It’s not uncommon to hear stories of large-scale online business failures. From major companies – anyone remember Webvan? – to small design firms and marketing agencies, failure is a part of doing business. With the low costs of starting and operating a business online, many businesses that would fail under other circumstances end up getting started. Sometimes they grow into leading enterprises, but more often than not, they don’t.

We’ve identified the six most common mistakes that newbie designers, entrepreneurs, and online businesspeople make when they start their own online businesses. If you’re just starting out online yourself, use this article as a template of what not to do in your business. The best business lessons are often learned from other people’s failures, and these six should give you a good foundation for creating a long-term online business.
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Online entrepreneurs have an incredibly wide range of marketing options available to them. While brick-and-mortar businesses are typically limited to directory marketing and direct marketing forms, online businesses have a highly valuable extra advantage: the ability to drive customers to them. Through pay-per-click advertising, cost-per-thousand advertising, and long-term SEO (search engine optimization) marketing, you can transform your online service business from a small operation into a dedicated multi-employee company.

After all, online business is all about scale. With effective scaling comes higher returns, more manageable work, and significantly greater profits. These PPC, CPM, and SEO marketing tips won’t just help you grow your service business, but help you expand and scale it strategically so that along with your total revenue, your per-hour profits significantly increase.

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Online freelancers and entrepreneurs have a valuable business asset that few offline service businesses can apply: the ability to scale and size their workload, and in turn their income, effectively. With the right amount of employees and professional assistance, the only barrier to an increased online service income is the amount of clients and inbound cash flow that you can attract to your business.

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There’s been a recent revolution in online design – a move towards simplicity and minimalism. While minimalist design has been around for decades – from inspiring product design to ultra-simple building architecture – the most recent wave of simple blog designs and action-driven website styles has cemented minimalist design as one of the most important and valuable design styles out there.

Why? Because it works. Thousands of top bloggers have taken up ultra-simple blog designs for that very reason. Rather than distracting their readers and inflating their business requirements with a complex page design, more and more companies, bloggers, and web presences are opting for the simple option.

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The hardest part of starting any service business, particularly an online service business, is the first few months. They’re the months when the most adjustment takes place, the most active marketing occurs, and the most important decisions get made.

One of those important decisions is how you’re going to market yourself. As a designer, or any type of service-based freelancer, it’s very difficult to effectively market your business without a portfolio, testimonials, or some sort of track record. Internet entrepreneurs are understandably hesitant to go with a provider that’s not well established, making it difficult for new service providers to find an audience early on.

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