Take a look at some of the things you need to know when setting up a business off-line the legal stuff is the same as online but the rest ! wow what a lot of work much easier to get going on line, check out how here, www.askimmarketing.com

*Legal obligation

Choose your business name

Choose and protect your business name

Choose the right name for your business

Raise finance & manage your money

Choose and run a business bank account

Choose and run a business account

Examine your finance options

Choose the right finance when starting up

Use our interactive tool to identify the right

finance options for your business

Grants: the basics

Search our business support finder for grants,

loans, expertise and advice for which your

business may be eligible

Bank finance

Equity finance

Use your business plan to get funding

Work out how much money you’ll need when starting

How do I survive until my business is off the ground?

Budgeting and business planning

Plan your cashflow

Cashflow management: the basics

Identify potential cashflow problems

Avoid the problems of overtrading

Assess your pension needs

Pension planning for the self-employed

Understand the special needs of your

business sector

* Investigate and apply for the licences and permits that your business may need

Your type of business

* Review the regulations that may apply to your business

Review sector specific information for your

business

Sign up for email alerts about new and changing

Regulations

Set up your premises

Set up your business at home

Use your home as a workplace

Get the most from your phone system

An overview of IT and e-commerce

Design and print your business stationery

* Establish a safe workplace

Security and crime prevention

What workplace facilities do you need to

provide?

Set up your operations

Finance your initial equipment, plant and machinery

Decide whether to lease or buy assets

Set up your suppliers

Choosing the right suppliers

Negotiate the right deal with suppliers

Set up stock control and inventory procedures

Stock control and inventory

Set up transport for your business

Transport logistics for business

Operating your own motor vehicles

Promote & sell your product or service

Choose your target customers

Identify and sell more to your most valuable

customers

Know your customers’ needs

Segment your customers

Set the price for your product or service

Price your product or service

Price lists, estimates, quotations and tenders

Competing fairly

Plan your marketing strategy

Write a marketing plan

Create your marketing strategy

Market research and market reports

Advertising: the basics

Direct marketing: the basics

Close and get paid for your first sale Not started

The sales meeting

Identify potential sales channels

Closing and following up the sale

Forecast and plan your sales

Managing late payment

Set up and promote your business online Not started

Get the right website for your business

Distance selling and online trading

Stay within the law when selling your product or service

Comply with the law in the provision of goods,

facilities and services

The Sale of Goods Act

Comply with data protection legislation

Fair trading, trade descriptions and Trading

Standards

Product liability

Protect your business

Protect your ideas

Protecting intellectual property

Find out how to protect your ideas

• Insure your business
• Business insurance: the basics

Get the right insurance for your business

Insure your business and assets – general

insurances

Liability insurance

Set up your IT & e-commerce

Set up your IT system Not started

Get the most from IT in your business

Computer hardware: the basics

Computer software: the basics

Choose and manage your IT supplier

IT security: the basics

Set yourself up for e-commerce

Get the right website for your business

Planning for e-commerce

Develop an e-marketing plan

Generate business from your e-marketing plan

Accepting online payments

E-commerce and the law

Check whether you need to notify the Information

Commissioner

Use our interactive tool to find out whether you

need to notify the Information Commissioner

about the data your business holds

Set up & register your legal structure

* Choose your legal structure Not started

Legal structures: the basics

Sort out your tax & record keeping

* Understand your obligations regarding National

Insurance

National Insurance: an introduction

Identify the National Insurance contributions you must pay

Consider other business taxes

Business rates – an overview

Capital Gains Tax

Consider allowable business expenses

Check whether you are eligible for tax allowances

Tax advantages for those starting up in business

Research and Development (R&D)

Relief for Corporation Tax

that link again www.askimmarketing.com

My point here is that the training courses are only distant training courses and at best only suitable to a certain kind of person most without paying extra fees which are over expensive to say the least If you disagree with this then post a comment here

So being your own boss can give you freedom. Setting you free from being a paid employee, however this makes you responsible for your own future. Being self-employed will give you freedom to set your own hours, create your own work lifestyle, choose what work you will do, craft your own products, build  your own customer base, at the same time building a relationship with them..

You will not have to answer to anyone other than yourself, your suppliers, and of course, the taxman.

How Do I Start?

Generally there are two ways you will find for starting a business.

1/Pack in your job (time for money)  then its hands to the mill stone cause from now on there will not be any cash around unless you have planned ahead with a cash flow projection to manage your previously saved capitol. Without forward planning and capitol this way will become a crash and burn scenario so care needs to be taken.

2/The second way is to develop a business on the side, in your spare time while hanging onto your job. This means you should plan the switch over from being an employee to self-employed very carefully.

Nearly everyone starting from scratch have only a vague idea, debatable skills, and a limited income. So the venture into self-employment needs to start taking shape within  a few months.

Often businessmen/women find their first ideas unrealistic, or there are no markets for the  services they wish to provide, so they will look around for ideas, products and services else ware on the Internet. Follow the five things below before doing anything.

Do not invest any serious money in a product or business ideas until you have checked it out thoroughly.

Check out the people who are already selling the product or service, are they making money?

