If you’re struggling to get your products into more people’s hands due to the rising cost of advertising, you’re not alone. Here’s the good news. By tapping into the power of affiliate marketing to start an affiliate program for your ecommerce store, you can drive high-quality traffic and sales very affordably.

What is an Affiliate Program?

An affiliate program is a customer acquisition tool merchants (like you) can create to generate more sales with the help of publishers (like bloggers and websites). When a new publisher is approved into your affiliate program, they become your affiliate and get unique tracking links that they will use whenever they share your products online. Every time someone clicks through to your website with their link and makes a purchase, you generate a sale and they earn a commission of that sale.

As the program creator, you get to decide how much to pay affiliates and for what—such as a percentage per sale or a flat rate per lead. You also outline terms and conditions so they know what promotional methods they are allowed to use when marketing your brand to their audience.

Why Start an Affiliate Program?

Literally, anyone selling anything online can start an affiliate program, whether that’s physical products, digital goods or even services. The only requirement is that your stuff must be sold online through your website or on a platform that has affiliate tracking capabilities.

Here are some of the great reasons to consider an affiliate program for your product business:

• Your Sales Will Increase: Quality affiliates send high-caliber traffic to your website, so your product sales will increase as a result.
• You Only Pay for Performance: Unlike advertising, which can be risky, affiliates only get paid after they’ve generated sales for you first.
• Existing Customers Already Want One: Customers already sharing your brand will be thrilled to hear they’ll now get rewarded for it, which will incentivize them to promote you even more!
• It Boosts Your Brand Awareness: With affiliates talking about you all over the internet, your brand awareness will increase, leading to non-affiliate sales as well.

Affiliate Program Launch Myths

There are several misconceptions floating around when it comes to starting an affiliate program. Here’s a look at the most common ones I hear.

MYTH #1: IT’S TOO DIFFICULT TO DIY THE TECH INVOLVED WITH AN AFFILIATE PROGRAM

Even for the most tech-averse, the affiliate program setup process is fairly simple.

• Most ecommerce sites easily integrate with affiliate platforms, and some even have affiliate tracking capabilities baked right in so you can go live with the click of a button.
• For most merchants, setting up affiliate program tracking is relatively simple. You just add a piece of code (aka a tracking pixel) to your sales confirmation page and you’re good to go. Most affiliate platforms also offer step-by-step instructions or tech support to walk you through the implementation process.

One exception is software products and apps, especially if you want to pay on the sale instead of a lead. However, if you’re part of this field, chances are you’ve got an awesome developer on staff or contract who can tackle implementation for you.

MYTH #2: AN AFFILIATE PROGRAM SOUNDS LIKE A RISKY OR EXPENSIVE BUSINESS INVESTMENT

In my experience, starting an affiliate program is the opposite of risky or expensive.

• It’s low-risk because you only pay affiliates after you get paid first (as long as you’re paying on sales) whereas with advertising and sponsorships you’re paying upfront with no guarantee of results.
• It’s also one of the most affordable ways to acquire new customers compared to other high-cost marketing initiatives like pay per click advertising, podcast sponsorships, blogger giveaways, Facebook ads, and even content marketing.
• If your platform has affiliate tracking built-in, you can launch an affiliate program for $0 or as low as $10 per month if it doesn’t. The affiliate networks with a $2,000+ price tag aren’t your only option!

Keep in mind, you should consult with a lawyer and/or educate yourself on Affiliate Nexus laws before launching to understand which affiliate States you can and cannot allow into your program.

MYTH #3: IT’LL TAKE WAY TOO MUCH TIME TO SET UP, LAUNCH AND MANAGE MY AFFILIATE PROGRAM

You don’t have to invest tons of time to see results with an affiliate program…

• I once launched a scrappy affiliate program with E-Junkie that yielded thousands in sales within a week. I spent an hour on it, including the tech set up, inviting a few affiliates and paying out commissions at the end.
• The biggest affiliate program I’ve ever worked on had 10,000+ affiliates and multiple employees each working 40 hours per week to manage it. However, it started with 1 guy doing it part-time with a handful of affiliates. More resources were added only after it became profitable.

The bottom line is you get to choose your own adventure when creating an affiliate program. Just be sure to complete an affiliate program competitive analysis before launching to develop a winning program structure affiliates will love.

