Tag: online business

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Why Your Internet Business Is Failing

There might be a few reasons why your internet business is failing. Here’s a few of the reasons why I failed in the past. Successful online business owners aren’t afraid of failure. In fact, they see failure as ‘feedback’ rather than failure. If you continue to fail for long enough, you’ll eventually learn what not to do and therefore learn to use strategies which work. Ultimately, it’s easier to quit and blame whatever strategy you are using. It’s much harder to keep going and accept that you simply didn’t use the right strategy, or use it in the right way. Keep learning and never quit, you can’t fail if you stick to that mentality!

Why Your Internet Business Is Failing

why your internet business is failing

So what’s the main reason why your internet business is failing? One of the main reasons I failed so many times was that I simply didn’t know what I was doing. I was all enthusiasm and no knowledge. The idea in my mind was that I could make money very quickly online. I soon learned that this wasn’t the case. In my mind, I thought I could make money by just throwing up a website and letting it find customers for me. My ignorance soon caught up with me though. I learned through many failures online what didn’t work. Putting up a website is no guarantee of success. Think of your website as a tiny little store in outer space and you’ll come somewhere close to how many people will actually visit it, without you working at it.

1. Expectation

Are your expectations too high? Are you expecting an online business to be easy? I expected people to come running to my websites because there were there. It took a long time for me to realise that the key to making any kind of success online is by getting people to your products through your website, if you have one. If your expectations are too high for your online business, and you’re looking for quick success, you will likely be disappointed.

Any business takes time to build up. Don’t expect to make it big in only a few months. Would you expect that from a normal business. Of course people so have huge successes online in less than a year. However, they massively commit to their business in more ways than one. Could your expectation be too high for what you have put in? Could this be why your internet business is failing? What have you beed spending most time on in your business? Are you growing personally and professionally?

2. Lack Of Specific Knowledge

why your internet business is failing

I started out with a lot of enthusiasm and no knowledge. Seeing how little I knew took a lot of the shine off the idea and by the time I realised how much work was ahead, I was already pretty committed. Had I known how difficult it would be, I might never have started! Getting the right knowledge upfront is key.

I jumped around from one system to another, never really getting the continuity of training and expertise I needed. It was always the next “shiny object “which promised more riches in less time. I bought into the idea because of my lack of knowledge. It took a long time for me to realise that it was a long term business, like any other.

3. Shiny Object Syndrome

Because the internet is so accessible, it’s also very easy to become overwhelmed with information. There’s always something better than what you’ve already got. Someone is always there to promise the unobtainable. If you’re struggling with one direction, there’s always someone promising you an easier path. This is known as ‘shiny object syndrome’. Sticking to a path and finding a community and good mentors is key to avoiding this pitfall.

4. Commitment

why your internet business is failing

How committed are you to your internet business? This may be a reason why your internet business is failing. I thought I was committed for a long time, but it turned out I was only committing my time and I was only prepared to do certain things. I wasn’t prepared to commit any money because that was my problem. It became like a self fulfilling prophecy. I had no money to give, so I couldn’t step from my comfort zone and pay for more training, software or products which would help me. So I stuck to working for hours at a time blogging.

Much of my time was spent learning various strategies. But the real problem was I couldn’t get any traction with my online business because I didn’t want to step out of my comfort zone and spend money to get things moving. The fastest way to get an online business working is to invest both time and money. Paid advertising strategies can very quickly change your circumstances with the right business model. Free content marketing strategies take much longer. You need to commit both time and money if you want to escape your job within less than 2 years.

Why Your Internet Business Is Failing – Own Your Business

If you’re not taking ‘ownership’ of your business, you’re expecting it to simply work without your input. While this is part of an internet business, the ability to automate it, you still need to asses every part of it and look for improvements. The main part of your business is you.

If you’re limiting yourself by going it alone, not seeking out help and not committing to your own personal growth, how can you grow your business? Seeking out successful entrepreneurs who can help you is a massive factor. I kept doing the wrong activities for years and it wasn’t until I changed my actions did things begin to change. This was after finding a community and getting involved in the regular online meetings.

