web designer

Online Business Ideas You Can Start on a Budget

Posted on by Mario

If I were to ask the majority of people what they wanted to do to earn money, I’m almost one hundred percent sure they would want to build their own empire as they sit back and let their employees do the jobs instead. Even I would want that. However, not everyone can have the courage to take risks when it comes to building a business. Yes, building a offline or online business might cost you a lot and sometimes if things don’t run smoothly, it will even cost you more. Oftentimes, the most common problem is the budget. Many people don’t want to start a business because money becomes the obstacle to overcoming fear of business failures. As a digital marketer, I have always found some clients reluctant to invest some of their money for Melbourne SEO services, because it is expensive and might take long to see results. Of course there will be risks and consequences, right? This is the main reason why people are reluctant to start their own business and hold back even though they desire that plan and hate their regular job. Are you looking to start your own business but feeling like you are on a tight budget? Well, in this article, I’m going to give you some online business ideas you can start on a budget. Keep reading this article to find out!

Drop shipping

This type of business requires little or no money at all. All you need to do is; have a deal with a supplier or a drop shipper and you can start selling. The good news is; you don’t have to handle any delivery to your customers and you don’t have to store your products. Even better, you don’t have to buy the supplies first before selling. You only have to focus on marketing and advertising to gain customers and make the sales. Once the sale is made and you have received payments from your customers, you only have to purchase the products your customers have ordered from your supplier or your drop shipper for a lower price. After that, the supplier or the drop shipper will handle the rest including the packing and the delivery. This type of online business actually will not cost money, but if you want to have a good start, you can start with investing in digital marketing and advertising – that will be the only cost you need to consider in gaining more customers.

Blogging

Blogging helps you gain more opportunities to connect with your existing and potential customers in a different, more conversational way. Through high quality content blogging, you can build trust with your target audience and even help them find answers in your blog articles. When you are getting used to writing blog, improving your writing skills and having your own audience, you will then get more opportunities for your online business, such as connecting with new people, gaining recognition, as well as building your online identity. This, in the future, will lead you to another opportunity to be an influencer. Once you become an influencer, many companies might start recognising you and hiring you to include their products in your blog, which means, you get money from this. I know this seems delusional and this might also take time, but if you focus on relevant and unique content, you can gain something from this.

Online video

Okay, maybe this is almost the same as blogging, but the only difference is that you don’t write things this time, but you are talking in a video. Yes, setting up a YouTube channel can be your own business. Find something specific that you like and you know of; make it more specific for your channel theme. All you need to prepare is a camera or even your mobile phone camera. Make sure you know your theme and what you want to share on YouTube. If you have zero idea about what kind of video content you should make, you can consider these options:

  • Beauty care or cosmetics (reviews, tutorials or swatches)
  • Family, friendship and relationship (advice or sharing)
  • Video games (walkthroughs, gameplays, or reviews)
  • Electronic and gadgets (reviews or overviews)
  • Do It Yourself (tutorials)
  • Travelling (advice, tips, tour or knowledge)
  • Education (advice, tips, knowledge or tutorials)
  • And many more

That’s all the simplest ways to start earning money from a business you can start today with less budget. Of course, even if you can start this business without money, you still need plans and strategies. Any type of business needs plans and strategies with a focus on targets. Of course, it also needs your consistent focus on achieving goals.

Can you start an online business even with a tight budget?

You can start an online business with low budget as long as you plan it carefully.

How do you start an online business with a budget?

Start an online business with a good research, then make consistent plans that include careful calculation for marketing and your budget.

What makes a small online business stand out even with small budget?

Marketing strategy is always the answer for success. Focus on content quality and make everything easy for your customers.

Design Archetypes: Why Leaning into Familiarity is a Virtue in Web Development

Posted on by Mario

web development tips

In life, we’re frequently told and advised to just be ourselves, to not constantly cater to what society expect of you and just focus on what brings you joy. For the most part, this is not actually a bad advice but let me remind you that this kind of thinking is what led Ted Bundy into becoming Ted Bundy and sometimes, fitting in is your best course of action. The unknown might be exciting at times but they can be equally disheartening and this is why in the world of web development, it’s not exactly a bad idea to lean in to the concept of familiarity every now and then.

