The internet has revolutionized the way we do business, and in many ways made it easier to start a company than ever before. But as with any new frontier, some pitfalls await those who are unprepared.
Starting an online business from home can have a lot of benefits, both financial and personal.
For starters, you’ll be able to make your own hours and set your own work schedule.
You won’t have to commute or spend time in an office, which can save you a lot of money on gas and transportation costs.
And since you’ll be working from home, you can avoid the stress and distractions of the traditional workplace.
You’ll also have more flexibility to take care of personal responsibilities during the day.
Starting an online business from your home requires less capital to get started when compared to a traditional brick-and-mortar company.
The benefits are plenty if you’re able to make your online business successful.
However, there are several mistakes you should be aware of before you launch your online empire.
Today, I’m going to share with you what I believe to be the top five Internet business startup mistakes most beginners make.
Let’s unpack this…
1)) Choosing the Wrong Business Model
The first mistake you must avoid is rushing into a home-based business program that you know little or nothing about.
Many of the gurus want to make money from selling you the perfect Internet business opportunity or system.
You must be extremely careful because in many cases they haven’t even tested the programs themselves.
Or they package up so-called proven money-making systems that don’t work.
Another unethical approach used by the sellers of business opportunities is what I call “Bread Crumb Marketing.”
This is where they sell you a piece of the puzzle, then drop bread crumbs that lead you to another puzzle piece, and continue dropping more crumbs without ever giving you the whole puzzle.
This approach is used to extract as much money from your bank account as possible without ever providing the whole money-making system, which may or may not work in the first place.
Unfortunately, there are several ways to make money online with more being introduced every time you look around.
And to top it off, Internet marketers are constantly promoting them to their lists, which causes those folks to jump from one opportunity to the next, causing them to never gain momentum on one business model.
Believe it or not, some of the new ways to make money online are legit, but the problem is figuring out which ones are trustworthy.
Trying to find legitimate ways to make money on the Internet is like walking through a minefield.
To reduce your risk of being ripped off, I recommend sticking with proven business models and purchasing money-making systems from experts that practice what they preach, who are still in the trenches.
10 Proven Ways To Make Money Online
WAY 1: Email Marketing
WAY 2: Affiliate Marketing / Brand Ambassador
WAY 3: Local Marketing
WAY 4: Publishing Kindle e-Books
WAY 5: E-commerce Stores
WAY 6: Create And Sell Information Products
WAY 7: Create Online Courses
WAY 8: Create A Niche Specific Media Network
WAY 9: Publish Other People’s Courses
WAY 10: Membership Sites
Related Article: 10 Best Ways To Make Money From Home
Before you invest your hard-earned cash into any money-making system, be certain to do research to learn about all the details.
Examples Of Questions You Need Answered:
- What is the business model?
- Is the money-making system battlefield tested?
- Is the system creator reputable?
- How long has the system creator been doing that type of business?
- Is there proof that everyday people are having success?
- What is the average monthly cost to run this business model?
- What is needed to run this business?
- What marketing tools are needed?
- Do you have to purchase upsells to make the model work?
- On average how much time is needed to run this business?
- Does this business model interest you enough to stick with it long-term?
These questions barely scratch the surface of what you need to know before choosing a money-making system.
However, they provide you with a good starting point.
I recommend doing some critical thinking and creating your own brainstormed list of questions you’d like to get the answers to.
Going through the simple process of getting your questions answered provides you with a filter that can help you make the right choice.
So, don’t rush into any business opportunity in a desperate attempt to make some money.
2)) Setting Unrealistic Expectations
The second mistake to avoid is thinking you can take your startup from zero to a successful Internet business in 30 days or less.
I am not saying it is impossible, because there are exceptions to every rule, but most end up with a giant information overflow and no money in their bank accounts.
Some of the same fundamentals that apply to brick-and-mortar enterprises also apply to online businesses.
The truth of the matter is that building an online business takes a lot of work no matter what business model you choose.
Of course, some models are better than others, but they all require more work than you’re led to believe.
There are no free lunches in this world because work is required.
That’s why it is so important to take your time choosing the right business model for you because making it successful will most likely take longer than you expect.
It would be wise to plan for a modest income for the first 3-6 months or longer if you’re following a proven money-making system.
Make a list of the key skills you’ll need to master in order to succeed with your chosen business model.
Setting unrealistic expectations is one of the biggest reasons for online business failure, which causes thousands of people to continually abandon their current money-making systems for the next shiny object.
This is what I’ll discuss next…
3)) Jumping From One Opportunity To The Next
The third mistake would-be entrepreneurs make is quitting a program too soon.
Have you heard the old saying, “5 feet from gold?”
It’s based on a gold miner who gave up when he was only 5 feet away from finding gold.
This is what happens when online business owners become frustrated and give up when they don’t make any significant amount of money or none at all, despite their greatest efforts.
From day one of your new venture, you must accept that success may take anywhere from a few months to a few years with consistency.
Realistic expectations protect you from falling into the trap of the overnight riches mindset.
Successful entrepreneurs know from experience that it takes time to build a real sustainable online business.
Adopting that same mindset gives you staying power, which can prevent you from jumping to another business opportunity every time your current one doesn’t seem to be working.