Develop The Owner Not Just The Business

Not developing the owner is probably one of the major causes for why people fail with their online businesses. After all, pretty much anyone can start up online without any previous experience. Most people are not entrepreneurial. This can mean they bring their own mindset to their online business with them. I made this mistake too. I worked a job and expected that if I worked really hard for long enough, results would come.

But being an owner is different to a job. Affiliate marketing or drop shipping or any online business is performance related. If you don’t get things done, you don’t get paid! Working on the wrong activities can mean you never get paid, if you never make any sales. You need to take an overview of the business as a whole and focus on the best money producing activities, not just those activities you are good at, or enjoy. You also need to learn the things you’re not good at.

Self development is key to success with an online business. Both in terms of your online business education and your motivations

Who Are Your Friends?

why your internet business is failing

Another key reason why so many fail with their online businesses is that their friends and family don’t support them. If your 10 closest friends are opposed to your internet business, the changes are pretty good that they will subtly (or even not very subtly) attempt to undermine your efforts.

An internet business can be very lonely without some support. Again, this is why a community is good to find. Remember too, that your income can be determined by taking an average of the income of your closest 10 friends. “Birds of a feather flock together”.

Your Self Image – Why Your Internet Business Is Failing

If your self image doesn’t allow the concept of success to be a part of your life, you’ll self sabotage and default back to your comfort zone. This is a very important realisation to make. Unless you can get all parts of you mind ‘on board’ with your highest purpose and achievements, you’ll hold an inner blockage which you can’t get past. If you’ve ever felt like there is an ‘inner wall’ which blocks your success, it’ll be very likely to be your self image.

Your self image tells you ‘who you are’. If your continually reminding yourself that you’re not up to it, or that you can’t do something, it’ll be very difficult to move past this to create a successful online business. You need to find out this inner saboteur and take steps to remove its influence to your subconscious mind. Read Maxwell Maltz’s Psycho-cybernetics and get Stuart Lichtman’s book “How to get lots of money for anything fast“.

Why Your Internet Business Is Failing – Your Unconscious Saboteur

There’s a good reason your internet business might be failing because of your unconscious behaviour patterns. While consciously you want your business to succeed, you may be sending your subconscious mind conflicting signals which maintain the current status quo, or, which block you from achieving the success you desire.

If despite your best efforts you feel as though you can’t succeed, it’s probably down to your unconscious inner blocks to success. Removing these is possible by first noticing your thoughts, words and actions. What contrary thoughts do you have about success or money? How do you talk yourself down, against your best intentions? See how to train your subconscious mind for success.

Frustrated And Want It Now?

Another reason your internet business is failing is simply down to you being too impatient. Perhaps you’ve had some success already, but it’s not at the level which you want. Remind yourself of the 80/20 rule – Pareto’s principle. This basically states that most of your success comes from only 20% of the activities which you have done. By concentrating on the 20% of actions which give you your best results, you can make more progress than working twice as hard and twice as long, on the wrong kinds of actions.

So, if you’re frustrated and want more success, it’s entirely possible that you are focusing on the wrong actions in your business. If your actions are “slow burners”, like article writing, v’logging or organic traffic generation, you will have to accept that success will come much slower than if you can use paid advertising. Paid advertising takes time too, but you can scale it up very quickly once you’ve learned it. You can’t do this with organic content generation.

Working At The Wrong Strategy

It’s entirely possible that you have wasted your time on the wrong business model too. I did this several times over. I built websites which were supposed to rank on Google and make money from both affiliate marketing and Google Adsense. The problem was always traffic but I was also using an outdated strategy.

I learned from a course which was outdated. It taught how to rank websites on Google. The problem was, it didn’t work. Or, at least it didn’t work for me. Google is constantly changing and despite the strategy working several years previously, after I had bought a ‘how to’ course, it was no longer a viable strategy.

