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Being your own boss is a dream that everyone has, and in the digital age, it is more feasible to accomplish than ever before in human history. It has come to the point where you don’t even have to deal with physical goods in order to manage your own business. Decentralization of information, education, and technology have all come together to make this dream of financial independence a reality, just within your grasp if you are willing to plunge in.

The problem is, everyone else is realizing it too, which creates a fiercely competitive environment. There’s a multitude of online and offline entrepreneurship success stories; people making a million in one year, stay-at-home moms turning a casual hobby into a six-figure successful business. As we are bombarded with these stories, the underpinnings of those successes are often overlooked.

If you too are looking to undertake the journey of entrepreneurship, and seize the opportunities that have never existed before, you must understand the severity of certain compromises and hardships that you will inevitably encounter.

Consider Your Financial Situation

Depending on how much money you have available to spend without going into a negative balance, you have to make a decision: quit your current job and dedicate yourself completely to your new path in life, or treat the side business idea as something akin to an intensive hobby. Both scenarios have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Should You Go Full In?

If you quit your job and, for some reason, your attempt at entrepreneurship fails, you lose the safety net, and you bleed additional money as you seek your new job. A job that may pay less than the one you had before.

Motivation Driver

Going all in gives you a significant benefit in terms of how much time you can spend on learning and implementing various ideas to make your business as successful as possible. Additionally, having no safety net in the form of a regular job puts you in the mindset of ‘no failure is permissible’; the constant pressure keeps driving you on, and eventual failures just become learning opportunities – something you can build upon.

Time as the Ultimate Resource

If you retain your job, as a safety net, or because you do not have enough savings to engage in any significant investment, you will need to drastically restructure your life. Setting up a side business, even an online one, is not a small task. For all intents and purposes, you will now have two jobs, and lose any meaningful capacity of having a social life or family. That’s if you truly want to succeed in your endeavor in a timely manner.

Structured Learning

If you feel overwhelmed with the massive amount of information and advice that you will find on the internet, it would be best to take a more structured approach via one of many online courses, led by experienced experts, and that cost next to nothing.

Due Diligence

It all comes down to the level of precision of the business plan or idea that you have in mind. Is it vague or do you have a meticulous list of all the practical steps you need to take? What’s the competitive environment in this market like? Have you done a thorough research, crunched all the numbers, made a few dozen charts? Have you considered the exact potential factors that would contribute to the failure of your business idea? Have you consulted experts in this field?

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If the answer to any of those questions is yes, then you know exactly what it will take, and how long will it take. Moreover, some online ventures are inexpensive and low-risk, like forex trading. If you follow the golden rule of trading – set a fixed amount of money aside for trading, then if you win you only use that profit for additional trades. This way, you are engaging in a highly educative, profitable, and low-risk side business. At that point, you will have broken the psychological barrier of online entrepreneurship, and in time, you can move on to even greater endeavors. From small to big is the most optimal path to undertake if you want to minimize the pitfalls of online money-making that you will inevitably encounter.