By the way, in the Internet Marketing World, we call this phenomenon, “Shiny Object Syndrome,” which simply means jumping from one business opportunity to the next.
If you don’t set the proper expectations for your new online business, you may think something is wrong with the opportunity when the money doesn’t start pouring in after a few months.
You run the risk of being 5 feet from gold if you give up on your business too soon.
Not getting the results you desire could potentially be solved by making minor changes, measuring the effects of the changes, and simply being patient.
But you’d never know if you don’t stick with the process long enough to find out.
The cure for “Shiny Object Syndrome” is to pick a business model you enjoy and stick with it until you make it financially successful.
Bonus Tip: I recommend choosing a market that you’re passionate about and a business model that can be used as a vehicle that can accommodate it, because this will make it a lot easier to continue when you get frustrated from a lack of progress. This is optional of course. In my opinion, you shouldn’t chase money because the road to entrepreneurship can be long, lonely, and challenging. You have one life to live, so why not do something you love, if possible?
4)) Using Unethical Business Practices
The fourth mistake is to take shortcuts by using unethical business practices when you get desperate from a lack of immediate financial success.
Don’t become one of those people who try to get over on people and game the system.
For example; years ago search engines like Google would rank websites high in their databases that had thousands of backlinks from other sites pointing to them.
Once marketers figured this out, they began creating all types of shady ways to build worthless spammy backlinks to their sites in order to get them to rank on page one of the search engines when people did searches for specific keywords.
Once search engines such as Google caught on to this artificial backlinking strategy that marketers were using, they updated their algorithms, which deindexed millions of those sites.
And overnight, those sites lost their rankings, which put millions of marketers out of business.
That’s only one example out of thousands.
Again, that’s why it’s extremely important to set realistic expectations and to develop an entrepreneur’s mindset.
This will safeguard you from entertaining the possibility of implementing unethical business practices, that could get you banned from multiple platforms.
Just imagine putting in all that work, not to mention money, only to have the rug pulled from under your feet, and losing it all.
Pick the right business model and program in your mind that it may take a while before you see success.
That’s how you avoid selling your soul for monetary gain.
Pro Tip: Another way to avoid the temptation of getting involved in shady business practices is to focus on serving your target audience by solving problems that they’re already spending money on solutions for, and the money will follow. When people find out that you only see them as an ATM machine, they will run away.
5)) Not Taking the Time to Master the Basics
The fifth mistake to avoid is the failure to not learn the basics of building an online business as well as the specifics of your chosen money-making system.
An online business contains several moving parts.
Almost every successful Internet business has the following components:
- A list of email subscribers
- An offer (their own or affiliate)
- A steady flow of website visitors
If you master those three components, making money becomes inevitable, provided you remain consistent with your efforts and do not give up.
The key to succeeding with your home-based business boils down to building a responsive list of subscribers and then offering them solutions to their problems using various traffic methods.
Every other skill that you learn apart from those will be icing on the cake.
Building an email list allows you to build a relationship by providing valuable content.
You should think of your email list as “Traffic in a Holding Pattern.”
A responsive list allows you to print money on-demand, by sending product offers via email.
It’s worth repeating; go to your target market to genuinely serve the people.
Focus on the fundamentals of building a successful Internet business first before introducing more complicated tasks.
Let’s wrap this up…
Conclusion
Today, you learned about the five most common Internet business startup mistakes made by entrepreneurs.
These traps are easy to fall into because the creators of money-making systems are masters of praying on our fears, desires, and desperation.
During their webinars, they press every hot button of emotion you may be feeling.
To a certain extent, there’s nothing wrong with marketers motivating us to take action to invest in their money-making systems, if they actually work.
However, what’s left out of most sales webinars is how long it may take to make their systems successful.
They need to be more transparent about what it actually takes to make their systems work so that entrepreneurs can make informed decisions and set the proper expectations before investing.
There are a lot of business opportunities that flat-out don’t work.
On the flip side, there are successful marketers that have been around for over two decades sharing their knowledge on what has been proven to work.
The problem is that most new entrepreneurs have no idea who those seasoned marketers are, and have to walk through the digital fields littered with landmines.
Starting an online business can be exciting, but there is the potential to make a lot of mistakes in the process.
One of the best ways to reduce the number of mistakes you make is by doing research and planning.
This allows you to filter out business opportunity scams and not waste time on the wrong money-making systems.
All that filtering puts you in a position to choose the best business model for you.
This drastically increases your chances of succeeding.
The absolute best way to reduce your chances of making mistakes is by modeling success.
After you’ve determined what business model interest you the most, invest in a money-making system created by a successful expert.
For example, let’s say that after all of your research, you came to the conclusion that you’d like to become a Brand Ambassador.
You’d simply find a qualified Brand Ambassador expert who teaches a course on it.
Modeling success can save you 5, 10, 15, or more years of trial and error.
If the system is proven, the investment is worth the money, because going at it alone using a trial-and-error approach could cost you a fortune, stress you out, then make you jump to the next opportunity.
Unfortunately, there are millions of entrepreneurs stuck in this vicious cycle.
And you don’t have to be one of them if you apply what you discovered today.
Don’t let fear stand in your way of building a successful online business!
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