Why You Fail – Working on The Wrong Activities

why your internet business is failing

A common cause of failure with an internet business is through working on the wrong activities. You can also get ‘stuck’ in learning mode too and spend endless hours watching “how to” videos without actually applying that knowledge. If you’ve been working really hard, but haven’t seen any results for 6 months, it’s likely you’re working in the wrong direction. Of course you should get an idea of your timeline according to your strategy.

If you’re building a niche website which you hope to rank on Google, you’re going to have to do a lot of work before you see anything happen. On the other hand, with paid marketing strategies, you can start to see sales come in much more quickly. This will also depend on the training you get and your ability to take an overview of what you are doing. I made the mistake of expecting results far too early in the grand scheme of things.

Entitlement – The Hidden “Cancer” Of Your Internet Business

I’ve definitely made this mistake too. Being ‘entitled’ means you think that just because you’ve paid for a course, or have taken a certain action, that you must get a certain result. This thing about an online business is that absolutely nothing is guaranteed.

why your internet business is failing
Mindset is everything

Although a healthy expectation gives you motivation and is necessary, too much of an expectation can become entitlement. This is the idea that success should just come to you because of something you are or something you have done already. This can bring a huge amount of disappointment with it. Keep taking a step back from your internet business and ask yourself “how am I getting in my own way?” “What can I do to move things faster?”

If you’re bringing an entitlement attitude towards your internet business, you may be doing less than you can to bring about success in the long run. If you expect results to come, without doing the right actions, you’re going to be in for an unpleasant awakening.

Until you have the results you want, consider yourself to be the main reason why, instead of placing the responsibility on someone else or on a strategy or system. Until you take 100% responsibility for your life, there’ll always be an element of blaming someone else. This means you’ll shirk taking charge, because you can diffuse the blame!

Why Your Internet Business Is Failing – Your Why?

There’s many reasons which could explain why your internet business is failing. One of them is your “why?” Unless you have a strong enough reason to make your business a success, you can easily give up before you have given it a chance. I’ve heard a lot of reasons why people simply just give up. “Not enough time” was a recent one. This is quite ironic, since something an internet business can give you is time.

why your internet business is failing

But if you don’t have enough of a reason to put time in, you won’t get any of the benefits out of having a profitable internet business. If you don’t believe it will work over the long term, it will be hard to maintain the actions required to make it a success.

Unless you absolutely despise your job, have huge financial problems, or are in a situation you can’t abide by anymore, you may not have a good enough “Why?” to motivate you to take the right actions for long enough to replace your current job and provide a growing income for the future.

What’s Your Motivation?

why your internet business is failing

Is your “why?”, (your reason for starting an internet business), good enough to motivate you towards success? If life is “ok” and you don’t have a strong enough compulsion towards creating more time and financial freedom, or, you don’t believe it’s possible for you, you’ll create excuses in your mind before you even get any traction.

Could this be why your internet business is failing? If any of these ideas have hit a nerve, it’s likely that it relates to you and your business. If you want to build an online business and learn from mentors within a community, access a 7 day video series here to learn more and get started.

Thanks for reading my article “why your internet business is failing”. I hope you’ve enjoyed it? If you have anything to add or would like to leave a comment please do. Also, I’d be grateful if you shared my post! Many thanks!

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10 Reasons To Persevere With Your Online Business

Running an online business has its difficulties. From time to time it can get you down and you can wonder whether you are barking up the wrong tree. If you’re struggling with your online business, don’t give up. Remind yourself why you are doing it in the first place and re-calibrate your activities in line with your goals. Start with where you want to be with your online business and reverse engineer the results backwards to a list of basic forward steps which will take you closer to your goals. You need a vision in order to keep going. Remind yourself of this often and you will have more positive intention and belief when the going gets tough.

