Starting an Online Business All-in-One For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Seeking Out the Next Level of Your Business

Entrepreneurs can tell you that the process of growing your business almost always starts out the same way — by planning for it.

Before transitioning your online business to the next level, you have to identify exactly what that next level is. You have to put all your options under a microscope and decide which one makes the most sense to pursue. What are your choices? Well, each of the most common paths to growth has its advantages and disadvantages.

Expanding the business

An obvious choice is to add products or services to your existing site. The purpose is to use variety to attract a wider customer base while bringing in larger revenues. This strategy is certainly the one that many entrepreneurs implement regularly, whether they realize it or not. But, after you consciously identify it as your preferred growth strategy, you can become more aggressive and targeted with your actions.

Here are the pros of expanding your business:

• You retain full control of the business, just like always.
• You can explore different areas, which can be fun for an entrepreneur.

The cons of expanding your business are that they

• Can take more time to show results
• Might require a large investment in back-end systems to support added inventory or a product base

We discuss ways to expand your product base in Book XI, Chapter 3.

Acquiring other sites

Buying existing sites is another fairly typical development strategy. You can easily start by making a list ...