A Few Platforms You Can Start Your Affiliate Program With

You have a lot of choices when it comes to affiliate tracking platforms. Today I’ll share 3 options I’ve found the easiest to get started with.

LAUNCH AN AFFILIATE PROGRAM WITH REFERSION

Refersion is designed to help you quickly create and launch your own promotion network. They handle all the heavy lifting, allowing you to focus on growing your business through partnerships with bloggers, influencers, ambassadors, and promoters.

Great For: Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce and WooCommerce users

Merchants Using Refersion: Natural Stacks and Best Self

Pricing Details: $29 per month (up to 30 affiliate orders) or $89 per month (up to 130 affiliate orders). For unlimited orders, you’ll need to contact Refersion for pricing.

Pros

• Refersion offers a free, 14-day trial so you can test it out before you commit to a monthly package.
• Thanks to their apps, Refersion can be integrated with a few clicks if your store is on Shopify or BigCommerce.
• The majority of customer reviews speak highly of the Refersion support team for offering exceptional customer support.

Cons

• I’m not a fan of their pricing tiers being based on the number of affiliate orders you get because when you go over your limit, you and your affiliates will not be able to see any new orders until you upgrade your account. Affiliates will not appreciate this, especially if they’re closely monitoring real-time information to optimize their active campaigns.
• Refersion doesn’t automatically pay your affiliates their commissions, so you’ll have to set aside time on your calendar every month to do this manually.
• Some users find their UI outdated and confusing to navigate.

Getting Started: Refersion offers a free 14-day trial on both their Starter and Professional packages. Once signed up, you can use their Start Guide to get your affiliate program set up in a jiffy. Alternatively, you can use their Shopify App or BigCommerce App to get started.

LAUNCH AN AFFILIATE PROGRAM WITH AFFILIATEWP

AffiliateWP allows you to easily create a full-featured affiliate program on WordPress. It’s known for being an easy-to-use, reliable WordPress plugin that gives you the affiliate marketing tools you need to grow your business and make more money.

Who Can Use It: WordPress.org users

Pricing Details: $99 to $249 per year, depending on how many WordPress sites you want to run the plugin on and if you want their pro add-ons. You can also pay a one-time price of $499 for unlimited everything, lifetime access and all current and future add-ons.

Pros

• You can develop an affiliate program with all the bells and whistles (if you want!) thanks to their free and pro add-ons. These include things like coupon codes, tiered affiliate commissions, and affiliate landing pages.
• Their customer support team is considered world-class and as someone who’s emailed them a ton, I can vouch for this. I recently got in touch with their support team about a bug and they issued a plugin update to fix it within a couple of days!
• Unlike large affiliate networks and smaller tracking platforms, AffiliateWP does not charge you for each individual affiliate transaction. You pay the one-time or yearly-fee and that’s it.
• AffiliateWP integrates with all of your favorite WordPress plugins, including Restrict Content Pro, WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, Gravity Forms, and Zippy Courses.

Cons

• Every time an affiliate order comes in, you need to manually approve them before affiliates can see them on their dashboard. This is good for fraud, but time-intensive if you’re running a high volume program or launch.
• I’ve run into issues with tracking bugs where legitimate affiliate sales didn’t have reference IDs so they appeared invalid. On a similar note, as with all WordPress plugins, make sure you promptly update it as new releases come out. When you do this, you’ll also want to test tracking and key features to make sure everything is working correctly.
• If you opt for the personal or plus pricing package, you don’t get the pro add-ons.
• Non-US users aren’t able to pay their affiliates using Paypal’s mass payment feature, which speeds up the affiliate payout process.

Getting Started: Go to AffiliateWP to sign up, then upload the plugin to your WordPress site. From there, use their in-depth Getting Started documentation to get your program set up. Should you run into any hiccups, their FAQ and Support sections are available to assist you.

LAUNCH AN AFFILIATE PROGRAM WITH SHAREASALE

ShareASale is an affiliate marketing network that’s been around since 2000, serving both merchants and affiliates. ShareASale’s technology receives accolades for speed, efficiency, and accuracy—and their reputation as a fair and honest business is well known within the affiliate industry.

Great For: Users on virtually any ecommerce platform, including software applications.

Merchants Using ShareASale: ModCloth, Reebok, and FreshBooks.

Pricing Details: $550 one-time setup fee plus $100 minimum deposit for affiliate commissions.