So here are my top 10 reasons to persevere with your online business when you’re becoming tempted to quit:

  1. Remind yourself what you have got to go back to. Usually it is a job which you don’t really want to do. What is it about your internet business which keeps you motivated? For me the number 1 reason is FINANCIAL FREEDOM. This kind of freedom allows you to live more fully and in the way you choose.
  2. This leads nicely onto my second best reason to own an internet business – TIME. Having financial freedom allows you to enjoy your time more. Your time isn’t caught up with financial obligations, job commitments and ‘have to do’s’.
  3. CHOICE. Having your own business does mean working on it and on yourself. It does allow much more freedom of choice however that a typical job. You can choose when to holiday, how to work and when to work. You can work anywhere with a laptop and internet connection. You are not obliged to anyone to work a certain amount of hours or to be anywhere for a certain time. It takes time and effort to make an internet business work in the first place, however once it is working, you have so much more flexibility in your choices, that you might in a normal ‘job’.
  4. Often the biggest motivation for many people to have their own internet businesses is what they don’t have to do. I Don’t have to: Queue in rush hour traffic, work traditional hours, accept work I don’t really want just for the money, work only for the money, feel trapped by a job, do a job I don’t like, obey my boss, have a boss, relocate because of a job, commute, stress out over bills, stress out over work commitments, take low paid work, accept unjust circumstances or unfair work obligations, tow the line, work for someone I don’t like. The list goes on and on!self esteem 3
  5. Creating your own niche business is (should be) a joy rather than a pain. There is a challenge to running an internet business and this is a good thing. Without challenges we can’t learn and grow. If it was easy we would soon get bored and look for something else more stimulating. The joy of building an internet business, learning new skills and overcoming difficulties is a rewarding process. Setting yourself free from financial burden, the stress of a job and giving yourself greater choice in the process is what helps keep you moving forwards and overcoming obstacles.
  6. Helping others attain the same freedom you are striving for. Helping others to achieve is a rewarding process which can’t be matched by only achieving for yourself. Knowing that there are many others struggling with the same difficulties which you have overcome or are overcoming, can be a vital lifeline to your success. Make it about yourself, and you can easily become unstuck. Make it about others and you have a greater reason to achieve.
  7. Spending time with family, friends and those you love. This is a reason for many to work for themselves from their laptops. It means they can work around their more important activities like seeing family and friends.
  8. Working around other obligations. A internet business can be worked around other commitments, jobs, careers and family ties to create a second income which can eventually take over as a primary income. This is the reason I began looking for an income from the internet several years ago. My film and TV work was very sporadic and I needed a second job. However when the work came it was at short notice and could take me away for several weeks at a time. This pattern of work wasn’t compatible with a second job. The internet offered a solution to this problem.
  9. Lack of choice. If you don’t have a degree or specific training, your career options can be fairly limited and you can find yourself ‘stuck’ in the lower pay scales. An internet business offers the opportunity for anyone to carve their own career path by learning new skills and leveraging the internet to increase their income and quality of life.
  10. Job security. Or rather the lack of job security means that many people are now having to work two or more jobs to keep the wolf from the door. Employers are favoring self-employed and short term contracts more and more because they don’t have to offer holiday pay, pensions, health benefits and sick pay. Technology is taking many low paid jobs which can now be automated. Just look at the self service tills at supermarkets which used to be all manned by operators only a short time ago. Now they are almost all automated. An internet business makes use of not only the growing trend in technology, but also the growing trend in online shopping, which is also putting smaller shops and ‘brick and mortar’ businesses out of business.

So before you throw in the towel, think of the path you are creating for others who will look to you for advice in the years to come. To learn more about staring your own internet business, or for help with your existing online business check out this free video series.

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Top Tips To Be More Effective In Your Online Business

Owning an online business can be all consuming and often we can get caught up in the ‘nitty gritty’ of our businesses without actually moving it forwards. We can get stuck in the learning, building or understanding phase of the business and literally spend years here without actually creating the results and reasons for having the business in the first place.