As an analogy, look into some of the biggest films in 2019 and you’ll start to see a pattern. We have the updated, live-action version of Disney classics such as The Lion King and Aladdin, the final entry in Star Wars third trilogy, and a Terminator sequel that brings back some of of the more notable characters from the earlier films. As much as we clamor for the new and exciting, we are naturally drawn to what’s familiar and this is something you can always take advantage of in web development.

Staying in our comfort zone

The common adage is that familiarity breeds contempt, that the longer you comes into contact with something, the less respect of affinity you’re going to have for that particular thing. Honestly, I would very much like to call hogwash on that particular adage. I’ve been regularly playing Pokémon games since the very first one came out in 1998 and even after two decades, I’ve always eagerly anticipated the latest video games. Because of how the games have largely stuck the same formula, I know what I’m going to get with Pokémon but instead of diminishing my interest, it has instead raised my anticipation because I know I’m going to have a good time.

The phrase staying in the comfort zone tends to carry a negative stigma because it implies a lack of a sense of adventure and an inherent conservative attitude but there’s virtue in sticking to your lane. Being open to new ideas but if you’re confident in what works, why fix what isn’t broken? Trying to engage in something novel and a desire to innovate can sometimes lead to unreasonable expectations and that can be particularly damaging as the potential for disappointment would be high.

Setting you up for failure

When you promise something new and exciting to the general public, you’re basically setting yourself into having to fulfill two different goals; that the public is willing to adapt to whatever you bring to the table and what you’re bringing is an improvement to what’s currently out there. The first one can be especially hard and typically, it’s the kind of thing that only companies that have accumulated a lot of goodwill can safely navigate. There are plenty of real world examples of the difficulty in being a trailblazer.

In a conversation of when online video gaming first appeared on consoles, Microsoft’s Xbox Live that launched in 2002 is frequently cited as the starting point when in fact; it was Sega’s Dreamcast that first had the audacity to start the trend in the late 90s. Despite the critical acclaim received by games like Phantasy Star Online, which has been frequently cited as a landmark title in the history of video game, the console market as a whole didn’t warm up to online games until Microsoft took the baton.

Forcing the public to adapt to your ways isn’t always a good idea

Whenever I boot up a new Pokémon game for the first time, I always know what I’m going to get. It always comes down to the choice between three starter Pokémons, a limit of four moves per Pokémons and a limit of six Pokémons at any given moment. There are 8 gym leaders across the region I have to beat before I could enter the Pokémon League in which I have to battle the Elite Four and the region’s champion and hundreds of Pokémons to catch and train. Thanks to my familiarity with the system, there’s only a small learning curve and this is why familiarity can be such as powerful tool in the world of web development.

In websites, usability has always been an important factor. With so much competition and so little in terms of attention span, you can’t risk having a website that has a steep learning curve as that could easily push away potential customers as they look for an easier website to navigate. Best practices and generally accepted standards exist for a reason and it’s easy to overlook what is familiar in search of the exceptional as designers focus on what they think look best instead of putting the focus on users.

Falling back on design archetypes isn’t a sin

For the more creative designers, relying on archetypes tends to be strictly verboten but trust me when I say that those archetypes exist for a reason; they tend to work. Radical reinvention is a risky bet and 90% of the time, it’s better to use archetypes as a starting point and focus in improving them one step at a time. I’m not saying that thinking outside the box isn’t useful but that’s the kind of advice that could only work when you have the necessary resource to back it up, something that might be too out of reach for small businesses.

