Scaling up as an Online Solopreneur

Scaling up an Online Business as a Solopreneur

Can you build an online business as a solopreneur? Here we share a few remarks from one solo business owner who successfully scaled his business up.

The worldwide web is a vast universe of aspiring bloggers, content creators, and digital marketing experts. Moreover, every one of these individuals is seeking out every opportunity to scale up their online businesses. But this race to the top of every search engine meets with tough competition in every niche.

Let’s face it: It’s tough to attract your desired customer base through branding alone. In fact, it usually takes an entire team of experts to launch an online business and scale it up to success.

So now you’re probably asking yourself: How can someone build an online business as a solo entrepreneur?

I’d like to share with you a few things about being a solo business owner and how I’ve learned to scale my business up.

Who Is a Solopreneur?

Most entrepreneurs require a handful of skills plus a few colleagues or employees to get a startup off the ground. But solopreneurs take on the task of running a business alone. Most solopreneurs run their businesses online as a way of compensating for the absence of a workforce upon whom they can rely daily. In other words, they depend on software and automated processes instead.

But being a solopreneur doesn’t necessarily mean avoiding external help or doing everything on your own. While leadership and control are completely in your hands, many tasks are repetitive. You’ll find that you can outsource at least some of those tasks to a freelancer, or you can allow an automated system to maintain them for you. Moreover, you can do so in order to build a self-sustaining website that will generate both passive and active income for you.

What Is the Motivation Behind Solopreneurship?

Many solopreneurs are fleeing the endless cycle of a nine-to-five hustle with prolonged working hours filled with never-ending demands and expectations. The added stress of having to live from paycheck to paycheck in a world where inflation runs rampant makes starting an online business an even more attractive option.

But while many people have entrepreneurial skills, few are skilled in sharing their vision with others. These few are therefore obliged start their businesses alone.

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Fortunately, the internet offers every opportunity for aspiring solopreneurs to invest their time purposefully. Meanwhile, the barrier to enter the market as an internet entrepreneur is quite low. Anyone can launch a website or an e-commerce business. Starting a dropshipping store from the comforts of your own laptop is fairly simple.

Unfortunately, this where the bright side of being a solopreneur ends.

This is because starting a business as solopreneur is fast and easy. But becoming a successful business owner who can monetize a business is quite a different story.

How to Go About Scaling up an Online Entrepreneurship

The first challenge of solopreneurship lies in the vast amount of work that a startup owner must do alone. This could be daunting at first. But then you begin to realize that there are some online tools available to you. You start finding software and locating talented people online who can help you carry your burden.

For example, by selecting a good web hosting solution you can launch your website. Then you can install a handful of plugins to take over for you while you run errands. In time, you learn that it’s smart to pay for a variety of online tools that make your life easier.

In the absence of a product or service that you solely own, a solopreneur can resort to affiliate marketing and display advertising to acquire passive income. Meanwhile, you maintain focus on building relevant traffic and generating strong new leads.

Learning to Manage Your Well-Oiled Machine

But in terms of workload, solopreneurs can be quickly overrun with content along with multiple digital marketing tasks. The truth of the matter is that no one person can do all these things alone. I had to learn this lesson the hard way—until I began outsourcing the most time-consuming parts of my labor.

Platforms like Fiverr and Upwork offer up plenty of reputable individuals who are happy to accept any tasks thrown their way for the right price. The primary challenge here is to find the right person who can carry out your tasks with due diligence.

One of the most disappointing aspects of outsourcing content writing and link-building was the lack of trustworthiness I found on these sites. This meant that I had to consistently look for new individuals, explain the task and my vision, then specify exactly what I needed from the individuals I hired online.

It was a time-consuming task to find the right recruits to help ease the burdens of my business. But eventually, and thanks to a good bit of luck, I managed to find talented individuals with integrity who now help me on a regular basis. Mainly, I accomplished this by eschewing my long-standing habit of being entirely frugal, a habit which initially led me into hiring mediocre freelancers who had little to no experience.

Investing in the right people for the right tasks is perhaps the best long term payoff I’ve ever had.

Final Remarks

Starting an online business is not nearly as difficult as scaling one up from scratch. This is especially true if you’re going to take matters into your own hands. When you try to run your business with a mere handful of online tools while you face a dearth of skilled freelancers the challenges can be limited.

Solopreneurs will always have difficulty with scaling up their online ventures. Every niche is rife with competition. You’ll probably find, as I did, that successful solopreneurship is a balancing act of automating and outsourcing various tasks while you take care of the most significant aspects of your business yourself.

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About the Author

Robert Kormoczi is an online entrepreneur focusing on next-generation digital marketing and online consumerism. He covers stories on the metaverse, online business development, and web 3.0.

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