I bet you’re wondering why a merchant would pay hundreds to launch their affiliate program when solutions like AffiliateWP and Refersion are much more affordable. There are some very compelling reasons, which I’ll outline below.

Pros

• Unlike AffiliateWP and Refersion, ShareASale serves both merchants and affiliates. That means there’s a built-in audience of affiliates across every niche in their network looking for new programs on a regular basis. All of the programs I’ve launched or managed on the network get organic applications almost daily from affiliates who find the program on their own.
• ShareASale has an incredible support team that offers both email and phone assistance.
• You can get more eyeballs on your program by advertising to affiliates in several prominent places inside ShareASale.
• ShareASale collects all tax forms from your affiliates and pays them out automatically every month.
• While affiliate fraud is a problem across every network and platform, in my experience ShareASale is the safest option out there. Whenever an issue comes up, they proactively contact the merchant to let them know what happened and how it’s being resolved.

Cons

• If you are on a budget, the startup fee can be a buzz kill. ShareASale also takes 20% fees on every affiliate transaction. For example, if your affiliate earns $4 per sale, ShareASale takes another 40 cents. However, compared to other pro networks like CJ and Linkshare, it’s the most affordable of the pro networks both in startup and transaction-based fees.

Getting Started: Start by signing up as a merchant here. You aren’t obligated to pay the setup fee until you complete tracking implementation and testing so go ahead and get started. Upon logging in, you’ll see ShareASale’s helpful merchant setup wizard, which walks you through an 8-step launch process.

3 Success Tips for Your Affiliate Program

Now that you know what an affiliate program is and how to create one, I’d like to share 3 tips to ensure your program gets off to a great start.

DON’T EXPECT RESULTS OVERNIGHT

When I chat with startups interested in launching a program, I tell them it’ll take months to see consistent results and more than a year to see significant sales. That’s because once your affiliate program is live, you’ll need to recruit and activate new affiliates before the sales pour in and there’s no way to rush that process.

While I can understand your desire to see the time and money you initially invest pay off quickly, affiliate marketing just doesn’t work like that. Unlike with paid advertising where you can turn on a switch and watch results trickle in, affiliate marketing is about building and nurturing relationships. Speaking of which…

TREAT YOUR AFFILIATES LIKE PARTNERS

In addition to being an affiliate manager, I’m also a content affiliate that’s been fortunate enough to work with wonderful affiliate managers who truly care about their affiliates.

I’ve also dealt with my fair share of affiliate managers who didn’t understand how to treat affiliates. For example, once I received a newsletter from a merchant that threatened to remove affiliates from their program if they didn’t send a sale by the end of the month. Another time, a merchant refused to let affiliates promote a cool resource they offered, even though other types of partners were allowed to share it.

Here’s the thing: affiliates are independent people or organizations who work at their own pace and don’t owe you anything. You’re there to answer questions, offer tips and troubleshoot problems. Basically, it’s your job to help them succeed, not enforce rules or deny resources that will discourage and demotivate them. Build strong relationships with your affiliates and affiliate sales will follow.

EDUCATE YOURSELF ABOUT THE INDUSTRY

I’ve been involved with the affiliate marketing industry for nearly a decade and still learn something new every single day. To grow your affiliate program, try and set aside time each week to learn more about the industry, from both the affiliate manager’s and affiliate’s perspective. Here are a few resources to help you:

• Affiliate Activator: This is my monthly newsletter chock full of affiliate program management tips and links to must-read industry articles for product marketers, ecommerce entrepreneurs and affiliate managers looking to grow their affiliate program.
• SugarRae: Rae Hoffman is my AM hero and her affiliate marketing blog offers tons of in-depth articles on the subject.
• Geno Prussakov: Geno literally wrote the book on Affiliate Program Management and shares useful tips for merchants on his site regularly.
• ShareASale: My favorite pro network publishes an impressive number of affiliate marketing articles every month for both affiliates and merchants.

Conclusion

Starting an affiliate program is an affordable and low-risk way to grow your product sales. Just remember you’ll need to invest time in the early days to develop a winning program structure, set up your affiliate platform and source affiliates for your program. Once the program is generating 5-10%+ of your overall product sales, you can hire help or retain an affiliate agency to manage the day-to-day of the program for you.

