I love owning my home business, especially because it’s online. It’s a lot of fun to me, flexible and challenging. I rarely know exactly what’s going to happen when I do a new type of promotion, although I can take my best guess at it.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from running an online business, it’s that not every idea I have is going to work. Some websites will never take off, even if the keywords looked good. That said, there’s a lot more to running an online business well.

Choose the Risks You Take Carefully

Running any kind of business requires risk. That’s true even in online business, even if you do a lot for free. At the very least, you’re risking the time you spend. You may also be taking a financial risk, hopefully not more of one than you can afford.

By taking risks carefully, you pay attention to what’s involved. You don’t jump from idea to idea, never giving one time to pan out. Take a chance and really work on whatever you decide to do. It’s a much better risk to take on average than hopping around trying so many things that you never get anywhere.

Network

Not all online business owners are good about networking. I know I’m not always good about it, as I’m very much the quiet type in person too. A good network can help you succeed.

You network by visiting other people’s sites, leaving quality comments, going to industry events and meeting people in person, using social websites to meet others, and generally being a good resource to those around you.

You don’t network by spamming or demanding people with more experience help you. Many experiences people online are quite willing to help people within reason. Start demanding they do more for you than they’re willing to give, expecting them to drop everything to help you build your business, or do anything at all for you. People will help you if they choose, to the level that is reasonable for them.

Keep Learning

If you’ve been in online business long at all, you know that things change in this industry, sometimes too quickly. Search engines make little or big changes that impact your rankings, income sources disappear, websites you market successfully on change their rules. You never know what is going to happen, but sometimes you can catch the hint before things get too bad.

If you keep up on what’s happening or likely to happen, you can plan ahead and have alternatives in motion before things get bad for you.

I had to deal with this recently when California started requiring Amazon to collect sales tax if they had any affiliates in the state, resulting in Amazon dropping all California affiliates. My plans to work on more Amazon sites were delayed when the process clearly got serious, and I worked on alternative income sources that don’t rely so much on physical product affiliate links. It’s absolutely a pain, but that’s the way things go.

Forums are a great place to learn, although you will sometimes be better off buying information. You can learn a lot for free. Pay attention to forums in your niche as well as about online business in general.

Pay Attention to Your Competition

You will have competition if you’re online, that’s a given. Even obscure niches will have a few other sites competing for traffic. If you want to compete, pay attention to what they’re doing. Don’t copy them, just be aware and think about how you can work up ideas of your own.

Pay Attention to Your Metrics

You need to have goals that you can measure. You can measure visitors, income, customer engagement, just make sure you’re measuring something which will benefit your online business.

Income and visitors are pretty easy to measure. You can check these directly. Engagement may be more challenging. Are people really participating in discussions you have on your blog, for example. What percentage of visitors commenting do you consider to indicate a high level of engagement?

The exact metrics that will be most important to you may not be the ones that are most important to someone else. Just make sure that you’re measuring something that you can improve to make your business better.

At the same time, don’t obsess over your metrics to the point of ignoring the things you need to do to actually grow your business. Checking your stats every hour isn’t a good way to grow your business. Check them when you’re ready to use the information to take action.

There are many more things you can do to become a better online business owner. I believe the most important are to keep working and keep it honest.

One of the most important things with your home business is to get things moving. If you don’t take action, nothing will ever happen with it. But how do you decide you’re ready? When do you know enough to get things started? Will your early, mediocre efforts be good enough?

What Is Mediocre Anyhow?

The first thing to do is make sure you aren’t being too hard on yourself. Sure, your early efforts won’t be perfect, but are you at least a little knowledgeable about your niche? Is there something you know that people will be interested in hearing from you? You’re probably ready enough, even if you’re still learning yourself. Most of us are still learning, no matter how long we’ve worked our businesses.

How Professional Does Your Business Look?

I know many people who delay and delay launching their website because they don’t think it’s ready. There are always changes to be made and content to be added.

Problem is, that’s true even of older websites. I’m always adding content, of course, and major changes happen sometimes too. If I let that stop me, I’d never get anywhere.

All you really need is some basic information on your site and a professional look for it. Go over your site with a spell checker and read it out loud. This will help you to catch the mistakes spell check misses. I spelled “loud” as “lout” in this paragraph at first, but caught the mistake. Spell check would have missed it.

