side gigs are becoming more common for people with standard, 9-to-5 day jobs. (Continued below.....)

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Side hustles are great options for many people for a few reasons — they serve as an extra source of income, help you make ends meet, or build savings for retirement. The money you bring in from a side gig can be used for various purposes, depending on your financial situation and future goals.

Aside from financial gains, side hustles allow you to do what you enjoy and are passionate about, something your day job might lack. It’s common for professionals in the corporate world to switch paths and take on a new business endeavor that’s more tailored to their passions.

Why Are Side Hustles Booming Right Now?

The pandemic has prompted many professionals to reflect on their careers. Some decided to leave their jobs entirely and fully invest time and money into their side hustle.

This contributes to what’s being coined as “The Great Resignation.” It’s a period where an unprecedented amount of the American workforce is resigning for many reasons.

According to U.S. Census data, U.S. Business formations rose by 47% in 2020. This highlights the slew of professionals taking advantage of the opportunity to create companies. However, it can be challenging to know if your side hustle is capable of scaling. You’re likely flooded with questions: Will this work? When do I quit my day job? Is this realistic for my financial situation?

Signs Your Side Hustle Could Be a Viable Business

Here are some telltale signs that your side hustle is ready to be taken to the next level:

• You’ve identified a need in the marketplace, and you can meet customer demands

• Your side hustle has taken on a life of its own

• You are already profiting from your side hustle

• You need a change from your day-to-day routine

• You’re an authoritative force in your industry

• You’ve built a reputation among your competitors

Of course, you could spend hours contemplating every small detail when deciding if your side hustle could be transformed into a real business. It’s also worth noting that how you speak about your gig can impact your perception of if it will be successful or not.

For example, if you continue to call it a side gig, that’s what it will be. If you truly believe in the products or services you offer, you should consider calling it what it is: a business. Dreams only work if you do.

Here are some signs that your side project may not be viable as a business:

• It cuts time into your day job without being profitable

• You create emotional reasons to justify why you have this side hustle

• You lack consistency when working on your side gig

• You’re not ready to put yourself out there

• You’re not meeting an existing customer demand

The decision ultimately comes down to you and your financial situation. It’s best to have six to 12 months of saved income before you decide to take your side hustle to the next level.

It may take that amount of time to earn profits from your business, and the last thing you want is to drain your savings. Financial security should always be a top priority for anyone entering the entrepreneurial landscape. Entrepreneurs need to be wise in their saving strategies to stay afloat if they experience any emergencies.

How to Transform a Side Gig Into a Business

If you’ve decided to elevate your side hustle, you must take steps to ensure you set your business up for success. This way, your company is more likely to survive and thrive in a competitive market.

1. Draft a Business Plan

Without putting your business ideas onto paper, it’ll be challenging to know if this is something worth fighting for. If you do not already have a drafted business plan, make sure you write down all the details you’ll need to know in advance. For example, you should start with your mission statement and the overall goal you want to achieve. It should be followed by an executive summary, company description, organizational structure, and a breakdown of finances.

Planning is crucial when launching your business, so taking extra time out of your day to draft a thorough business plan will give you the best start.

2. Perform Thorough Market Research

Market research will play a significant role in determining your target market and help you operate your business as it scales. It also enables you to determine how viable your business plan is.

Suppose your side hustle is selling handmade jewelry to local friends or family members. While this is certainly a good side gig, you may not be tuned into customer needs. Your ultimate goal in market research is to see what your customers do or do not like about your products or services. This will minimize the risks associated with launching a new business.

3. Establish a Legal Business

It’s critical to take the right steps to separate your business and personal finances. Your side hustle may have given you some disposable income, maybe through a payment app like Venmo, CashApp or Zelle. This won’t be sustainable if you’re ready to take your side gig to the next level.

Choose how you want to incorporate your business and whether you want to establish a sole proprietorship, limited liability company (LLC), or partnership. Incorporation may seem daunting, but it’s quite easy as long as you have a couple of hundred dollars to cover fees. You’ll also need to register your business with the state and receive an employer identification number (EIN).

4. Consider Purchasing Business Insurance

Business insurance is a necessity. It would offer protection if your company were to experience an emergency, such as fires, floods, or property damage.

While the state you’re in will determine what type of coverage you need, it’s worth investigating and investing in. There are many benefits to having small business insurance:

• It attracts new clients to your business

• It enables you to find and keep new employees

• It protects your business from lawsuits and claims

• It keeps your company profitable year-over-year

• It helps you conform to legal requirements5. Invest in Marketing and Advertising

Every business needs to have a hand in the marketing and advertising landscape. Without these crucial components, how would you attract potential customers? You need to have a viable strategy and choose an appropriate advertising approach when launching your business.

Consider placing ads in your local newspaper or online news source. As your business scales, you may want to think about hiring dedicated advertising or marketing professionals to help you with this part of your business. There are plenty of ways you can use marketing to your advantage, so be sure to prioritize this as you get ready to launch.

6. Decide When to Quit Your Day Job

Now that you’ve taken some crucial steps in forming your business, it’s time to think about when your day job is no longer needed. It may be a couple of months before you can quit, and much of it will come down to how profitable your new operation is.