This content originally found on abetterlemonadestand.com

Between changing diapers, scrubbing sticky fingers, wiping runny noses, putting away toys (because stepping on Legos hurts), dealing with temper tantrums and toting Junior from school to practice to his pal’s house, being a mom is exhausting.

And expensive.

Sure, kids are real joys for the most part — many parents maintain they wouldn’t have it any other way. But you might find yourself all too often strapped for time, money and sanity.

We’ve got you covered on one of those fronts: money.

How to Make Money as a Stay-at-Home Mom

Just when it feels like the last straw might break, here’s how to make money as a stay-at-home mom, without getting a full-time job…

1. Wait. Don’t Delete All Your Emails

Product prices constantly fluctuate online — especially on Amazon.

Because we all seem to have the worst timing ever, it’s bound to happen: You buy an item, and the price drops soon thereafter.

But as a mom, when you need something, you need it, and you certainly don’t have the time to monitor Amazon’s erratic pricing behavior.

Lotus, the mom behind Mommy to Max blog, put it best:

“But, who has the time to track whether the price has fallen after you’ve made a purchase? Or whether you’ve found the lowest price for a product that you’ve just purchased? I sure as heck don’t. (Not to mention the time and energy involved in requesting said options.)”

Looking for the best side hustle to build your income? Get great ideas delivered straight to your inbox in The Penny Hoarder Daily!
Email

PRIVACY POLICY

It turns out deleting your emails could be costing you money. Intrigued?

One of our secret weapons is called Paribus — a tool that gets you money back for your online purchases. It’s free to sign up, and once you do, it will scan your email for any receipts. If it discovers you’ve purchased something from one of its monitored retailers, it will track the item’s price and help you get a refund when there’s a price drop.

Plus, if your guaranteed shipment shows up late, Paribus will help you get compensated.

Paribus compensates us when you sign up using the links we provide.

2. Take a Picture of Your Grocery Receipt

You’re not taking a picture to immortalize it — that would be torturous since grocery bills always seem to end up expensive — but to earn money back.

The Ibotta app houses tons of cash-back offers from more than 340 stores, including Walmart, Target, Publix, Aldi and Trader Joe’s.

Ginny from The Simple Moms blog wrote about the app. She’d earned $117 in rebates — without cutting coupons:

“I recently stopped my newspaper subscription because I just plain don’t have time to do the coupon clipping. 3 kids under 6 years old makes my brain mush and life busy. The Ibotta app is my coupon alternative and has simplified my life.”

It’s easy, too. Just download the app, find cash-back offers on your favorite products, go shopping, then scan the items’ barcodes and submit a photo of your receipt after.

Some recent rebate examples include $5 back on select Huggies products from Sam’s Club, $2.50 back on Similac infant formula from Walmart and $2.50 back on a case of Bud Light from Target (in case you’re that stressed…).

Sign up now to bank a $10 welcome bonus after you’ve snagged your first rebate.

3. Strike Up a Work-From-Home Business

Working from home is a great way for moms to earn extra money, especially when you work for yourself.

It might sound impossible, but plenty of online programs will walk you through the steps of starting your own at-home business — one that’ll allow you to set your own hours.

Bookkeeper Business Launch is one such course, and Amy McLaughry shared her experience with the program with Anywhere & Anytime, a blog for stay-at-home moms. She said:

“I get to choose the hours I want to work, where I want to work, and how much I want to work.  I can work while the kids are in school, and then be done for the day when they get home, I am always home for dinner and can make a good dinner for my family, and I can always put my kids to bed.”

If you’re interested in more online courses that’ll help you start your work-from-home business, we’ve got you covered.

4. Let This App Work in The Background

This is passive income at its finest: downloading an app and getting paid to do so.

Granted, the app tracks your behavior in some sort of way (like ShopTracker), but the data won’t get spilled to your friends — just research.

Here’s one app you can download now: Nielsen Panel. If you have a PC or laptop, this Nielsen panel will pay you $50 a year to keep this software on your computer and browse the web like you normally do.

Kelly Land, over at Money Making Mommy, downloaded the Nielsen Panel to her iPhone, and she’s thinking about downloading it to other devices, too. She writes in her blog:

“…you can earn up to $50 a year PER DEVICE. So — I’m thinking because I use my phone, computer and laptop regularly — that could mean $150 for me per year by just doing what I do every day without any changes at all.”

