Who wants to start an online business, really? There’s a lot of interest in starting an online business for several reasons. Maybe you’re fed up of your boss, you hate the commute or you just feel trapped in life or that you’re not living up to your full potential.
Perhaps you’ve had a career for a long time, and you can’t earn the same money anywhere else? There’s many reasons to start an online business. Maybe it’s lack of cash or just that you need a new direction. For me, it was all of the above!
There’s a few benefits of starting an online business. It’s not all sunshine and roses though. It’s tough and you should be prepared to work for it for the duration to achieve the results you want.
Why Start An Online Business?
Here are a few of my own personal reasons:
I can work when I want from where I want. This can be a double edged sword of course! If you can work whenever you want, you need to be very disciplined with your time. Working from home is a luxury and it’s very easy to slip into poor habits and get nothing done!
I don’t have a boss – I always hated being controlled and having to stick to the 9 to 5 working hours. If you’ve got a good boss that’s great. There’s many who don’t though. I’ve had many jobs over the years and many bosses. I’ve had to learn to be productive with my time working online in order to actually make the online business work though. This has taken some getting used to!
Earnings are performance related – again, a double edged sword! If you don’t make sales you don’t earn anything! But, if you can learn which strategies are working and make them work for you, you can use the automation of the internet to help you grow your business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!
I can choose my days off – having days off if you’re self employed is more of a luxury than with a job though. When you’re working for yourself you want to work! You want to keep moving your business forwards. Taking time away is always available but your motivations are different with an online business. In a job, you can’t want to get away, but your trapped by the income. In an online business, you’ve got time but are working towards earning an income.
The Downsides Of An Online Business
One of my main motivations for starting an online business was the flexibility of working hours. I wanted something I could pick up and drop around other work. However, unless you keep working on your online business, it’s not going to make you any money!
When I got distracted with work that came up, my online business fell behind. I had to get myself back in gear when I returned to it. It’s much easier to sustain an online business if you do a little every day, than if you continually take time away and neglect it.
For a long time too, I wasn’t earning anything from my online business. This will depend on the strategies you choose to use. If you’re working regularly, you can use paid marketing to get things going more quickly. Without regular employment, you’re going to need to spend time building content. This takes time and is a much slower strategy than using paid marketing.
Affiliate marketers who get the best results in the shortest time use paid marketing strategies alongside a ready made sales funnel which has a good range of products in it.
Who Shouldn’t Start An Online Business?
Don’t start an online business if you’re not prepared to work hard for a long period of time. You need to be the kind of person who can be hard working, ambitious and patient. If you think you’re just going to ‘give it a go’, it’s probably not for you.
Anyone can learn the strategies of online marketing and use those skills to sell digital products over the internet. Digital products are far better to sell than physical products. See best products to sell online. That’s because digital products pay up to 50% commissions compared to up to 10% for physical products.
Most people who succeed online have a strong enough reason to pursue it and overcome any barriers to success. There are many such barriers. See my article on mistakes affiliates make.
Learn More & Get Started
If you’re interested in starting an online business you can access a free 7 day video series here.
You can also access an online community and all the tools and software you’ll need to build your own online business from scratch. If you’re ready to get started use this link to access the SFM App or contact me for any further information.