Ascertain  the standing of the person or company providing the product or service.

Make sure the company  provides on-going support for their product(s) or services

Make sure there are no hidden or unexpected costs that will eat away your profits. Read the small print, or have a professional do it for you.

This applies to online or offline business opportunities such as an MLM or affiliate scheme, or a more traditional product or service.

Any successful businessman will tell you, their choices of products/services were crucial to their success or failure. Many products/services may simply be ideas with no hope of working, many others are designed to produce maximum profits for their creators, you can check out the top 300 online opportunities on the Internet on the right of this page, with bios of the most noticable guru’s and their products or services. With the added imput from people who have used their services.

The one maxime to remember when looking for an opportunity is if it looks too good to be true, then it is.

But being a successful entrepreneur requires that you look at the big picture and follow a plan through from beginning to end. Rieva Lesonsky, editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine gives some practical  guidelines that can help you when beginning your own enterprise:

Don’t Quit Your Day Job.

Consider starting your business part-time, especially if it’s online, while you’re working and have a steady income. It usually takes six months to a year to get a business going and you don’t want your ability to make your house payment to hinge upon your company being an overnight success. Start with what you can manage, financially and time-wise, and scale up as your business  grows.

Find Your Niche.

The days of general stores are over. Particularly online, consumers are looking for stores that specialize. You have to find a need—something a specific group of people want, but can’t get at the big chain stores—and fill it. Advises Lesonsky, “You can’t compete with the big guys, so you have to find where the big guys aren’t and go into your niches.”

Have an Online Presence.

Even if you’re not planning to start an online retail business, consider that the internet can still play a valuable role in your company. Having an online presence eliminates the limitations of physical location and broadens your customer base by, literally, millions. It’s also a great tool for promoting yourself and letting people, even in your own area, know that you’re there, and what you’re doing.

Refuse to Quit.

Successful entrepreneurship requires creativity, energy, and a drive to keep going when you fail. Few people realize that before Bill Gates created the extremely successful Microsoft 3.0, he created a Microsoft 1.0 and 2.0, both of which flopped—but he kept at it. And that determination and refusal to give up is what will separate successful entrepreneurs from unsuccessful ones. Says Lesonsky, “Arm yourself with optimism to get beyond the ‘No’ or the trouble. There’s nothing wrong in failure—just don’t repeat the same mistake!”

When I was thinking about starting an internet business there were a few things that were must have requirements.

The first one was that I needed to be able to get the business to profitability for less than $1600 (£100). In practice each site has cost more than that when you figure in the marketing costs needed to get it off the ground quickly. The silk tie retailing site was set up for less than $300 but when you factor in marketing spend, then I have spent almost $800 per month on marketing, mostly Google Adwords and Overture. It is only after month three that I have got close to breaking even. Anyway, near  enough and if you are more patient and make less costly mistakes than me then you should be able to do it for less.

Secondly. The  business had to need as little manual work as possible. I am after a business that I can start working part time and as am a management consultant and sell my time by the hour, for me time really is money. I am also not keen on hiring people if I can avoid it.

The internet has the potential to offer some really virtual businesses and I wanted to use this. For this reason as well as start-up costs this means that I do not want to stock or handle any products. I do a lot of supply chain consulting work so it was obvious to me that I could have a business that used other companies to buy, store and deliver the products. The easiest way to do this is by using dropshipping. Dropshippers are wholesalers that ship individual customer orders direct to your customers.

There is a lot of information on dropshipping online, however it has to be said that there are some terrible dropshipping companies where prices are too high or products too common to successful. Typical of these is Select which charges a fee to join, but once you join you find that the prices are often higher than they are being sold for on eBay and are widely sold with lots of competition. It is very hard to make good money from these sort of dropshippers. There are however some good companies out there with niche products where achievable margins are good.

The third requirement was that the business needed to have the potential to generate at least $1k per month in profit. That way with a few  web businesses it could become my full time job. I decided that I was not trying to start the next Amazon, instead I was after a good profitable niche. Something not too competitive and with no house-hold names as competitors.

This means that I have not gone into electronics even though it is the area I know the best, it is a very competitive market online and were competition includes Amazon and Dixons. To be successful in electronics you either need to find a niche not served by the big boys or spend serious money to get established.

I then started searching for business ideas. I read the get rich quick newsletters, internet marketing newsletters, internet business forums and drop shipping websites. I searched for dropship suppliers then when I found a product that I thought might be promising, did a search for it and checked out the competition. If after that it still looked interesting then I did a keyword search on Google AdWords to find out how many clicks I could get and at what cost.

While doing this I came across some sites selling ready-made business websites. Essentially they provide a shop template, a catalogue and a supplier of stock and off you go. These sell for between £50 ($80) and £500 ($800). I wasted a fair bit of money with a couple of false starts.

I bid on a lingerie web business template on eBay with a starting price of £99; my wife was a lingerie merchandiser for Marks & Spencers and so I though she could help, then I saw a gadgets website from the same people and thought I would get that and see if I could find a gadgets niche and bid for that too. Trouble was I then did some more research and found that lingerie was very competitive online and that the supplier I would be getting had a limited selection of very tarty undies at rather high prices.