If you want to learn more about passive income, we’ve got a beginner’s guide waiting for you.

5. Drive With Lyft Between Carpool Shifts

If you’re a stay-at-home mom and want to make some extra money on your own time, ride-sharing might be a good fit. 

Try driving with Lyft.

Demand for ride-sharing has been growing like crazy, and it shows no signs of slowing down. To be eligible, you’ll need to be at least 21 years old with a year of driving experience, pass a background check and own a car made in 2007 or later.

We talked to Paul Pruce, who’s been driving full-time with Lyft for over a year. He earns $750 a week as a driver.

Best of all, he does it on his own time. You can drive days, nights or weekends — it’s up to you!

6. Sell Off Those Old Movies (or Annoying Video Games)

You can get paid to sell your kids’ old CDs, DVDs, video games, cell phones and anything techy.

This might be especially useful for those of you with older kids who have flown the nest — but left everything behind.

We suggest downloading the Decluttr app. Crystal Paine, from Money Saving Mom, says it’s super easy:

“Decluttr is quick and easy to use, and I love that they offer instant pricing on your items,” she says. “Unlike other sites, there aren’t any listing, auction, or PayPal fees.”

7. Write What You Know (Mom Stuff)

Writing is a valuable skill nowadays, so if you know the tricks of the trade, you could make some extra money freelancing, which you can do while the kids nap.

Tap into your interests. You could get paid to write about anything — travel, cooking, technology, personal finance. You can also take notes from these 11 women freelancers, whom Elna highlighted on her blog, Twins Mommy. Each of them have found different ways to make money at home as a freelancer, if you want to get really creative.

Of course, there are tons of parenting publications out there, too, which are looking for first-hand experts (you). For that, we put together a list of six parenting blogs and magazines that pay up to $700.

Hey, you can always pitch a story to The Penny Hoarder, too!

8. Put Away Some Money in Investments

Do you want to start investing but think it’s not for you? Or that it’ll take forever to build a portfolio? (Whatever that is, anyways…)

Acorns is an easy way to get started. Plus, you’ll earn a $10 sign-up bonus.

Digital Mom Blog wrote about the app and how easy it was to save.

Here’s what she said:

“In the last few months, I’ve saved over $500. How Acorns works – it rounds up your purchases and deposits the money into a separate account, which then is invested. This is effortless micro-investing. This isn’t meant to be your only way to save, but it offers a great solution for saving for Christmas, vacation or what have you.”

And hey, signing up is easy.

9. Pocket a Free $10 Gift Card from Rakuten

We’ve established online shopping is a godsend for busy moms, so here’s another way you can earn money back from your purchases: Rakuten. The online platform offers a wealth of coupons and promo codes.

Gina at Money Wise Moms has used the platform since 2008. Here’s what she had to say about it:

“I use it for all my favorite stores–Children’s Place for my daughter’s ‘slim’ pants, Shoebuy for my hard-to-fit wide feet, and more–and each time I earn cash back on the purchases I would make anyway. We just had to replace a dead computer tower, and I got $21 back just for shopping through Ebates.”

If you sign up now and grab your first rebate, you’ll earn a $10 gift card. (You’ll have to wait 30 days to receive it, but hey, it’s free money.)

10. Do a Little Extra Grocery Shopping

Grocery shopping is probably the bane of your existence, but you likely know your way around those aisles.

If you want to capitalize on that efficiency, consider delivering groceries via Shipt, an on-demand, grocery-delivery service. It works kind of like Uber in that you can accept grocery requests through an app. You’ll receive the list, fill up your cart, pay through the app and head out for delivery.

Last year, we spoke with Destiny Frith, who makes about $20 an hour doing this part time each week. It works perfectly with her busy schedule.

(You can also opt to utilize the service and get groceries delivered to your door. Some even say it helps save money!)

11. Find a Work-From-Home Job

Work-from-home jobs are aplenty these days, and they’re especially convenient for moms who have to juggle sticky schedules.

The mom of three behind Work at Home Mom Revolution has worked from home since she bought her first computer back in the ’90s. She started her blog for moms in 2007:

“At the time, I was a separated, single mom raising three children on my own, and working from home allowed me to be available to my girls when they really needed me most.  I wanted to encourage other moms on their path to finding work from home…”

If you’re not even sure where to start, don’t worry. Work at Home Mom Revolution posts some great opportunities.

