by Mark Thompson

Don’t believe what all the Guru’s tell you it’s not easy to make money online. Via my Blog and forum I get to chat to lots of people who all have one thing in common they want to make money online. Often this is to supplement a poorly paying full time job, to bring in some extra money to help out with bills or just so that can get away from a mundane 9-5 job. Unfortunately about 95% of these people won’t get to realize their dreams and be able to make a significant online income. There are 5 basic mistakes that people make when they set out on an online career. The sad thing is that most of these can be easily avoided with a bit of planning and preparation. Let’s look at the mistakes and how you can avoid them.

1 Failing to Plan Is Planning to Fail

Just like with any real world business you should produce a business plan before you start your online business. Create the plan around your strengths so that you can keep your initial costs low. If you lack many of the skills you’ll need then use the first 6 months to learn them. This short apprenticeship will pay dividends in the long term

2. Don’t the believe the hype

It’s a successful Internet marketer’s job to make you believe what you read in their sales letters. Having read the sales letters or email you’ll be certain that you need whatever product they are promoting this week to be successful. STOP! You don’t. There is no replacement for hard work. Learning how to do things yourself without relying on some tool will be the best long term investment you can make.

3. Lack of spending control

I lost count of the number of people I know who have spent thousands of dollars on tools and e-books and still have not made more than $100 online. If you spend $100 on tools then you need to make $101 before you make a profit. Start out by joining a forum and see what people are doing to make money. Test their methods and if they work and you make a profit then buy tools that will help speed up the process.

4. Failing to Focus

I am sure that if you’ve been online for any length of time you will have met someone who jumps from one method of earning money to another almost every month. Last month they were buying and selling domains and were going to make a fortune. This month they are affiliate marketing because there was no longer any money in domains. It’s not that there is no longer money to be made it’s just that they don’t give any method a long enough chance to work or they haven’t mastered the skills required yet.

5. You think you know all you need to know.

It’s all to easy to think that you know all you need to know about your business model. Recently I’ve had newsletters from 3 or 4 well know marketers telling me that I need to join Twitter and Hubpages as these are going to be the next big thing. I’ve been using both of these resources for the last 9 months. It’s vitally important that you try to keep up with the latest sites and technologies and not just wait for an email from some guru, by that time it’s generally too late.

Making money online is not easy but that doesn’t mean it’s overly difficult. If you find you are making some of the mistakes above then now you know what to do to rectify them. Take some time to Annalise what you are doing and where you are going worn and you will find that you’ll soon be on the path to a good online income.

About the Author:
Leave a Reply