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It’s fair to say that early-to-mid 2020 presented some tricky business challenges courtesy of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most offices had to close down for months, and some ran aground entirely. Many thousands of jobs were lost or furloughed. Economic activity ground to a halt as resources got diverted elsewhere and people smartly stopped spending so heavily on frivolities.

Due to all of this, you might think that this is a terrible time to launch a new venture. Where’s the stability? Where’s the foundation for a solid five-year plan? What if COVID-19 cases skyrocket at some point and plunge the world back into lockdown? Surely it’s safer to leave it for now. Regroup, plan, and wait for a year or two until things have settled down.

Not true. Not only should you forget about waiting for a year or two, but you should in fact get started right away. You don’t need to go out into the world to forge your business: you can make it a home business. Not convinced? Here are some of the biggest reasons to act now:

You can learn as you go with online resources

The learning curve that’s inherent to running a business can be quite intimidating. There’s so much you need to figure out before you can become successful, after all, and it’s much easier said than done — but you don’t need to get a business degree or even pursue a specific course. The online world is saturated with fantastic resources to help you along the way.

This blog is a fine example, offering pieces on various topics pertaining to digital marketing, and there are countless more blogs out there — from myriad companies and experts — covering all the topics you’d ever need to read about. And that’s just written content. There are also video guides, podcasts, infographics, and even interactive tasks to help you learn in different ways.

You can simply get started on your home business and do some searching when you run into something confusing. This will mean that your business won’t develop extremely quickly, but you shouldn’t encounter any brick walls. Instead, you’ll make slow but steady progress.

Ecommerce has become highly accessible

There are plenty of business models that could work for you, and many of them exist in the ecommerce sphere. Selling online has come enormously far since it first reached the mainstream. It rapidly became extremely easy for buyers, but has since become almost as easy for sellers through the advent of intuitive online tools, lowered costs, and simplified processes.

Now, this doesn’t mean that it’s easy to become an online seller, because there are still plenty of tricky components: most notably choosing the right products to sell, optimizing the pricing, creating a suitable marketing strategy, and providing a great service. But you need the tricky parts because they give you chances to stand out — and while those parts are time-consuming, they’re not inherently expensive.

The big part that might have been expensive (creating a great store and equipping it with a decent range of features and functions) is now pretty cheap. There are numerous store-building tools that use templates and native hosting to let any aspiring seller get their store up and running within hours — all without spending anything at all. You ultimately do need to pay for the hosting, but that’s extremely affordable given what you save elsewhere.

Remote working is allowing more free time

Working from home became necessary when regular offices were viable, but companies noticed that it didn’t necessarily reduce their productivity: as a result, they stopped objecting to it (no longer being in a position to claim that it would cause problems). Even if society can truly get back to normal through having no restrictions in place, remote working is sticking around.

If you run a regular small business but have now decided that you’re never returning to your company’s office, then this is a great time to launch a home business because you have so much more free time (and because you can save money on the office space). If you work for a small business, then the same applies — barring the office space saving, of course.

No more lengthy commuting, getting ready before work, or getting stuck in the office and making it home late. You can get through your regular workday fairly early and still have a solid amount of time to put towards your home business. Why not give it a try?

Uncertain times present great opportunities

Lastly, and most intriguingly, it bears considering that the level of risk inherent to the current economic climate isn’t innately bad. It’s just a multiplier that will amplify whatever result you’re able to achieve. If your home business fails, it will fail miserably, possibly damaging your savings and knocking your confidence in the process — but if it succeeds, it will succeed in a major way, leaving you looking highly competent (and rather prescient).

So if you’re feeling confident that you can create a competitive business, then these circumstances should scare you: they should excite you. Get it right now and you’ll get it right in a big way that seriously pays off. Get planning, check all the numbers, and go for it. Don’t put in more money than you can afford to lose: get some initial results first, then funnel more investment into the operation. That way you can bail out quickly if it isn’t working.

Conclusion

It might be safer in some ways to wait for a while to launch a home business, but safety isn’t everything. You can still be fairly safe launching such a business today, and you get to take advantage of the rich opportunities out there at the moment. Good luck!