You can also use these job search sites, most of which are free. And keep an eye on our Facebook jobs page; we post our favorite, hand-picked work-from-home jobs there.

12. Set a Bet to Lose Weight

As a parent, you’re busy. You don’t have as much time to focus on yourself and your health. We get it.

If you need some motivation to lose extra pounds, HealthyWage might help. In short, you bet on yourself to lose weight. If you hit your goal, you pocket money.

Marcie Hagner, mom of Samuel, 8, signed up for HealthyWage. She bet $500 she’d hit her goal. If she can hit her weight-loss goals, she could bank $862. Not bad, right?

“Money is a huge motivator for me,” she says in an interview with The Penny Hoarder. “Especially because I don’t have a lot. I don’t want to give somebody $500, especially for something I can control and do.”

13. Rent Out Your Baby Gear

If you travel with your little ones, you understand the chaos that can ensue.

Not only are there constant bathroom breaks and “Are we there yet?” sort of questions, you also need to be able to bring along all your gear: the car seat, the bouncer, the stroller, the crib…  

This can get tricky and expensive, especially if you’re traveling by air.

That’s why a mom of two launched the goBaby app, an Airbnb-style marketplace for traveling parents.

Ksenia B. told the goBaby team:

“We’re still planning to have another child, but currently a lot of this well regarded equipment is sitting around unused. goBaby has enabled us to easily make some extra income on the side with it…”

If you have baby gear sitting around, you can make a pretty penny by renting it out through the platform. Cribs can go from $10 to $50 a day, strollers for $15 to $40 a day and car seats $12 to $25 a day.

Check out all the information online and see if you want to rent out your gear to traveling (probably exhausted) parents.

14. Become a Work-From-Home Disney Travel Agent

Obsessed with Disney? And want to work from home?

One Penny Hoarder contributor caught up with Kari Bonnes, a mom — and a big fan of Disney. When facing a divorce, she decided to take control of her income and founded Marvelous Mouse Travels, a travel agency that specializes in (you guessed it!) Disney vacations.

Although the business is based in North Carolina, work-from-home agents are based across the country as independent contractors. The pay depends on dedication and hours.

“I offer generous commissions to my agents, plus referral bonuses,” Bonnes says. “I have some agents who make $35,000 to $40,000 a year working part time. But I also have others who just book a trip here and there and bring in some side income.”

This content originally found on thepennyhoarder.com

There are more than 28 million small businesses in the United States, making up a whopping 99.7 percent of all U.S. businesses, according to the Small Business Administration. When you consider some of the most popular reasons to start a business, including having a unique business idea, designing a career that has the flexibility to grow with you, working toward financial independence, and investing in yourself — it’s no wonder that small businesses are everywhere.

But not every small business is positioned for success. In fact, only about two-thirds of businesses with employees survive at least two years, and about half survive five years. So you may be in for a real challenge when you decide to take the plunge, ditch your day job, and become a business owner. The stage is often set in the beginning, so making sure you follow all of the necessary steps when starting your business can set the foundation for success.

Here are 10 steps that are required to start a business successfully. Take one step at a time, and you’ll be on your way to successful small business ownership.

Step 1: Do Your Research

Most likely you have already identified a business idea, so now it’s time to balance it with a little reality. Does your idea have the potential to succeed? You will need to run your business idea through a validation process before you go any further.

In order for a small business to be successful, it must solve a problem, fulfill a need or offer something the market wants.

There are a number of ways you can identify this need, including research, focus groups, and even trial and error. As you explore the market, some of the questions you should answer include:

• Is there a need for your anticipated products/services?
• Who needs it?
• Are there other companies offering similar products/services now?
• What is the competition like?
• How will your business fit into the market?

Don’t forget to ask yourself some questions, too, about starting a business before you take the plunge.

Step 2: Make a Plan

You need a plan in order to make your business idea a reality. A business plan is a blueprint that will guide your business from the start-up phase through establishment and eventually business growth, and it is a must-have for all new businesses.

The good news is that there are different types of business plans for different types of businesses.

If you intend to seek financial support from an investor or financial institution, a traditional business plan is a must. This type of business plan is generally long and thorough and has a common set of sections that investors and banks look for when they are validating your idea.

