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
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
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
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?
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
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.
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.
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?
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!