In the world today, there are all sorts of opportunities available for making a name for yourself, establishing your professional path, and finding a niche to operate in that suits your particular temperament well.
Among the wide array of different things that people can choose to do with their lives these days, becoming an entrepreneur is a major dream for a huge number of individuals all around the world.
Among other things, an entrepreneurial path in life promises a significant degree of autonomy, confidence, the ability to potentially make a fortune while “taking your fate into your own hands,” and all sorts of other things, as well.
At the same time, however, not all forms of entrepreneurship are equal in terms of the costs and benefits involved, or in the impact you can expect them to have on your life as a whole, over the short term.
With the Internet being ubiquitous these days, many new entrepreneurs are choosing to start up businesses that are primarily web-based, or that at least begin that way.
Here are some reasons to start a web-based business.
The internet is constantly growing in importance
The Internet has been a feature in just about every household for a pretty long time now, but as time goes on it only seems to be becoming more and more prevalent.
In the last couple of years in particular – and this has no doubt been influenced as well by the lockdowns connected to the COVID-19 pandemic – more and more of the popular culture is centred around the web, in addition to the Internet also making up a larger part of people’s leisure time thanks to services such as Netflix.
Web-based businesses – or, at least, businesses that have a strong web presence – seem poised to take advantage of this more or less continuous growth in the popularity and broad social significance of the Internet.
SEO Companies who can help businesses to rank well for their keywords of choice on Google’s search result pages are not just participating in a marketing exercise. They are actually shaping the future in a pretty tangible way.
Location independence is a great thing
Easily one of the biggest benefits of running a web-based business, is that it will almost inevitably grant you location independence – a thing that, until recently, most people could scarcely dream of in the context of their professional lives.
Location independence is a great thing, not necessarily because you want to, or should, go on a round the world trip or leave your home, but because this degree of flexibility allows you to lead your life in a much more autonomous way, by default.
With location independent working, you can head off on a micro adventure vacation whenever the mood takes you. Or you can visit relatives for a while. Or choose a location to live in without having to worry about commute times. Or, for that matter, you could indeed become a “digital nomad” and travel constantly while working on your business remotely.
Not all jobs can be done remotely, even just in a potential sense. But out of the ones that can, they will just about all be web-based to a significant degree.
Web-based businesses may be significantly more resilient than traditional ones in some key ways
In one sense, web-based businesses can seem less resilient than traditional brick and mortar businesses, not least of all because the success of your business is likely to depend very much on things like how it ranks on SERPs, which can be fickle.
In various key ways, however, web-based businesses may actually be significantly more resilient than traditional ones. If you are wondering how this could be the case, just look at the effects of a real life social upheaval that we are all currently living through as of the writing of this article: the COVID-19 pandemic.
Traditional brick and mortar businesses have been very hard hit throughout the duration of the pandemic, ranging from restaurants and bars, to cinemas, and retail outlets.
On the other hand, web-based businesses are thriving.
In today’s landscape, it would be hard to imagine a kind of upheaval that would cause web-based businesses, specifically, to suffer to the same extent, short of a complete infrastructure failure resulting in the shutdown of the Internet altogether.
It’s often possible to create and run web-based businesses with far fewer resources up-front
One of the great things about web-based businesses as a rule, is that they allow you a lot of flexibility with regards to getting a business venture off the ground quickly.
If you are selling physical merchandise, you can set up a sophisticated web store and can sell limited runs of your products out of your bedroom or garage. If you’re running an affiliate marketing or consulting site, you may well not need any kind of infrastructure at all.
With traditional brick and mortar businesses, start-up costs tend to be high, and there are a lot of logistics to consider and account for.
If you don’t have a huge amount of money to sink into a business venture upfront, or if you want to just get started with an idea of yours, without having everything perfectly planned out in advance, a web-based business is almost certainly the way to go.
Web-based businesses often allow you to be a lot more flexible with your time
One of the major constraints placed on people by their jobs, is the hours which they are expected to be “at the office” for.
The more flexibility you have with your own time, the more freedom you have in a fundamental sense. With autonomy over your working hours, you can fit in all sorts of personal obligations, social engagements, projects, and interests, that might have been just about impossible to fit in if you are expected to be somewhere every day during specified times.
With a web-based business, you will tend to have no standard working hours. In fact, you may not even be operating within the same time zone as a person who is shopping via your site.
