Three useful links

As my username suggests, I’m at the earliest stages of getting my start up going, and one of the biggest headaches I’ve had so far has simply been doing the preliminary research. I know it will prove small fry in comparison to future problems, but I thought I’d share anyway.

It’s not that there’s a shortage of information, but rather that there’s a complete oversupply. It seems almost anyone who’s ever sold a second hand toaster on eBay has written a book on how to become an entrepreneur and make an instant million. It’s impossible to know where to start or to dig the quality advice from the random rubbish.

I wasted a good few weeks religiously reading every article and visiting every website only to realize most of it was…

a. Repetitive
b. Assumes you’re a moron
c. Assumes you’re a genius who’s sitting on the next Facebook and planning a start up to make Bill Gates look amateur. Don’t get me wrong, I am ambitious, just not delusional.
d. Written like a self help manual (‘believe in yourself and you can do anything’ style stuff. Gag.)

So I’m feeling a bit guilty about adding to the start up clutter with my own little blog, and by way of an apology I thought it might be helpful to cut through some of it with a short list of the most useful sources I found. The list really is very, very short. That’s not because there weren’t some other good guides, but I really believe a thorough browse of the below will leave you with a passable picture of what’s involved and a practical plan of action.

So, if you read one...
...book make sure it's:
Starting and Online Business in the 'for Dummies' series.

It's geared to a US audience and the case studies are terminally boring. But it's easy to use, doesn't patronize, is comprehensive enough to get you going but not so detailed it leaves you lost.

...official website make sure it's:

NOT the .gov Business Link, one of the most confusing, ill thought out sites ever. Especially bad, given that it's billed as a “beginners guide”.

I guess they're hampered by having to cater for everyone, but even allowing for that it's almost impossible to root out the key facts in amongst all the repetition and poorly structured topic headings.

I suspect there's a lot of important information on the site, but you're better off going back to it once you've got a list of tax code questions you need answering. Ditto the HMRC site.

http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/

A better alternative is the BBC guide. It's not exactly imaginative, and the info is very generic, but a glance at the topic list gave me a good guide to what to start thinking about and the information is presented in plain English. Good old Beeb.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/consumer/start_a_business/

...unofficial website make sure it's:
The Young Entrepreneur blog. It’s a little American and there are too many references to 'finding your life's purpose' for my taste, but hidden underneath all the positivity are some tremendously useful articles on how to push a business site up the Google listings and info on which clicks are valuable and which aren't.

The nitty-gritty technical stuff won’t be relevant until I get to building the website and writing the copy, but it confronted me with some practical considerations before I got carried away with grand visions for a sexy site that won't get any hits.

http://www.youngentrepreneur.com/blog/category/internet-marketing

Hope the above helps and please post your short list.