Another common misconception that many people have when starting an online business is the amount of time spent on starting the site. Staring a business takes time. The more you can put into the planning the better. Here is an example of the types of calls I would get from people wanting to use the drop ship services provided by my company.

The conversation would start out by the person asking about my drop ship program. I would ask them a few questions about how they would sell the items. I would ask them what marketing plans they had in place and what prices they would sell the items at. Most people indicated they would they would sell the items online and think the products would magically find their way into their stores.

It takes anywhere from 4-24 hours or more just to enter products into a store. Sure you can copy and paste descriptions and images but do you really want to be just like the next guy. Setting up the credit card processing, email and all the site content could easily take up 1-3 weeks of time. Most people are just not aware of the amount of time required to start a business.

Along with the initial time to start a company, the business owner must also send several hours a week running the site. This includes filling orders, searching for new drop shippers, answering phones and returning phone calls and emails. I would usually spend about 2-5 hours a week running the patio furniture business. This is low as a rule of thumb. I would estimate anywhere from 2-10 hours a week for a store that receives a good amount of traffic.

Next post is what business model to use.

Back to making the decision to start a web based business