6 Rules To Understand Before Starting An Online Business

Written by Bryan - 0 Comments

If I were to make a list detailing why most online business attempts fail, it would start with unrealistic expectations.

Over the past 10 years I’ve had plenty of friends and family ask me to help them get started with a website or an online business. In the early days I would spend a few hours with them going over the ins and outs of creating and marketing a website. I always felt really good when we were done and confident they were going to just kill it. That never happened. Most fizzled out in less than a month. I eventually came to realize I was partially to blame. I had covered all the technical details to get started on the right foot but I had failed to address many of the challenges to pull off a profitable venture. The missing pieces were assumed with blind optimism and the rest is history.

Before I start covering the nuts and bolts I want to make sure my readers have realistic expectations. Here are 6 rules to understand before starting an online business.

Building An Online Business Is A Lot Of Work - Dismiss any notion you might have about making money online being easy. This might have been the case in 1997 but it is not reality today. It is a GRIND, especially if you are working a day job at the same time. Results are directly related to your inputs and nothing is going to come easy. If you take nothing else away from this post it is important to understand that this is WORK. I personally love this work and I hope you do too but it is still work. A lot of it.
Organic Traffic Takes Time – Many of the people I’ve taught assumed search engine traffic was a gimme from the start. It’s not. There are numerous techniques to build a link profile and rank in search engines to grow organic traffic, but even the best methods take time (think months to years, not days to weeks). This is the same for building a list and word of mouth traffic. Think of it as planting an acorn. No matter what kind of fertilizer, soil or water you use it’s going to take some time to before that seed is an Oak Tree.
Paid Traffic Is Expensive – This rule assumes you are brand new to marketing a website. Learning how to find targeted traffic for your niche and turn that traffic into sales/conversions is a learned skill. I’ve seen so many people assume they know what they are doing and lose $1,000+ on Adwords (or Banner Ads) in no time at all. Buying paid traffic should be done slowly with constant testing. (Note: expensive is relative to the return you get on the traffic. I love my paid traffic.)
There Is A Significant Learning Curve – Developing, maintaining and marketing a website requires several different skill sets and knowledge bases. Coding, Design, HTML/CSS, Hosting, Databases, Configuring/Installing Scripts, Managing a Domain, SEO, Link Building, Advertising, Writing Copy and Marketing are some of the foundations. You don’t have to master all of these skills yourself but you need to have a strong understanding what role they all play to competently outsource any of them. This takes time and plenty of reading.
You Will Fail – I’m not saying you will go down in flames, but you will experience failure along the way. It may be small failures or a complete collapse (I’ve done both). This is the point where many throw in the towel. Don’t throw in the towel. Failure is a part of the game. In fact, many of my successes were the result of unique insights I realized through failure.
Not Every Niche Is Going To Make Money – This rule is a fine line, but it is important. I hate to see people use this rule as an excuse to quit on a website/business before the proper effort has been put in. With that said, it is critical that you know when to cut your losses and try something else. A bad business model is not going to be profitable not matter how much effort you give. (Note: I will be covering how to pick a niche to avoid this problem in a later post)

Bottom Line: It takes time to build a profitable online business and there are no shortcuts (…but it is so worth it !).

I understand that there are always exceptions to these rules but they are exactly that, exceptions. If you understand these rules and are prepared to embrace them you will start out way ahead of the game.

Share and Enjoy: