Starting your own business is a great way to take control over your own destiny, do what you really want to do in life and hopefully make lots a decent living in the process, but it is also a scary prospect.

Many people dream of starting their own business using the skills they have to make themself money rather than a faceles corporation or a mean boss, but they never take the leap because they simply don’t know where to start.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some simple steps you can take to run the skill you have into a successful business:

Work Out Which Skills Are Most Marketable

The first thing you will need to do is work out what skills you haven and which are most marketable by tracking down the average market rate for savvy graphic design or copywriting for whatever you can do.

Of course, the skill that commands the highest rate might not be the one you want to go with as you may enjoy doing a slightly less lucrative skill more or be better at doing it – that’s fine as long as you know how much it is worth so you can charge accordingly.

Get Some Entrepreneur Training

You might be great at copywriting or have a knack for selling anything to anyone, but to run a successful business, you also need to know how to be a good entrepreneur, which is where entrepreneurship training comes in. Companies like Fox Web School will teach you all the entrepreneurship skills you need to launch your business from scratch and keep it ticking over effectively, which is exactly what you need if you want to be a success.

Build an Online Presence

If you want to run a business, you need a website that you can direct customers to, but you also need to have a decent social media presence with lots of followers to who you can market to. This means setting up business profiles on all major platforms and populating them with funny, interesting and shareable content.

Build a Portfolio

Of course, you will also need a portfolio of work that you can show potential customers to give them confidence in buying from what is a very new business, so see about putting up the best examples of your work online or at the very least, obtaining testimonials from people you have worked with before.

Learn SEO

Learning the basics of search engine optimization will help you to drive traffic to your website and social media so you can convert those visitors into paying customers. However, to get your first customers, and those all-important portfolio pieces/referrals, you might want to offer your services on a decent freelance marketplace.

Start Marketing

From writing blog posts and posting on social media to appearing on podcasts, making vlogs or even visiting local trade shows, anything you can do to raise the profile of your business will help you attract clients and start building something special.

Time to turn those skills into a successful business!