Remember that earning enough profit to quit may take longer than you expect. Some say to ballpark how much you’ll need to make before you leave and then triple that number because it’s better to be safe and financially stable before you resign.

This decision will boil down to your specific circumstances, and if you need to consult a financial adviser, then be sure to do so. Your future self will thank you for taking into account your long-term financial stability.

As you prepare to bring your side gig to the forefront, you’ll need to remember these steps. Launching a business should be a fun, enjoyable experience, but it will come with obstacles you’ll need to overcome. Many entrepreneurs will use new technologies to streamline their operations, so be willing to adopt new tech to make starting your new company a breeze.

Own Your Side Hustle and Call It What It Is: A Business

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Side hustles are becoming more common in today’s economy. They come with pros and cons, and it’s critical to remember that not everyone will work as an established business. However, many new companies can be viable if you follow the right steps before launching.

Becoming an entrepreneur is not for everyone, but if you have enough drive, determination, and passion for the products or services you provide, you can make it happen. Start calling your side gig a business and take the required steps to set yourself up for success. If you follow your heart and keep a cool head, you’ll be ready to start earning a profit doing something you love.

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Yahoo Small Business Why Milestones Matter When Building a Website

Why Milestones Matter When Building a Website

BY BREA SALIM | SMALL BUSINESS

Ideas without execution are mere whims. If you want to see your notion become tangible, you’ll need a plan to bring it to fruition. This is just as true for developing a website as it is for building a house.

Of course, the advent of website builder software has made producing an attractive web presence easier than ever. However, if you don’t have a rigid set of guidelines in place to keep the project on track, it can very easily go off the rails. This is why milestones matter when building a website.

What Are Milestones?

The easiest way to think of milestones is stages of accomplishment. By “X” date, we will have completed the “Y” portion of the project, so we can then move on to the “Z” phase, and so on. When you’re building a website, these stages usually include planning, design, content creation and SEO, development, testing and launch.

Planning

This is where you take all of the aspects of the project into consideration, figure out what tasks need to be done to fulfill them and place them in a logical order. This helps you get a feel for how long it will take to complete each one as well as finish the overall project—and what it will ultimately cost.

Design

This part is made a bit easier with the existence of templated themes. Still, because they can be customized to reflect your own unique vision you’ll still need to spend some time thinking about how you want the finished product to look. The key considerations here are the design of the home page, landing pages, information and product pages, and mobile screens. You’ll also need to consider the look of your navigation and other key pages, such as “About Us” and “Contact Us”. Checkout and payment pages will also need treatments if the site will be used for ecommerce.

Content Creation & SEO

While your design team is working up the look, your content team should be developing the site’s voice. You’ll need page titles and headings, search engine optimization (keywords placed optimally in titles, headings, content and image tags), key messaging and calls to action. Sourcing and/or producing articles and images along with audio and video clips should also be conducted at this time.

Development

With the first three milestones complete, you can start assembling elements to actually build the site. You’ll set up the pages, plug in the content and place your images. Links to various elements from the home page and the navigation bars will also be created during this phase. When you’re done with development, the site look finished—but there are still a couple of more steps to go.

Testing

During this aspect of the production, you’ll go through and test all links, buttons and functions to ensure everything works the way it should. When you click an email address, you should get a popup for creating a message; when you click a “Buy Now” button, you should be taken to a checkout page, etc, etc., etc. Videos should play in the format prescribed. In other words, all functionalities should be reviewed to ensure they do what visitors expect.

Launch

You should be laying the groundwork for your marketing blitz to support your launch while the work above is going on in the background. Get your social presences up and running, tease the development of the site as the various milestones are met—and just generally build anticipation for the day the site goes live.

Then, take it live!

With those milestones completed, you might be tempted to rest on your laurels. However, rather than completion, this begins the management of the life of the site. As users interact with it, you’ll find opportunities for improvement. You’ll also need to add functionalities as technological developments emerge. Security is an ongoing concern as well.

Still, you can enjoy the satisfaction of seeing your idea brought to life right before your eyes. And ultimately, this is why timelines matter when you’re building a website. If you have a tool by which to measure progress, you’ll get a sense of accomplishment as each one is completed. And, it’s even easier with a good website builder like the ones offered by Yahoo Small Business. Check it out today!

Brea Salim manages social media and email marketing for Yahoo Small Business. Prior to this, she was a freelance writer with bylines in SF Chronicle, The Jakarta Post, Tasting Table, 7x7 and many more. 

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Yahoo Small Business Presents: What is affiliate marketing and how to make money with it? On US Sports Net!

What is affiliate marketing and how to make money with it?

