In today’s age, the age of information we have entered an era where all the physical processes are either being automated, digitized or outsourced. More and more people want to “make money online”.
While it’s extremely easy to start an online business as compared to a decent offline business but it’s equally hard to differentiate and make your presence felt in the online world. Even e-commerce is filled with thousands of wannabe Amazons. There were hundreds of social networks before Facebook and many more come and shut shops every month.
I won’t compare the ease or difficulty of running an offline or an online business. (Being a part of both gives me enough authority to speak on this topic though! Let’s save that for another time.) But one thing is sure, if you are under the impression that you can be an overnight success online that too without doing any hard work then my friend you can not be more wrong.
If you are a “become rich quickly”, “make money fast” type person then you have come to the right place. Apart from shattering your false beliefs, I will also tell you 7 secrets to sure-shot failure in your online business.
For those who are serious about running a full-time, respectable business, online, be it e-commerce, blogging, web-services or any other net-biz, consider these the 7 deadly mistakes you want to avoid or be ready to shut your shop!
– Not Considering it a Business.
Did you notice that I didn’t use the word blog or blogging to refer my blog? Instead, I used the word business multiple times in this article to share the mentality with you. Most of us start an online business as a hobby, an extension to our passions but forget switching to business mode when the time comes, making it just a passion, a hobby, Just another WordPress blog!
At one point of time, you need to understand that you are in either full-time or not-at-all, as far as business is concerned. You can manage a blog as a hobby to express and share your thoughts keeping the business part away. But most other businesses don’t enjoy such a flexibility. So, if you are in for the money-part, be ready to differentiate it from a hobby!
– Not showing up regularly.
This may seem a simple albeit useless advice but it’s actually very hard to show up!
Most of the online businesses shut shops within few months either due to loss of interest from the founder/s’ part or from the users part. They lose hope when they are this close to success. One thing I have learnt so far is that “showing up regularly” is often half work done. You don’t know what to do next, heck you don’t know what to do now. Still, just show up! Just keep working and don’t look back.
I started 2 other blogs before this one, one was shut down within a month due to lack of interest, the other within six months due to lack of patience! They say, “The third time’s the charm.” Let’s see what the future holds for me and this blog.
– Hesitation to invest.
People today want an infinite ROI, i.e, earning infinite money without investing a dime. Mathematically, earning even a single dollar without investing a cent counts as infinite ROI.
Being an engineer by education and a self-proclaimed businessman, I have learnt that there are three other things that you can’t deny Science, Maths and Economics apart from Gravity.
If you can’t pull up enough courage to invest your “own” hard earned dollars in your “own” idea, your business, your future money-minting machine; then you know how sure and passionate you are about your online business.
– Stop learning.
Most of us think that learning ends with school or college but fail to understand that they were actually just play-schools. Life after school is the actual school and learning actually starts in the real life, not in the structured confines of the traditional education system.
In today’s world, education and degree are over-rated and your credentials are as good as crap if you don’t adapt with the fast advancements in technology and stop learning. The programming language you learned in school that landed you a well-paying job, on-campus is only going to help you only until a better alternative(both the language and you, the human) is found!
So, stop fooling around, gear up and educate yourself. Don’t hesitate to invest after all, the best investment is the investment on oneself.
– Being selfish.
Not helping others while expecting the opposite from them. That’s not how the world works!
Even nature is designed in such a way that only those features evolve that are mutually beneficial to participants of the interacting species. The best empires were not those that fought more but those that made more allies and treaties.
If you want to succeed yourself you have to help others succeed, that way you automatically succeed, even without trying! You need to focus your energy on mutual growth not in fending animosity.
– Limiting yourself.
Limiting risk, your chartering new territories. Not choosing the path less trodden. In the blogging world, limiting yourself to a single monetization method and being an Adsense slave dependant on their whims and fancies. Limiting, the opposite of growing is what can destroy even the best in business.
You must diversify and stop putting all your eggs in one basket!
– Not pivoting.
Most of the time we are so overwhelmed, so smitten with our idea that not only we hate but strictly protect any deviation from the original idea or plan of action.
Even when the customer says otherwise, the colleagues say otherwise, the whole f***ing industry is moving in the opposite direction, we stick to the holy plan. That’s the recipe for a well-planned disaster and sure-shot failure.
Sometimes we dwell on our past successes or even failures and sit there with folded hands doing nothing, taking no action. You may or may not hate change but you must remember that “Change is the only constant.”
Just hoping that you will be cautious and avoid these seven deadly sins to save your online business from a one way trip to the hell!
Please share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments section below.
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