Functional Simplicity: The Various Ways Minimalism Can Enhance Customer Experience

Posted on by Mario

web design tips

Simplify, then add lightness. This one core philosophy is the foundation of Colin Chapman’s approach in building cars in the 50s all the way until his death in the early 80s. Even now, you can still see this philosophy mirrored in Lotus Cars, the British automotive company that Chapman founded that you might’ve recognized from classic James Bond films. Even before minimalism become fashionable, Chapman has always adhered to this philosophy, even when it sometimes jeopardized the safety of drivers driving his cars.

For Chapman, minimalism isn’t just an aesthetic choice. Another one of his famous quotes exemplify his line of thinking; “Adding power makes you faster on the straights; subtracting weight makes you faster everywhere”. As is the case with the automotive world, minimalism also carries actual functions aside from just being nice to look at when it comes to the world of Melbourne web designer. The word basic tends to have pejorative undertones in our current discourse but simplicity does have its values when it comes to designing a user interface.

Minimalism as a design language

There is no universal agreement on what would constitute minimalist design but the oft-cited consensus is that it represents a school of thought where every element in an interface is there for a specific purpose. In minimalism, there’s a deliberate reason behind the existence and placement of every element in a single web page and in the eyes of the users, everything works exactly the way they think it would. Ideally, there are no superfluous elements in minimalism and the experience is pared down to only focus on what’s essential.

This is not to say that there can be no intricate, complex or any kind of visual touch in a minimalist design; it’s more about how these elements shouldn’t be made more intricate, complex or distracting than they already are. Functionally and aesthetically, the goal in minimalism is to prioritize efficiency, how a designer can do and convey more with less. This less is more approach doesn’t just infuse your website with a tidy look, it would also enhance your customer experience in several tangible and noticeable ways.

Minimalism helps add clarity to your website and/or contents

It doesn’t matter if your website serves an educational or a marketing purpose; you would still want your message to be success fully delivered to your audience and one easy way of achieving that is by adopting minimalism as a design language. Minimalism means having less things to focus on for the users, enabling them to navigate their way around your website and digesting your contents easier. The challenge here lies in your ability to distill your message to its essentials while still being unambiguous.

Far too often, designers commit the sin of pulling too hard and too much to the other direction. They not only succeed on stripping down their elements of any superfluous elements, they also succeed in making them almost unrecognizable. Having to manage this delicate balance can be hard as there’s a very fine line between a minimalist design and a muddled, ambiguous design. If you’re just starting out, you might not be able to achieve this balance in your first try but dig your heels in and I can assure you that the result would be more than worth the trouble.

Minimalism helps with the performance of your website

Just at look at how much success Colin Chapman has had in Formula 1, the Holy Grail when it comes to motorsport. Under his leadership, Team Lotus won a total of seven Constructor’s Championship titles. That’s enough to place Lotus in fourth place in the all-time list, which is quite impressive given it’s been two decades since the last time Lotus entered a Formula 1 race. Obviously, motorsport and web design is far from an apple-to-apple comparison but lightness does carry several inherent performance advantages in the world of web design.

On the users’ part, adopting minimalism as a design language helps make your website load faster and perform better simply because there are fewer elements that have to be loaded. Having less complicated elements means that your website wouldn’t be such a resource hog either, making it easy for users that are using modest hardware in both desktop and mobile. On the designers’ part, minimalism would make maintenance and upkeep easier as again; there would simple be fewer elements you have to take care of.

Minimalism helps make organization and housekeeping easier

For business that runs an online service and have to resort to using highly sophisticated and complex web applications that have to either process or host a lot of data, adopting minimalism as a design language can help make all of that sophistication and complexity more digestible. Even if your target audience skews younger, it’s wrong to assume that all millenials and Generation Zs are all equally tech-savvy; some would still be just as clueless as your grandparents when faced with a highly technical application.

As has been mentioned before, minimalism helps add clarity to your user interface. White space, another essential element in minimalism, could also help make the complex nature of web application more manageable by injecting a visual breathing space on your interface. Given the sheer popularity of web applications, ranging from office productivity apps, music streaming apps and e-commerce platforms, web designers have to come up with a way so that they can be easily used by everyone and minimalist design is one way of achieving this.