Digital Skills

How to Start An Online Business While Working Full Time? Too many people ask the question, how to start an online business while working full time? Well, Starting an online business while working full time can be stressful, but it can also be worth it and help you eventually, after putting in the time and effort, to get away from that job you don’t like. Just because you are over forty-five doesn’t mean you have to stay at a job you hate. If you are looking for a way out, starting an online business while working full time, maybe just what you need. Or maybe you’ve been wanting to start a business and don’t know where to start. Creating an online business will allow you to create another stream of income and most importantly enable you to have the opportunity of replacing your job with the lifestyle business that you desire. Starting an online business may not be as complicated as you might think, but it will take a lot of steady effort. Your business could involve selling items on Amazon, affiliate marketing, or doing freelance work. If you have services that you can offer like ghostwriting, editing, or proofreading, you can turn them into a business. In the age of technology, you need some digital skills to survive. Starting a business requires a set of digital skills most don’t have, but at the same time, it’s easy to learn. Digital marketing, graphic design, and website design,  digital skills can be outsourced if you don’t have time or the patience to learn them. So, How to Start An Online Business While Working Full Time? Before going through the steps to online business, please check the blog, “What is the best business to start to escape the rat race, live anywhere, and become financially self-reliant?”. This will give you more clarity and understanding of how to start an online business while working full-time. Here Are the Six Steps To Help You With Your Business. 1. Choose the Right Online Business. Before you do anything, you need to decide what type of business you will create. There are a lot out there and they all work differently. Is this business going to be something you are passionate about? Are you going to be making the products or are you going to outsource? Figure this out before you can move forward so you need to give it a lot of thought. If you want to start a craft business, are you making the items? How long does it take you to produce? Or are you going to link with a company that allows you to create items like coffee mugs and T-shirts while they maintain the inventory? This will save you on overhead. Is your business a service you provide, like teaching a class or editing services for manuscripts? Be clear about what you want to sell before you continue. 2. Research for The Best Business Idea. Researching a new business venture is very important. Just because you have an idea doesn’t mean it will translate well into a business. Once you have decided what market you want to enter research it. How should you market your product? Your services? Knowing how to market your business is as equally important as the idea. Researching your idea also includes researching if there is a market for the product or service you want to offer. There is no point in starting an online business while working full-time only for there to be no one interested in buying. 3. How to Start An Online Business While Working Full Time- Keep Your Day Job. Even though starting an online business doesn’t require a lot of capital, you need income to pay your bills and support your family before your business takes off. So, you need to keep your day job when you start. It may be difficult to work at a full-time job and your business on the side, but it can be done especially if you are willing to put in the time and effort and consistently set up your online business. Until you are 100% sure that your online business can provide you with a livable income, keep your job. Having a day job allows you to test your business first, test the market, and most importantly make sure your products or services are ready for public consumption. 4. Gain the Right Digital Skills. It takes more than drive and an idea to run an online business; you need the right skills. Since this is an online business you will need some digital skills. This includes digital marketing, graphic design, web design, and development, dealing with social media, and some IT skills. Now you do not need to know all of these and you can outsource everything, but it would be better if you could get a basic understanding. Also, learning a digital skill like graphic design can be turned into a business or freelance work. These digital skills are things you will need and can be learned online. There are too many online platforms where you learn almost anything such as Skillshare. Marketing, graphic design, and designing a website are some digital skills you could learn and there are many more. Some of these online courses are free and others charge small monthly fees. You could try LinkedIn Learning and Udemy they provide courses online. 5. Set Priorities for Your Business. Like everything else in life, if it is important to you, you will make time for it. If you want your business to be successful, then you need to make it a priority. Starting an online business while working full-time can be difficult and even exhausting. But if you want something, work for it. To do this, make a schedule. Schedule time to work on your business so many hours a day. Whether you schedule that time before your full-time job or after is completely up to you. Also, if you know that you don’t possess or have limited familiarity with the digital skills listed above, then you