The Hard Work Behind Every Successful Small Business

Let’s face it… running an online business takes a lot of dedication and work. It’s stressful and needs to be treated like a real business. Just because we have blogs, conference parties and seems like everything is cake, there is really a ton of grunt work that is put into every ad campaign, web site and blog that finds success. Running a small business is serious work, and should be treated no differently than any other business or life changing task.

The Idea of Running Your Own Small Business

There’s two types of people in the world. Those who work for themselves, and those who work for other people. There is nothing wrong with the path you decide to take, and running your own business definitely isn’t for everyone. If you have a family and costs that need to be paid, it will take a lot of work, dedication and sacrifice to have those responsibilities looming over your head month after month without a secure pay check coming in every week.

With all of that said, the benefits of running your own business can pay off big. Along with all of the stress and dedication, comes big benefits such as potentially making a lot of money, being your own boss, and building a business the way you want and maybe even selling for millions of dollars in the future. You can only work so many hours, and make a limited amount of money when you are working for someone else, but when it’s your own business, you are in control of your salary and the business’ earnings.

What Does It Take to Run a Small Business

Personally for me, it was an undying drive and dedication that brought me to where I am today. I always had a passion for business and thinking up new ways to make money. When I first started making money online, I was around 15 years old, and didn’t have a lot of financial responsibilities, which helped put me in a unique position to start my own business. At the same time, I was also investing everything I made right back into the business, and never took any investment money or loans to start the company. I started from scratch, learned everything I could about making web sites and affiliate marketing and everything else that has brought me to where I am today.

So what does it take for YOU to start your own business online? I keep saying it, but it’s the truth, you actually NEED to WANT to do this. I have so many friends that think I am so “lucky” to be where I am, but there are thousands of hours and blood, sweat and tears behind every successful business. For every successful idea, there are thousands of wasted hours and dollars lost in failed ideas. The bottom line is, you need to have the drive to keep going til you hit that next big success!

Depending on what type of business you want to create, you will need some investment money. To start with a web site or blog, your investment is minimal (not counting advertising dollars). You can get started with a domain and web hosting for just a few dollars a year. If you wanted to focus on affiliate marketing and creating ad campaigns, you would want to start with at least $500-$5000 to get an idea of how campaigns works, while turning them profitable. If you’re providing a service and you don’t have enough cash flow coming in to run your campaigns, you can use an invoice factoring service like TBS capital funding.

For every successful web site or ad campaign we build, there are tons of failures we’ve hit before them. The difference between those who succeed and fail, is the driving passion and dedication to not fail, and keep working those extra long nights and learning what it takes to make a profit.

You Have an Established Small Business… Now What?

Congratulations, you now have a successful business and are your own boss, now what? All the time people are saying “Why would they keep working?“, in reference to the millionaires and billionaires out there running big companies. The answer is simple, go right back to what we talked about in step one… it’s all about the passion! When you are in business long enough, and doing well at it, it’s more like a game than anything else. You want to keep succeeding, hitting new levels (whether that is revenue or personal goals).

This is the driving force behind every business and online marketer who stays up to 5am in the morning, continually pushing out new ad campaigns, and pushing conversions for that extra 1%. We are the future of business and if this is the game you want to play, you have to take it seriously and never doubt yourself for a second!

I received compensation from Visa for sharing my views in this post, but the views expressed here are solely mine, not Visa’s. This post was sponsored by Visa Small Business as part of their #gobiz Sweepstakes for @VisaSmallBusiness. Visa will be rewarding small business owners with $10,000 in prizes for their hard work from October 25^th through November 17^th. Visit here https://hosting.thetenthwave.com/visasb/ for more details, and follow @VisaSmallBiz for ways to help make your small business more efficient and successful. Discover more at https://visa.com/business.