By: Jesse Powell

A variety of online money making methods are available for the people in today’s world. Affiliate marketing holds a prominent place out of them. If you wonder how to make passive income, you can think about starting off with affiliate marketing without keeping any doubts in your mind. What is Affiliate Marketing? Before you make money online with affiliate marketing, you need to have a clear understanding about what it is. Affiliate marketing is recognized as the way of promoting someone else’s product to receive a percentage of sales as a commission. Affiliate marketing can help both you and the seller to earn profits. Most of the affiliate marketers start their promotions by creating a squeeze page that belongs to a certain niche. They can either use their blogs or websites to promote the products and gain the attention of potential customers. When a customer goes through one of their affiliate links and make a purchase, the affiliate marketer would be able to earn a commission. Therefore, you can think about following this method to generate a steady online income. Yahoo Small Business Web Hosting - Build a great web site with our easy-to-use tools How to get started with Affiliate Marketing? Marketing affiliate products is recognized as a great way to earn money at home. You will even be able to create your own online business with it. The affiliate product you select should be similar to the information on your blog. You can even purchase products from other marketers and promote them to earn a commission. When you master how to attract customers towards your website, you will be able to promote products with less hassle. You don’t need to be the owner of that product, but the people who visit your website will think that you are an authority of that product. Creating a website is an easy thing and a person does not need to have a technical knowledge to do it. Blogger and Wordpress provide their blogging services free of charge to the clients. Both these websites have instructions and you can create your own blog or website on those platforms within a short period of time. However, Wordpress is more advanced than Blogger, so if you are a beginner to creating websites, it is better to start the things with Blogger. Important facts to keep in your mind You will have to keep several things in your mind when looking to make money online with affiliate marketing. A large percentage of the visitors coming to your blog or website come through search engines, so you should optimize it accordingly. You will have use popular and low competition keywords that are related to the products you promote. It will increase your traffic count and you will be able to increase your profits in the long run. Make your website content interesting and try to create a bond with the reader. Then the reader will trust your product and they will tend to purchase it. You should update your website on a regular basis as well. It will assist your website to achieve a prominent place in the search engine results. The Internet users in today’s world are impatient and they do not like to go beyond the first or second page of search engine results. You can even seek the assistance of a SEO expert to optimize your blog and that can be considered as a great investment. Make sure that you leave your signature link so the people can click on it with less hassle. The results of these methods are proven and any person can use them to achieve success in affiliate marketing and earn a decent income online. To Your Success JP Jesse Powell, Brick and Mortar Business owner as well as online entrepreneur. I am a blogger for make money online products.I hope my articles and honor and knowledge to you mind and heart.

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Yahoo Small Business: Why Your Business Domain Name Matters

By | Small Business

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No matter what size business you run, one of the primary ways people will learn more about your business is through the Internet. It’s the reason why plenty of business owners invest the time needed to establish their online presence. This is all the more reason to choose a web domain that makes sense for your business. For some, this might be as easy as buying business-name.com. For others, things might be a little more complicated due to domain availability.
Either way, it’s important to remember that your domain name is essential to your online branding. If you cut corners, you’re going to regret it. Below are a few reasons why your business domain name matters.

Register Your Domain for $9.95 with Yahoo 

Secure Your Online Space with a Domain Finder

The first thing you’ll want to do is discover whether your desired domain is available. This is super easy if you employ a domain finder. Just type your chosen domain (such as your brand name) into the search bar to see if it is available. If it is, you can purchase the domain, make your monthly or yearly payments and enjoy your own little slice of the World Wide Web. Simple, right?
Well, what if your domain isn’t available? Fortunately, most domain finders provide a series of permutations that could work just as well. For instance, you might not be able to get brand-name.com, but you could buy brand-name.net. But is this the best strategy, really?
Folks are used to typing .com. Sure, you can get by with a .net address. But it’s just not the same. Web users may even confuse your domain (brand-name.net) with an unrelated company at brand-name.com. This might hurt your digital marketing efforts and confound your would-be customers.
So, what’s a better solution?

Think Strategically About Your Domain Name

Instead of just choosing brand-name-dot-whatever, try getting creative with your domain. For example, let’s say you own an ecommerce site selling bobble wobbles. Your brand name is Bob’s Silly Toy Superstore. It’s too long for customers to type the full name into the address bar; and most of the shorter versions of the domain name are taken including bobs-silly-toys.com and others. What’s Bob to do?
Well, since Bob sells bobble wobbles, he may search bobblewobble.com. Lo and behold, it’s available! This is a perfect opportunity for Bob to corner the online bobble wobble market by owning the domain name for this product. Suddenly, bobble wobble ecommerce shopkeepers everywhere are kicking themselves for not being as creative and crafty as Bob.

Consider Your Keywords

Think about how consumers find anything online. Targeting certain consumer queries and keywords, you can probably figure out a better domain name than what first comes to mind. It’s like creating a website for your personal brand called first-name-last-name.com. If you have a common name, the domain is probably taken already. But that doesn’t matter, because your name says very little about what you do. On the other hand, if you buy first-name-last-name-PR.com, folks will associate your name with public relations.
This strategy works for any number of industries. Green-thumb.com taken? Why not try green-thumb-landscaping.com or even Arizona-landscaping.com. These URLs anticipate what web users are looking for (“landscaping companies” or “Arizona landscaping companies”) and puts it right in the address bar. It’s a smart strategy, one you should consider and why your business domain name matters.
Now that you have the knowledge, try your hand at building a website for your small business by visiting Yahoo Small Business. It’ll be the best decision you make all day!