If you’re launching a website, make sure you check for broken links and such. You’ll have to do this over time too, as sites change their linking structure or go out of business. It’s also quite easy to have broken links on your own site if you don’t take proper care.

Take Pride In Your Work

Whatever sort of home business you run, take pride in the work you do with it. It doesn’t matter if your business is entirely online and no one ever sees your face. Take pride in your work.

You don’t have to be the best, especially right at the start, but you should be pretty good. Keep working and you will improve in time.

It’s back to school time. My two older kids have been back for a couple of days and I’m still getting used to the routine. In fact, I’m working on a new one, adding in more specific fitness time and fun time for my youngest. Of course, I also want more work time. These hours with fewer kids are something any work at home parent should take advantage of.

Start the Day Well

I’m lucky. My school is walking distance, as in takes less time to walk there than to load the kids, drive there, find a parking space and unload the kids. Like most schools, the first few days are the worst for drop off, with cars parking almost up to my house. Of course we walk.

This is a great time to make sure that my day gets off to a good start. I’m up, out and about. Perfect time to take a longer walk, so I go around the school block, which is about 1.3 miles, almost entirely on a hill. Downhill is pretty easy, but that uphill is on the steep side. Not San Francisco steep, but respectable enough.

I’m alternating this with walking my toddler to the playground. It’s a longer walk total, but with the playground time I get a good break between sections. She loves the time there, as she’s well aware that there’s a playground at the school, and she’s not allowed to use it. Giving her time to play outside while the day isn’t too hot helps tire her a little too.

This is a great way to get the day going if you want to be sure to include exercise in your daily routine. It’s nice to get it done before the day gets hot or you get too involved in work and suddenly realize you forgot to exercise again.

If the weather isn’t right, you can simply play with any kids you still have at home. Give them some attention before you get busy with work.

Plan Your Day

One of the things I do early each day is a bit of marketing work. It may be link building or other very basic marketing activities. Nothing too intense at this point, because I have a toddler who demands attention at random intervals, so I want these times to be work which I can leave and come back to easily.

As my littlest one naps while her siblings are at school, that’s perfect serious work time. Time to work on video marketing, article writing, anything which requires focus and/or quiet.

After the kids get back from school, it’s back to less focused work for me, if I do much at all. There’s homework to be dealt with most days, plus talking about their day, things like that. Things aren’t always terribly productive later in the day for me, up until the kids are in bed, at which point I may choose to work again on things that require more focus, assuming I have the energy.

Your own schedule may well vary from mine. You could get up before the rest of your family because you’re more productive in the early mornings, a thought which makes me (a night owl) shudder. If it works for you, make the most of it.

If all your kids are in school, you probably have a good number of solid work hours, and you should really take advantage of them. Get away from distractions as best you can and get some work done.

I suggest you have at least enough of a schedule to ensure that you do all the things you need to get done every day. If you have a home business, be sure you include some marketing activities every day, for example. If you have a work at home job, see how much you can get done with the kids out of the way.

A to do list or a written out schedule may help. Think about what you need to get done each day and write it down. If you like schedules, estimate the time you’ll need for each and what time you will work on it. Do something so that you’re accountable to yourself at the very least.

Don’t Overdo Activities

Some kids love to be signed up for all sorts of activities, and back to school is a big time to hear about activities to sign up for, clubs to join and so forth. If you have to take your child to a lot of activities, you may be eating into your own work hours or your child’s homework or relaxation time, both important.

Same goes for you, of course. Don’t give yourself more work than you can handle. Work hard, yes. Overwork, no. We all need time to rest and clear our heads.

I came across this article on Marketwatch the other day about telecommuting. Apparently, employees who are allowed to work at home are less likely to violate corporate ethics while on the job. Chalk that up to another reason for employers to consider allowing appropriate employees to telecommute.

By corporate ethics, they mean people who work at home are less likely to abuse expense reports, steal, misuse social media, things like that.

They don’t know exactly why there’s a difference, although the article does not that employees who are allowed to telecommute probably don’t want to lose that privilege, and that makes sense to me. Another possibility mentioned is that usually only the most responsible employees are allowed to work at home anyhow.

Of course, this doesn’t particularly effect you if you’re working at home for yourself. This is purely about people who telecommute from their current employer’s office.

If you’re wanting to telecommute, this is just one more thing to consider. I don’t believe it will impress your employer more than your ability to be more productive from home; after all, some telecommuters do break corporate ethics policies.