I also found that the gadget supplier was the Select and as I have already said they are overpriced. I then found the tie web business and decided this was a better niche where margins really are 60% and bought that one from DpbUK who have been very good. Unfortunately no one else bid on the two on eBay and I ended up winning them although I no longer wanted them. $300 wasted. Oops. So do your homework carefully  before buying; look carefully at the sample sites and try and find some clues to the suppliers, check the competition out and make sure the margins are high enough.

There are many good reasons why this can be a wise move. Being your own boss means you can set your own hours. This can be very important if you have small children, or simply want to spend more time at home. Working from home can also save valuable time, if the alternative is spending two or three hours every day commuting back and forth to your work place. And of course, working for yourself also gives you the opportunity to make a whole lot more money.

In other words, being your own boss gives you that valuable commodity called freedom. It sets you free from the limitations of being someone else’s paid employee, and in return makes you responsible for your own future. As a self-employed entrepreneur you are free to set your own hours, establish  your own work habits, choose what work you will do or will not do, create your own products, drum up your own customers, and do what you have to do to make those customers happy.

And perhaps most importantly, when you are self-employed you are free to set your own prices and make as much or as little income as you are able. You will not have to answer to anyone other than yourself, your suppliers, and of course, the ever-present taxman, after you become successful.

**How to get started — Two Alternatives**

There are two obvious ways you can go about starting your own business. The first way is to quit your day job and launch full bore into your new business. We’ll call this the “All or Nothing Approach”. The second way is to continue on with your current employment and develop a business on the side, in your spare time. We’ll call this the “Spare Time Approach”.

Depending on your point of view, taking the All or Nothing Approach can be either an act of bravery or just plain recklessness. Unless you are independently wealthy, planning and timing are very important with this approach. That’s because once you leave your previous employment your source of income will be gone and you will have a limited amount of time to make your business work. It is “sink or swim”. And you can sink pretty quickly without a source of income.

So that means you should plan the changeover to self-employment very carefully. Every situation will be different. An acquantance of mine was able to step from his quasi-government job into a private consulting business because he spent the last few months of his employment developing leads and contacts within his industry. When he went on his own he had customers waiting in the wings and was able to more than double his income in his very first year.

But most of us are not so lucky. We do not have the quality leads or the specialized skills. Nor do most of us have the opportunity to use our present employment to build a launching pad of potential customers before we take off into the wild blue yonder of self-employment. Most of us are starting from scratch with a few vague ideas, a questionable set of yet-to-be-defined skills, and severly limited income. So our venture into self-employment had better take off within a few months or we’re likely to crash and burn.

That is why the Spare Time Approach is best for most new self-employed entrepreneurs. The Spare Time Approach lets you test your ideas, develop  your skills, and build your business slowly. If you are unsure about the products or services you intend to sell, the Spare Time Approach lets you try out different product lines and see how well they fit in with your overall objectives. Often new entrepreneurs find that their first ideas are not realistic, or there is no market for the services they want to provide. Or they find they cannot charge enough to make any money providing the products or services they have chosen.

**Choose your product carefully**

Like all new entrepreneurs, whether you take the “all or nothing approach” or the “spare time approach” you should be very tight-fisted with your limited resources. That means do not invest any serious money in a product or business idea until you have checked it out thoroughly. The best way to “check it out” is to:

- Talk to people who are already selling the product or service.

- Establish the credibility of the person or company providing the product or service.

- Make sure the company provides on-going support for their product(s).

- Make sure there are no hidden or unexpected costs (such as franchise fees) that will eat away your profits.

This applies whether you are looking at an online product such as an MLM or affiliate scheme, or a more traditional product or service aimed only at local customers.

For example, an associate of mine produces Business Card Displays. The idea behind this product is that it provides new entrepreneurs the opportunity to set up an advertising service for local businesses. With this product, the entrepreneur creates a network of displays placed in high traffic retail outlets like grocery stores, hair salons, and bowling alleys. Then local advertisers can place their business cards in one of the compartments in the displays across the network. If someone browsing one of the displays sees a service they are interested in, they just take a card for future reference.

Sure, it’s not everybody’s cup of tea. But for someone willing to put in a few months of hard work at the beginning, it is a pretty easy way to create a business that will return a handsome income for years to come.

And this manufacturer stands behind his product. He can show you examples of successful advertising networks where his displays are used. He will also provide testimonials and contact information from real people whom you can ask how well the product is working for them. And to top it off, he uses the product himself in a network of over 40 displays, and can provide hands-on information about how it actually works in a real-life situations.

This is pretty rare in the world of “business opportunities”. Many are run by “take the money and run” types who make wildly exaggerated claims about how successful you can be. But in many cases they have never actually made the idea work for themselves.

As any successful entrepreneur will tell you, your choice of products is crucial to your success or failure. Many products /”>propecia generic version are simply bogus ideas with no hope of working. And many others are designed to produce maximum profits for their creators, and minimum profits for people like you and me who sell them. So no matter how hard you work, or how committed you are to being successful, if you choose the wrong product you will be operating with a millstone around your neck.