Shoestring Startup For the Thrifty Webpreneur

The first thing Im going to offer you is a reality check. You absolutely can start something on the cheap that can be profitable and may grow into a major empirebut in the beginning its going to require a lot of hard work, learning, patience and tenacity to keep going. Itll also probably require you to keep your day job for quite a while as well, if you like eating

Every day I run across someone online who has lost their job for some reason, and right away theyve decided to try creating their own work on the web instead of seeking out new employment to work for someone else. Believe me, I understand that desire, but the notion that you can create and launch a startup today that will cover your living expenses immediately just isnt realistic.

It saddens me every time I talk with someone in this position, because I really do know how they feel and I see the passion they have to make it happen, but I also understand that unless theyre in a financial position to go for months, maybe even a year before seeing anything close to a livable income theyre doomed to fail miserably.

I dont care how great your idea is, it wont matter. In fact, it can even work against you early on. Look at YouTube as a prime example of this. How crazy-mad popular has that site been? Yet, as I understand the story it never made any profits at all until Google purchased it, the cost of running such a popular site was higher than the advertising revenue being earned from it. Not only was YouTube not profitable, it was losing money month after month.

Sure, the creators are living large today, but what if they hadnt been able to sustain themselves for so long? What if they had run out of money and supporters 6 months in? The site would be a faint blip in the web archives today rather than a top 5 Internet destination.

And many great ideas and startups have gone that route because their creators werent able to sustain themselves in the red long enough. Dont be the next one to take that path.

Im not saying that every new startup will lose money, or even that a startup cant make profits right away. It can and does happen. But, its rare for them to make any kind of serious profits early on.

Thats why the best advice I have for everyone starting a new online project with expectations of earning a living from it is simply to accept that it will be a supplemental income at first, it may even lose money, but youre in it for the long-term and your goal is to grow it into a solid, full-time business.

With that candid approach youre already on the right track in my opinion. Now you just need to start building and marketing your project.

Scott Bannon earned his first online revenue in 1995 and has made a full time living online since 2000. Get valuable advice and tips from Scott's free blog for webmasters, O`Bannon's Leap, where he chronicles the ongoing leap of becoming a webpreneur.