If you want to telecommute from your current job, start out by making sure it’s a good choice. How well can you do your job from home? How many days a week at home versus at the office? How can your boss be assured of your productivity?

Telecommuting is becoming more popular with employers, but you usually still have to convince them that you deserve the privilege. Think ahead so you’re ready to show them you can do it.

I often see posts talking about the things you can learn about running an online business from Yoda, Harry Potter,  and things like that. They’re cute, but it occurred to me that not all the business advice you get from these things will be good advice. Especially if you start getting ideas by watching your cat.

Don’t get me wrong. I love cats. It’s just that some things that work for cats really wouldn’t work so well in your business. Other things they do… brilliant!

Shed Everywhere

Most breeds of cats shed a fair amount, some more so than others. It’s not their most endearing characteristic, and somehow they always manage to shed light color fur on dark fabrics, and dark color fur on light fabrics. Just a bit of feline magic, I suppose.

I think of this as being similar to spam commenting on blogs. Think about the badly spun comments some people leave in the hopes of getting a backlink from your blog, or the “good post” comments the lazy leave behind. Usually it’s some vague sort of praise that sounds nice until you realize several different people are saying about the same thing to you.

Some even share the feline gift of leaving black fur on white fabric, that is, they leave entirely irrelevant comments everywhere they go.

Don’t shed your comments just anywhere. Blog commenting software may speed up the process of posting comments, but you’ll lose out as soon as your comments start getting marked spam, and even legitimate comments are harder to get published.

Hunt Your Prey

Cats are great hunters. Birds, mice, lizards, your feet as you get out of bed, nothing is safe from a cat on the prowl. They watch their prey carefully, choosing just the right time to strike, then play with it for a time until it either escapes or dies.

Just as there are some things you want your cat to hunt and others you wish they’d leave alone, this is not behavior you want to mimic without some thought.

You certainly want to know what your target market wants, and for that you have to know something about their behavior. Don’t do it to the degree that someone might call stalking, but do know what kinds of things people might want to buy from you and why. It helps to make sales.

You should also consider the cat’s focus on its prey. A cat doesn’t go for two mice at a time or a bird and a lizard at the same time. The cat keeps its focus on whatever it’s trying to catch.

Similarly, you should keep your focus on your target market. Don’t go for several all at once. You may be able to serve more than one market over time, but early on it’s a mistake that will slow you down.

Whatever you do, don’t be like the cat and play with your prey until it escapes or dies. You don’t want your customers to feel relieved to get away from your business, and you certainly don’t want to keep pushing products on them until they have no more money. Make sure that you’re offering products and/or services that fit the needs of your target market. Your relationship with your customers should be beneficial to you both, not harmful to the customer.

Get In the Way

Any cat owner knows that cats have an absolute gift for getting in the way. They’ll be under your feet as you try to walk. They’ll lie down on your laptop and get in the way when you’re reading. Small as they are, they’ll even hog the bed.

Often enough, you are your own greatest obstacle. If you make too many excuses for why you can’t work, it’s very hard to own a successful online business.

Chase Lasers

A small laser has to be one of the best cat toys ever. Cats will chase that little dot of light, determined to catch it, but never getting it. Turn it off when they get tired, then turn it on again and the cat will be after it.

Many people are like that with their online businesses too, always chasing the latest bright and shiny offer they see, but somehow never able to catch the success it promises.

Of course, the cat will never catch that laser, no matter how hard it tries, because light cannot be caught. You may or may not ever reach the level of success you want, but if you try as hard as you can, you improve your chances.

Take Lots of Catnaps

Cats sleep a lot. They may be very active when they’re awake, but there’s a reason why it’s called a catnap.

As an online business owner, this isn’t something you can usually get away with. Most people have to spend a lot of hours building their online business. Sure, you can walk away and leave it for a time, and a good business will keep earning for you, but you’ll usually do better if you keep working on it regularly.

This is especially true when you’re trying to build your online business. Don’t assume that the Four Hour Workweek will come true for you right from the start. It probably won’t. It’s far more likely that you’ll have to work a lot of hours for a long time before you can afford to ignore your business for a long period of time.

I hope this has made it clear why you should be careful about getting ideas on how to run your online business from you cat. Make sure you apply similar caution when taking business advice elsewhere.