After spending the last week getting the n10ah Online Music Network launched, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on some of what I've learned about how to choose a business model for bootstrapping.

Some of these tips are things I considered consciously, others are things I realized influenced my choice after the fact. I hope they prove helpful.

1. Pick something you can start today. By this I don't mean you have to start it today or that you should pick an idea that takes only a day to start. n10ah required only the set-up of groups in Yahoo! and MSN, a community at MyBlogLog.com and a Wordpress hosted blog in order to get going. I also spent a couple of bucks to buy a domain name with GoDaddy.com so that I could expand into hosting a site at my own URL when the revenue justifies the additional expense. There are obviously lots more things to do, but this is what I needed to introduce n10ah to the world and start generating interest. Don't pick an idea that requires an investor's OK, a bank loan or a line of credit to get started. It's fine to go for these after the fact, but don't make your start-up contingent upon them.

2. Start with an idea, not a business plan. This is directly the opposite of what you will be told by just about every business advisor, but I've found it to be absolutely true. When starting up n10ah and thinking of the idea before hand, I considered what I wanted to do and some of the paths I might take to get there. It seemed obvious to start with a blog which serves as a frequently updated method of interesting people in the business and attracting them to look over the site. I created two online groups and a community in the hopes fans and other users would become involved. I knew that I wanted advertising and sales of merchandise to be major early revenue streams but had no idea which would dominate and what other possibilities might develop for income. With a business plan you become consciously or unconsciously locked in to your projections instead of letting the business and customers lead you and, as everyone knows, that's where the money is.

3. Find a need and fill it. With an interest in independent music and as a musician myself seeking creative outlet, I found few examples on the Net of attempts to gather together a comprehensive musical community with resources, artists, posted online music, labels, merchandising and the like. Those that profess to help musicians sell their music often charge a fee for the service and those that are completely user operated suffer from either poor response or massive unregulated content making it difficult for fans or musicians to find anything of interest. I wanted to create a network that combined the structure of conventional music merchandising and distributing with the increased accessibility available through the Net. The result is n10ah!

4. Choose an idea that is significantly broad. The idea for this tip came about through a sort of online conversation with an affiliate marketer named BJ in the comment section of her site (here's her main blog page) about becoming too fragmented on start-up ideas. Incidentally, n10ah is the concept I'm talking about in my comment post and the idea is to pick a business that is not only broad enough to keep you passionately interested, but scalable enough to keep expanding. My core focus, of course, is an independent network for the distribution and appreciation of music, but this could be expanded into so many directions online and then into bricks and mortar after that. Let me count the ways. I can't!

5. Choose a narrow focus. This might sound like a direct contradiction to number 4. It isn't...really...er...let's call it a paradox. Anyway the idea comes from a post by venture capitalist Brad Feld followed by some of my own commentary here. With n10ah I chose one central idea, an online music network, and hope to develop every imaginable concept (online groups, communities, stores, boutiques, blogs) off of that concept. The idea, Brad says, is to be the best at that one focus. Do it to the max!

If you can think of any tips I've missed or would like to add some of your own to amend my list, please feel free to do so in the comment section below. Or post it on your own blog with links and I will return the favor in future posts.