How Start Up And Run A Business Online, Best Free Open Source Platforms

I frequently receive questions from anxious readers who want to know how do to start an own business online but don’t know exactly how do it. So, if you are one of those people….you have landed in the right place.

Today, build an business online can be the perfect way for people to obtain information about their favorite company, product or service.

Initially, nobody has a real clue as to how to do to build robust business online. People can feel intimidated because it take too time and effort and most important much money. Well, the reality is different. In my case, I’ve running different blogs, the3dtechnologies is one, that allowed me to get a constant income stream, and I can sure that I paid only for host my blog and some wp template, and no more. Is a little investement that with some effort you can easily recuperate.

For those are newbie, and are thinking to build a business online from scratch, this simple tips and resources online will help you get started with online business.

Get Started A Business Online

Image Credit: Krelic

No matter what your business online is, if is a blog, social bookmarking, social media, e-commerce service, when you start building your site you need to follow some tips to grow the chance to have success:

In a nutshell, you need to:

• Increase traffic to your business
• Increase subscribers number
• Increase followers number
• Improve trust
• Increase authority
• etc.

In general, the three main actionable things to do are:

1. Start up plans – If you have not yet developed your business plan, I strongly recommend you do so before moving on to the next step. Is an important part of developing an Internet business. Often, bloggers, webmaster, and internet entrepreneur, launch a business online just as another place to advertise. Without a powerful structure, a good services or a quality and unique content, no matter what your goals is, is a waste of time.

2. Equipment & Software – The choice of the platform depends by the aim of your  site. If you are thinking to share your knowledge through content online, then WordPress is the right choice for you. Instead, if you are think to create a place where anyone can join and share their own content, then Pligg is the right choice, and so on.

3. Choosing a domain name – Last but not least, choosing a domain name is a great part of developing an Internet business. You could choose to benefit to using one(or more) domain names. For my blogs and niche sites I do use both The Planet and Bluehost. Both are highly reccomended. Also, Ftp program can help you simplify uploading files to your website. I use Filezilla for all my blogs. Is very easy to use.

Best Open Source Platforms To Run A Business Online

Of course, one of the first thing you should to do to run a business model is to know the best tool to get started. Below, I listed what I think are the top resources that could work well for you, and could help you improve your site’s revenue.

The better thing of open source software, is that anyone can built a strong platform without any effort and make money by it. Here, are 8 open source software platforms on which to carve out your niche.

• Blogging platform: Let you create a blog or multiple blogs.
  
• Social bookmark system: Let you create a site similar to Digg.
  
• open source social platform: Let you create a site similar to Myspace.
  
• collaboration serve: Let you create a site similar to Google Groups.

1. Pligg – Is an open source content management system available for download at no cost that let you to create your own social bookmarkings sites, for instance a Digg clone site based around any subject of your choice. You can find several themes and modules to help manage the site. Also, it include an active community.

2. WordPress – Is an opensource Blogging platform for bloggers that let you easily create, edit and pubblish any blog you have in your mind. With thousands of themes available out there, and plugins for any purpose, you have the possibility to customize your blog as you want.

Other features includes: comments, spam protection, pingbacks, trackbacks, easy to upgrade, allows multiple authors, import from another blogging platform, bookmarklets…and so on.

3. Drupal with Vote up/down module – You probably know Drupal as one of the more popular open source content management systems available. However Drupal community have developed several modules that allow to voting submitted stories as well.

4. Elgg – Is an open source social platform that provides all building blocks you will need to create your own social application or build and run a site for your organisation.

The first to use trackBack, Unlimited weblogs, static and dynamic publishing, can create standalone pages asset and file manager, customized User roles, customizable templates, plugins / extensions, tags, categories, sub-categories…

5. AROUNDMe – Compared to others open source social platform. AROUNDMe let you to create your own collaboration server which enables your users to setup their own social networking site, community or webspace (like Ning, Google Groups, Snappville, CollectiveX).

6. GetBoo – Is a PHP/MySQL-based social bookmark system that let you to save you favorite sites and share them with your friends. It also supports public and private group creation.

7. ISocial – Is a free open source social platform that allows you to create your own Friendster and Orkut like sites. Use bookmarks, dating and create groups with just one mouse click.

8. Akarru - Akarru is a social bookmarking engine, is used to build social bookmarkings sites, like www.blogmemes.com. Users posts links and promote links to front page using voting system.