If you don’t anticipate seeking financial support, a simple one-page business plan can give you clarity about what you hope to achieve and how you plan to do it. In fact, you can even create a working business plan on the back of a napkin, and improve it over time. Some kind of plan in writing is always better than nothing.

Step 3: Plan Your Finances

Starting a small business doesn’t have to require a lot of money, but it will involve some initial investment as well as the ability to cover ongoing expenses before you are turning a profit. Put together a spreadsheet that estimates the one-time startup costs for your business (licenses and permits, equipment, legal fees, insurance, branding, market research, inventory, trademarking, grand opening events, property leases, etc.), as well as what you anticipate you will need to keep your business running for at least 12 months (rent, utilities, marketing and advertising, production, supplies, travel expenses, employee salaries, your own salary, etc.).

Those numbers combined is the initial investment you will need.

Now that you have a rough number in mind, there are a number of ways you can fund your small business, including:

• Financing
• Small business loans
• Small business grants
• Angel investors
• Crowdfunding

You can also attempt to get your business off the ground by bootstrapping, using as little capital as necessary to start your business. You may find that a combination of the paths listed above work best. The goal here, though, is to work through the options and create a plan for setting up the capital you need to get your business off the ground.

Step 4: Choose a Business Structure

Your small business can be a sole proprietorship, a partnership, a limited liability company (LLC) or a corporation. The business entity you choose will impact many factors from your business name, to your liability, to how you file your taxes.

You may choose an initial business structure, and then reevaluate and change your structure as your business grows and needs change.

Depending on the complexity of your business, it may be worth investing in a consultation from an attorney or CPA to ensure you are making the right structure choice for your business.

Step 5: Pick and Register Your Business Name

Your business name plays a role in almost every aspect of your business, so you want it to be a good one. Make sure you think through all of the potential implications as you explore your options and choose your business name.

Once you have chosen a name for your business, you will need to check if it’s trademarked or currently in use. Then, you will need to register it. A sole proprietor must register their business name with either their state or county clerk. Corporations, LLCs, or limited partnerships typically register their business name when the formation paperwork is filed.

Don’t forget to register your domain name once you have selected your business name. Try these options if your ideal domain name is taken.

Step 6: Get Licenses and Permits

Paperwork is a part of the process when you start your own business.

There are a variety of small business licenses and permits that may apply to your situation, depending on the type of business you are starting and where you are located. You will need to research what licenses and permits apply to your business during the start-up process.

Step 7: Choose Your Accounting System

Small businesses run most effectively when there are systems in place. One of the most important systems for a small business is an accounting system.

Your accounting system is necessary in order to create and manage your budget, set your rates and prices, conduct business with others, and file your taxes. You can set up your accounting system yourself, or hire an accountant to take away some of the guesswork. If you decide to get started on your own, make sure you consider these questions that are vital when choosing accounting software.

Step 8: Set Up Your Business Location

Setting up your place of business is important for the operation of your business, whether you will have a home office, a shared or private office space, or a retail location.

You will need to think about your location, equipment, and overall setup, and make sure your business location works for the type of business you will be doing. You will also need to consider if it makes more sense to buy or lease your commercial space.

Step 9: Get Your Team Ready

If you will be hiring employees, now is the time to start the process. Make sure you take the time to outline the positions you need to fill, and the job responsibilities that are part of each position. The Small Business Administration has an excellent guide to hiring your first employee that is useful for new small business owners.

If you are not hiring employees, but instead outsourcing work to independent contractors, now is the time to work with an attorney to get your independent contractor agreement in place and start your search.

Lastly, if you are a true solopreneur hitting the small business road alone, you may not need employees or contractors, but you will still need your own support team. This team can be comprised of a mentor, small business coach, or even your family, and serves as your go-to resource for advice, motivation and reassurance when the road gets bumpy.

Step 10: Promote Your Small Business

Once your business is up and running, you need to start attracting clients and customers. You’ll want to start with the basics by writing a unique selling proposition (USP) and creating a marketing plan. Then, explore as many small business marketing ideas as possible so you can decide how to promote your business most effectively.

Once you have completed these business start-up activities, you will have all of the most important bases covered. Keep in mind that success doesn’t happen overnight. But use the plan you’ve created to consistently work on your business, and you will increase your chances of success.

This content originally found on thebalancesmb.com