You Know You’re an Internet Entrepreneur When…

Whenever we start work on a new product at InfoMedia, the beginning is always a moment of inspiration.

In the case of a commercial product like SocratesTheme, it’s the awareness that people could really do with some help getting their sites launched in the right way. For a novelty product like iFart, it’s just a sense that people are going to really like this and have a lot of fun.

The idea is the easy part. It’s the next bit that’s a lot tougher.

And I’m not just talking about the production and the marketing plan. That can be fun too.

It’s the figures.

How much will production cost? What do we want to spend on marketing? Where should our price point be? How much can we reasonably expect to make back on this?

Some of those figures can be worked out exactly. Others, like predicted earnings, can only be an educated guesstimate. And many calculations, particularly production costs and timeframes, will be wrong, and we’ll only find out when we’re too committed to go back.

They’re business decisions and they define whether or not a good idea is a workable idea, and whether it ends up being produced.

They aren’t the kinds of decisions I’ve always made. When I started out online (all those years ago) I was freer to take risks because the stakes were lower. If I tried something and failed, I tried something else. Success was my goal but if it didn’t come yet, I lost nothing because I had nothing to lose.

That’s always the case for people starting to build online businesses.

When it’s done right though, that little business becomes the household’s biggest income-generator. The revenues stop paying for the luxuries and start buying the essentials. At that point, choosing subjects to blog about or affiliate products to offer stop looking like impulse choices and start feeling like business decisions.

When you feel that responsibility, that’s when you know that you’ve already built a successful Internet business.