Sure, online businesses are more flexible and scalable. Who doesn’t want to earn their fortune working in their pajamas at the kitchen table?
But if you’ve tried making money online and failed, then you know it’s not always as easy as it looks. There are a lot of people out there who seem to be doing it, but when you try it yourself, it’s just not as simple.
Here are the reasons why you might be struggling, and how to turn things around and make each one of these challenges work for you instead of against you.
1: It’s more work than you thought.
Making money online isn’t a get rich quick scheme, despite what you may have been told. Decide in advance that you’re going to work hard, overcome your mistakes and persevere until you’re profitable. Having this mindset is often half the battle.
Remember, tens of thousands of people are earning amazing incomes online. If they can do it, then so can you, if you just put in the work, learn how it’s done and don’t quit.
2: You don’t know what you’re doing.
Experience is a wonderful thing, but to get experience you’ll have to make mistakes and fall down a few times.
If there are skills you need to master, then do it. if there are needed skills that you are better off outsourcing, then do that.
And if you really want to shortcut the process, get a coach to teach you exactly what you need to know.
3: You’re in the wrong niche, or no niche at all.
Are you trying to appeal to everyone who needs to lose weight? Or everyone who wants to be smarter? Richer? Prettier? Then you don’t have a niche. When you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one.
If you have a tightly focused niche, such as training greyhound dogs, is there a way you can easily reach your target audience? If not, then you need to choose a niche where you can communicate with the exact people who want your product or service.
Finally, do the people in your niche spend money on the type of item(s) you’re selling? Maybe everyone could use a belly button brush, but not many people will spend $19.95 to get one.
Finding the right niche that is tightly focused, easy to reach and spending money is key to success online.
4: Your product or service isn’t noteworthy.
People spend money on products and services that solve their problems, enhance their happiness or make their lives easier.
If your product isn’t doing at least one of these three things, then it’s not going to sell well.
Find out what your market is spending their money on and what they wish they could buy but can’t find it. When you offer people products they already want to buy, you’re halfway to making the sale.
5: You’re lousy at selling.
Selling is a skill. It’s not something anyone is born with, and it can be learned by anyone willing to put in the effort. It’s also one of the highest paying skills in the world.
You can have the greatest product in history, but if you can’t communicate the value of the product to the prospect, then you won’t make sales.
How do you learn to sell? There are many courses on copywriting (selling via the written word) and on sales. But if you were to learn just one thing that would begin to make a vast difference, it’s this: Earn your prospect’s trust. When they know you, like you and trust you, they will buy your recommendations even if you do only a semi-adequate job of articulating how the product will improve their life.
6: You have no list.
It’s important to build a group of fans who know you, like you, and trust you. When you have an active email list, you can send traffic to any offer you choose at any time. And if you’ve done a good job of communicating empathy, compassion, and patience to your subscribers, they will follow you anywhere you choose to take them.
7: You have a list but you don’t regularly send emails.
A list of email subscribers won’t do you any good if you don’t build rapport with that list and also demonstrate that you are someone worth following online.
Send out not just promotional emails but also notices of your latest blog posts where you offer comprehensive articles of how to solve problems and get things done.
You might think it’s enough to get followers on social media, but email subscribers have the potential to bring in 50 times more value than social media followers if you email them regularly with the information and offers they want.
8: You think being a lone wolf is a good thing.
One of the lures of online marketing is the thought that you can do everything by yourself, without ever truly interacting with anyone else. But consider this: The $5,000 potential coaching client is never going to sign up with you if you don’t first jump on a call with them. And the $50,000 joint venture will never happen if you don’t have someone to do a joint venture with.
Not to mention the sales you will miss if you don’t recruit top affiliates, the projects that will never happen if you don’t collaborate with others and one day the sale of your million-dollar business if you won’t talk to potential buyers.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking the internet is a place to earn a fortune without ever speaking to anyone, because humans simply don’t work that way.
9: You’re doing things the hard way.
Whatever it is that you’re doing or trying to do, odds are there is a tool, software, process or even a person who can automate and streamline things for you.
Imagine digging a hole with a shovel. Sure, you can do it over time, but it’s going to take tremendous effort and a lot of hours for you to dig a truly great hole in the ground. Bring in some heavy equipment and you’ll have that hole dug in half a day.
The internet is very much like that. No matter what you’re doing by hand, there is an easier way to do it with partial or even total automation. And the tasks that can’t be 100% automated, such as customer service, can be outsourced to someone else to do for you.
When you free yourself from mundane tasks, you can put your focus where it belongs – scaling your business.
10: You’re not producing enough.
If you write one book a year, you’re not going to earn as much as the person who writes one book a month. If you write one email or one blogpost a week, you’re not going to earn as much as the person who writes one or two blogposts and emails per day.
Figure out which tasks are bringing in the most money and then focus on those tasks. For example, if you realize that affiliates are bringing you 80% of your income, then focus on recruiting and retaining more affiliates. If you realize that creating new products is where your best profits are, get someone to help you create new products faster.
Now here’s the bottom line: The way to fail in online marketing or any other endeavor is to give up, which should tell you how to succeed:
- Never give up
- Figure out what you’re doing wrong and fix it
- Prioritize tasks that build your business
- Automate everything you possibly can
And realize that if other people can earn their fortunes online, then so can you.
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