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So here are my top tips being more effective in building your own online business:

1. Know what you want. This sounds like it should be simple but often we come up with vague and ambiguous goals like ‘more money’, ‘greater flexibility’, ‘more time’ etc.. When you write down a goal or a desire for something you need to know when you have achieved it. How will you know when you will have achieved ‘more money’, ‘more time’ and so on? It needs to be iron clad. I want to make an extra 20,000 a year by this date is a specific goal and you will know if you have achieved it or not. Wishy washy goals are vague and you don’t know when you have achieved them. You need to work on what you want because if you don’t someone else will! Your life will get drawn into those with greater intentions, desires and ambitions than your own – or at the very least it will be controlled by your habits.

2. Create positive habits. We all have some habits which we would rather not have but successful people have become so because they created habits out of doing those things which unsuccessful people won’t do. Do something every day which will move your business towards your longer term goals, however small.

3. Write down your goals. Your habits on a daily basis should be in line with your longer term goals. If you are working in a 9-5 job for minimum wage, the chances are small that you will make a million or be your own boss in the next 10 years unless you change something radically. Writing down goals gives you something tangible to work with. Even if you don’t know how they will materialize you should still do it. See how-to-get-lots-of-money-for-anything-fast for the ultimate book in goal setting. Continually ask yourself if the activities you are doing on a daily basis are bringing you closer to your long term goals.

4. Write lists  and prioritize them. Many people write lists so that they can tick them off and feel good about themselves. If you only write down tasks which are vital to move your business forwards, you will save a lot of time and energy on the less important items. Prioritizing your list empowers you to do the most important things first. If time runs out or you get distracted by something you will have least completed the most beneficial and important task. We often do the opposite and leave the most important task until the end perhaps because it is the most difficult. Then it doesn’t get done. Ask yourself with each list which task will massively affect your business and which ones can be crossed off or aren’t so important. Don’t get caught up in unimportant busy-ness at the expense of the vital. If something crops up in the middle of your day, add it to your list in order of importance rather than just jumping on it.

5. Surround yourself with people on a similar path. If you are working for yourself you need to be talking to others in the same boat. Working on a online business can be very lonely and difficult especially when your social group doesn’t support your lifestyle choices. It can be damaging to your self image and self esteem to  be around people who don’t support your vision. If you have people around you who are experiencing similar difficulties and challenges then it make it so much more worthwhile to spend time with them. If you haven’t found a community of similar people yet I would highly recommend the SFM community. Click here for your free video series.

6. Know your ‘WHY?’ Check out my why’s here.  Having a list of your main reasons why you are running an internet business is a great motivational tool which you can look back over when you are experiencing doubt and uncertainty over your business. Having a why gives you a reason to get up in the morning and work on your internet business.

7. Get support. For years I have worked on my own on my online business and at times it has been completely soul destroying! Despite being your own boss, choosing your own work habits and playing by your own rules there are times when you can look back wistfully at some crappy 9-5 job simply because you had some comradeship there! Working online can be lonely. If you are trying and failing at an online business you need to get some more support. Check out the SFM community with this free boot camp series of videos. 

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Why mindset is the most important thing in an online business

When starting an online business there are many things to consider and the running of your business has many different components. However, an internet business is different from other businesses and often it is simply you on your own – no staff, no co-workers. The limit of your business is really your own limitations in terms of your mentality. If you get dismayed and disillusioned with your business, you lack the drive to carry on and your business suffers. Often there will be no-one supporting you to move forwards except for you and your inner drive. People will often try to dissuade you from even having an online business and this can further distract you from your goals.

Mindset is everything

Once you lose your motivation for your online business it is hard to move forwards. Your once ‘dream job’ working from home or anywhere in the world becomes a bind and you struggle to achieve results. You question whether you should be doing it and look for alternatives. Rather than moving forwards with your online business you become frustrated and indifferent, wondering if it was too lofty a dream. This can happen when you are working on your own and it illustrates why mindset is so important. Once you get into this state how productive do you think you will be?

We can often get caught up in the details of the business without focusing on ourselves and keeping our spirits high and our mindset focused. When this happens it is time to focus on the problem – you and your belief. Work on the person and not just the business. Look at your business and yourself as potential rather than simply looking for the results. Look at your activities rather than for results. Don’t blame the business and take full responsibility.

