Thousands of people come online everyday with the aim of starting and running an e-business or online business but 1% or less of those people stick around long enough to actualize that goal. Most get frustrated and quit way before fully starting. And when those people hear about someone making a six figure income online they get confused.
How are those making money online doing it? How come only few are actually making money? Is there a secret? Well, I can assure you there is no secret.
The difference between those who succeed and those who quit are within the following 5 reasons.
1. Not properly informed
Nobody can excel in something he or she has no detailed information about. Most of us come online to set up a blog or website because we heard people are making money doing it and we too want to try our luck. There’s nothing wrong with that if we are patient to learn the rudiments of how it can be done.
I have a student who has a live blog and wanted to add adsense to it. He called me to explain to him how to do it. I quickly explained how adsense works and sent him a 200+ page book to read on adsense and how to maximize his earnings. But the next morning he told me the book was too lengthy he won’t have the time to read it. And I am sure up till now he hasn’t opened it again.
How can you have the key to your success in your hands and refuse to use it? And it’s not about time either, because if you really want to do something you’ll find a way around it.
My sister has a well-paying job that takes all her time. But her dream is to work from home and have time freedom. To start she buys good books written by those who have achieved the kind of success she wants and since she hardly has time for herself, she takes the book she wants to read along when going to the office and reads in the bus on her way to and back from the office. She is taking her time and not in a hurry to start.
At times I think she is taking too much time, but the truth is when she eventually starts she’ll be so focused that she’ll beat the success of some people that have been online for 3-4 years still struggling to find their way.
If you wanted to start a local business you would take time to plan it wouldn’t you? E-business is the same thing. Have a plan and how to execute it in other to maximize profit before even buying a domain name and setting up a blog. If not your site wouldn’t have focus.
You wouldn’t be using a particular theme because it fits with what you want to achieve with your site rather because it’s being used by the top blogger or internet marketer. You would lose focus and jump into anything you find being promoted online.
If you want to succeed in e-business you have to be ready to sacrifice some time and money. But most importantly you must have a plan else you wouldn’t be focused on building your business but falling for the newest thing on the internet.
2. Lack of thorough preparation
Ask yourself: Do you know why you’re in the niche you are in? Is it because you have a purpose to achieve? Do you know if you can win your niche or not? Do you know your competitors? Are you creating an edge over them? Do you know if your niche will be profitable? You should have all these answers and more if you prepared well before starting.
To prepare well you need the right tools. Sacrifice whatever time and money is required to prepare right because if your foundation is poor no matter what you do you will be wasting your time. And if you’re lucky to make some money, know that you would have been making ten times more if your foundation was solid.
If it will take you 2 years to save some money, buy some products, learn, plan and start right, it’s better you wait till then than jump into it now with your eyes blind folded not having any particular purpose you’re serving online. Believe me, no matter how long it takes you to start right, you will do better when you eventually start than someone who has been online for 3 years before you without a plan. Some people have been online for more years but still not making a dime.
3. Poorly organized topics
Do you focus on a particular niche and cover all the topics there in step by step without diverting to other topics? Or do you write on something different today and something different the next day? Are your topics well organized with easy to navigate nav bars linking to them? Are they well inter-linked to each other or do people have to search and search for topics?
Picking a small niche where you can help others with your expertise and focus on it is the quick way to success. Structure your content in step by step format covering each topic in detail. Structure your content in a way that you become the guy to go to in your niche.
4. Lack of Search Engine and Human Friendly pages
- Re-circulating content, no unique topics.
- Covering different niche on one site.
- No inter-linking of pages.
- Linking to and obtaining links from poor sites.
- Not properly pre-selling readers.
The two persons you must please to be successful in e-business are the search engines and your readers. Structure your pages in a way that it’s easy for indexing by the search engines and easy for readers to find pages. Make your links look as natural and real as possible. If you want to link to a site, link to one that is relevant to yours and your readers can benefit from. Do same when building inbound links. Offer value on some sites where your target readers visits so you get relevant links and targeted traffic to your site.
The one rule to please the search engines is ‘keep things real’. And while at that always keep your readers in mind. If you can make them happy always they will be glad to make you money.
5. Not properly monetizing visitors
The monetization models you implement on your site, do they fit with your topic and profitable with it? How many monetization models do you use? Could there be other ways you can monetize your visitors that you haven’t implemented yet?
To maximize profit from your site make sure to use monetization models that are profitable with your site and your visitors will be interested in to make you money. Don’t implement a monetization model because problogger is making good money implementing such model on his site. It must fit will your topic and also profitable with it.
Don’t wait till your site is getting good number of visitors to start wondering what monetization model to implement. Plan that in the preparation stage that way you ensure the monetization models that interest you are profitable with your topic.
I read an article recently where someone was sharing is mistakes for others to learn from. He said he started a blog that became successful in no time getting good traffic that was increasing everyday but he wasn’t making more than few dollars. It was only later he realized that his monetization models like adsense was not profitable with his topic.
If your topic is not profitable with adsense don’t bother with it. If you plan your site well there would be many other ways to monetize it. If you know adsense interests you and you want to make good income from it then make sure your topic has a cost per click of above a $1 so that it wouldn’t take you thousands of clicks to make few hundreds.
If you take these points seriously and work on it then it’s a matter of time before you succeed.Planning is everything. Nothing happens with luck online. Your result is a direct reflection of the work you have put in. If you’ve been online for some time and not succeeding, it’s never too late to start over and do things right.
If you are yet to start an e-business then you are lucky because now you can start well. See the article how to start a blog it gives a detailed information on all the plans you should make and how to get the information you need to make them. I appreciate the opportunity to share my knowledge and experience with you.
Karo Itoje is a full time online home based business infopreneur. She started her career blogging but failed at first because she stumbled into it. She then took sometime to read and learn what blogging was about, realizing why she failed at first she created a website dedicated to blogging for beginners where she provides step by step simple to understand articles and tutorials on blogging which aim to guide beginners to starting their e-business right to avoid wasting valuable time. Image credit FreeDigitalPhotos.net