How to Generate Successful Online Business Ideas

Choosing an idea for your business is arguably the most important step you’ll take. Get it right and all the subsequent work – site building, web marketing and monetization – will be much easier. On the other hand, all the marketing in the world can’t make a bad idea good.

The best idea is one that users will love so much they can’t wait to tell others about – but it also needs to be something that’s right for you.

Specifically:

1. Choose something you really want to do
Even the most innovative ideas need promotion and marketing to find an initial audience. That’s work you won’t want to do unless you’re in love with your plan.

2. Create something you’ll use yourself
If you never use the service your startup provides, you’ll never discover bugs, problems with the user interface and anything else you need to refine and improve.

3. Launch something for nothing or almost nothing
What’s the sense in re-mortgaging your family home to pay for an idea you haven’t yet launched?

Launching is testing. And testing means sometimes finding out you need to rethink the concept or maybe even try something else completely.

Borrowing money too early can force you to stick with something you should drop just because you need to repay the loan. Worse, you may need to take on another job just to finance the bad idea.

Better to start small, test the concept and scale up when user feedback tells you the basic execution is on target.

If you’re skeptical that low-cost startups can work, take a look at Chris Guillebeau’s The $100 Startup for inspiration.

4. You need sufficient number of users to make money
The key word here is “sufficient”, it doesn’t necessarily need to be lots. A web app priced at a monthly 9 dollars / pounds / euros can generate over 100,000 per year with only 1,000 users.