Looking for results often means we are looking for some acknowledgement that our business is working. This can be because we lack the belief in our business or ourselves and the drive to move it forwards. We look at our poor results and re-enforce our limiting beliefs about the business. Our efforts reflect our lack of belief and we ‘struggle’ to move forwards. We look again for results which are not there, and this reflects on the amount of effort which we are prepared to put in. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy and the route cause is our lack of belief. We need to go back and remind ourselves at this point why we are working on an internet business. We need to develop the owner not the business.

Once you can acknowledge when you are getting into a negative state of mind, you can readjust your activities and take appropriate action. It may be that your activities are not moving your business forwards or that you are doing the same things over and over again which are not giving you any results. Go back and write down your goals. Write down your reasons for owning your own internet business. Visit the places you would like to live and create some inspiration to move towards. Set a lofty goal which if you would achieve it, it would blow your mind! Get outside of your comfort zones. Get uncomfortable. This is the fuel of your business – your drive and your mindset. Keeping in a positive ‘state’ will dramatically improve your results so becoming more aware of your state is an important part of working for yourself.

If you haven’t already checked out the SFM boot camp series you can click here for a free series of videos which show you how to build an internet business from the ground up. Jay and Stuart are passionate about this course and it covers a huge amount of mindset material. Even if you already have an internet business the material on mindset alone will dramatically improve your results. 

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Why now is the best time to start an online business

As Eckhart Tolle says there is no time like the present but this is even more true of an internet business. Before the internet came along and allowed the average person to gain access and connect to a large portion of  the population, it was only big businesses which had the potential, financial resources and power to reach a global audience. Now it is within the reach of any small business simply due to the power of the internet to connect to the entire planet. Before the internet came along in order to create a a business which runs 24 hours a day 7 days a week and 365 days a year you would have needed to purchase or rented  a physical business, employed staff and spent vast quantities on advertising it.  Most businesses failed within their first year and in order to build a business which could compete with the reach now available through the internet you would have had to have spent hundreds of thousands on it.

We can do things now which were impossible for the average person 20 years ago and a business can be started online for only a fraction of the cost of a  physical business and with a far greater customer reach than was previously possible. Almost all businesses have a website now and internet marketing has allowed many people to build a lifestyle of freedom which was only available for the super rich just a few years ago.

Not only has the internet got the capacity to far outreach the traditional business model in terms of advertising and customer connectivity but it also provides the means to facilitate a full time working business model which runs day and night without fail delivering products and making money even without the business owner being physically present. Very few opportunities exist today which allow the total flexibility of an internet based business. We can now operate an internet business from almost anywhere in the world and all that is needed is an internet connection and a laptop computer.

In terms of lifestyle choice the internet is providing a means to live anywhere in the world you choose and earn potentially an unlimited amount of income. This is true because of how the internet can serve many people at the same instant. In a traditional business there is a counter and a shop. The customer comes in the shop and buys over the counter. If many people come in at the same time a queue develops and only one customer can be served at any one time. With the internet many customers can be served instantaneously and automatically through a checkout system which allows multiple users to purchase items at the same time. No-one even has to be there once the systems are set up. The products are sent out automatically and the money is taken over a secure checkout – all completely on autopilot.

Once the systems are set up an in place online you have what is effectively an automated shop which can take multiple purchases at the same time. Your only job then is to direct customers to your shop.

With more and more people taking advantage of buying over the internet it is a growing industry and with the ease and speed of internet purchasing this trend is only going to continue.

The information age has grown faster than we have. People are still working from an archaic mentality and ‘stuck’ in an old fashioned thought process of trading time for money. What we can achieve in our lives is only limited by our current thought processes as the information age has surpassed current thinking. To learn how to implement the basic tools and strategies needed to implement an online income strategy, enter your email here for a free boot camp course. You can unsubscribe at any time and the course is totally free.