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Every year millions of people answer “Yes” to that question and every year that answer costs many of them money, time, confidence, and heartbreak. The Small Business Administration estimates there are 580,900 new small businesses opening each year and that number does not include the small one-person entrepreneurships that pop up every day. However even if you are your business’s sole employee then there is still something to be learned from the SBA’s numbers.

According to the SBA, two-thirds of new businesses survive at least two years and 44 percent survive at least four years. Two of the key factors in the businesses survival and ability to thrive: the owner’s education level and the owner’s reason for starting the firm in the first place.

How can you make sure that you are among the winners rather than the losers in this high stakes game? The answer is inside of you. You must ask yourself four key questions to determine whether your own small business will survive and thrive.

1. Are You Ready

Have you mentally prepared yourself for the switch from employee (or student or whatever label fits you currently) to boss. You are going to be the one making decisions now about everything from office products to product line. This total control is one of the driving forces behind many people who take the plunge into starting their ownbusiness but it is also one of the elements that drives new entreprenurs crazy. When you start out there is an endless list of decisions that need to be made and new questions crop up every day.

Even more important you will need to remember that in a small business you will wear many hats. Even if you manage to start out with one or more employees you will each fulfill more than one role in your new business. And if you are running a one-man or one-woman show then you serve in every capacity from file clerk to maintenance crew to salesman to CEO. Can you handle switching from task to task and role to role like that? Are you willing to make those switches?

Similarly, have you prepared your family and friends for this switch in attitude. Your life is going to change — probably pretty drastically — and that change can have a positive or negative impact on your family life and social interactions. It will make things much easier if your friends and family are supportive going into the process.

2. Where Is Your Niche?

Have you identified your niche yet? One of the reasons many businesses fail is that they fail to focus on a target audience. Yes if you are a major discount chain then you can sell everything from peanuts to wallpaper but this type of business requires vast resources that just aren’t available to the small business. But small businesses dominate the marketplace (creating more than 50 percent of the private gross domestic product last year) by finding a different approach — a niche.

Knowing your niche means you are better able to find, target, and maintain your customers as well as provide the best possible goods and services to that customer base. That focus is one of your best chances to not only survive but to thrive in a very competitive marketplace.

3. What Is Your Plan Of Action?

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Most businesses have started to wake up to the need to utilise the Internet as part of their overall business strategy. Whether they have, or intend to have a fully functioning transactional website selling products online, or perhaps a more basic site which only provides information about the company and its product or services, they know they need to be online.

The difficulty for a lot of smaller business is understanding what they need to do to maximise their online presence. They may have grasped the need for a website, but then what do they do with it, how do they measure success or progress? On top of that the Internet is fast moving and new buzz words are being bandied about every week; Twitter, Linked In, Google AdWords, Social Media and SEO are some examples.

For most smaller business’s the problem is that unless the owner or decision-maker is “tech-savvie” and prepared to dedicate time to developing their own knowledge then all of these buzz words are likely to have as much meaning as someone talking to them in Norwegian.

At its most simplistic level the performance of a website should be measured by traffic volumes (number of visitors) and conversion rate. A conversion could be a purchase, or getting a visitor to do something you want such as fill in an enquiry form. If a company sells products online it should also measure its average order value.

All of these figures can be collected by installing tracking software such as Google Analytics which is both incredibly powerful and free! Together, these three basic measurements provide the fundamentals for tracking site performance. More importantly though it is by addressing each of these fundamental measurements that site performance can be improved.

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If you want to make your self exposed to a global market then the only thing that can be helpful is the internet because it caters to a large audience.

As the world is moving out of the recession mode, it is the right time for business owners to make the move.

The market is now recovering with the flow of money inwards as so business can plan their growth.

At some websites we must see the guidelines before submit news.