Mistakes to Avoid If You Want a Successful Online Business

Starting an online business today is quite easy now. But if you don’t approach it in the right way you will never be successful. Many people who start an online business give up in a very short time. It would help if you did not do the same.
In this blog post, I will identify some mistakes that you need to avoid with your online business. You have a greater chance to succeed if you avoid these deadly mistakes.

1. Not Treating Your Online Business as a Proper Business

Curiosity can start an online business but it takes more than curiosity to sustain it. I have seen some people make claims about how they can make a fortune with just a few clicks of their mouse so they get themselves a domain name and some hosting and play around. It doesn’t work that way! They follow the methods described in a training program that promises them the world. Claims of instant and constant traffic and all this kind of BS. When reality creeps in, there is nothing like making a fortune their underwear by clicking their mouse, and using “miracle software” they lose interest rapidly and quit.

The truth about this is, it costs very little to get started with an online business. A domain name on Namecheap or GoDaddy is less than 30 dollars. So, with so little invested it is no wonder that so many people give up when they realize that it is not as easy as they think.
If you don’t want your online business to fail, you need to take it like a real business. You do not have to invest a lot of cash but you do need to make an emotional investment in your online business.

Setting up an online business is relatively easy – but making it a success is not. It doesn’t matter what some people tell you, there is work involved to create a great and sustainable online business. You will need to invest in digital tools to make it work properly.

There are going to be days when things will go not as planned. The results you are getting may not be good enough. You need the resilience and commitment to overcome these problems and carry on. Treating your online business as a real business will help you to do that.

2. Not Having A Plan

Do you know the number of people who have actual plans for their online business? The answer is very few. The actual number of failed online businesses is not known but I am sure they are many. Those who are new to online businesses at times they don’t have a plan. So, they are then surprised when it all fails.
Before you launch an online business, you must set reasonable goals. The easiest goal to set is a financial goal. Think about how much you want your online business to generate in the first 12 months and then turn that into your financial goal.
You are probably starting an online business because you believe it will give you some freedom. This is okay anyway. Yes, a successful online business can provide you with freedom. No more working a dead-end job and commuting for hours.
Your online business has the potential to make you a lot of money. The only thing standing in the way is you. So, use the SMART goal-setting process to set your goals. If you are new to the concept of SMART, this is what it means:

Specific – your goal must be specific e.g. my online business will generate $30,000 in the next 1 year.
Measurable – you must be able to measure how you are progressing with your goal. Fortunately, there are a lot of tools available to measure the success of your online business. There are metrics to use in order to get your KPIs (Keep Performance Indicator) right
Achievable – there is no need for hype. There is a real possibility that you will not make 1 million dollars in the first year. Not impossible though
Realistic – Think about the resources needed in a realistic projection.
Timed – you must add a time to your goal such as 1 year. Open-ended goals are useless.

You need to create a plan to achieve all your goals. What are the daily tasks you need to carry out to move close to your goals? There are macro tasks that you need to achieve but you will need to break them into micro tasks to get your goals realized.

A simple plan would be:
Decide online business model and your niche.
Website Set-up
Create Contents
Get offers to Promote
Then Promote the offer to your audience.
Of course, there are different levels of activities. There are high-level and sub-tasks involved to achieve your goals. You can start today by deciding on the niche that you want to enter for example. Write your goals and plans down and carry them with you wherever you go.

3. Choosing the Wrong Niche

You have to carefully choose the niche for your online business. You can’t afford to get it wrong because If you get this wrong then you will spend a great deal of time, effort, and money and not get much in return. There are thousands of niches, but not all of them are suitable for an online business.

A lot of influencers or online coaches will tell you to follow your passion. There is a good intention behind it. If you start an online business with a niche you are passionate about, you will be more motivated to make it work.
The question remains, will the niche you are passionate about making you the desired money? You may be passionate about goat rearing but how many people are passionate about this?

These are the major factors to consider if you are choosing a niche:
The demand for that niche
The money to be made in the niche
If there are more “no s” to the above factors, then you need to find another niche. One of the best places to gather information about demand for a particular niche is using Keyword planner by Google. Just enter in some seed keywords that relate to your niche e.g. “Affiliate marketing” and see how many searches this and similar terms receive each month. The higher the number of searches the better.

To check if there is money in the niche, do seed keyword and perform a search in Google. If you can find a lot of ads on the first page of this search, then this is a good indicator that there is money to be made.
Equally try and use a website called OfferVault.com and search for available offers using your seed keyword. If there is a lot then you are probably a winner. There are three main or top niches that I believe and over time have seen growing demand are:
Health and Fitness Niche
Online Money-making Niche
Personal development – better relationships, meeting boys/girls, self-improvement, etc

Well, If you are in any doubt about choosing the best niche – I will advise you to go where the money is. You don’t need to be an expert in the niche right now. You can learn and master it. Why should you be an expert in the wrong niche?

4. Choosing the Wrong Online Business Model

There are several online business models that you can choose from. These models have been tested and proven to produce fantastic results if well followed according to their rules.

• Amazon FBA
• Your own e-commerce stores
• Self-publishing
Affiliate marketing
• CPA marketing
• Selling your own products and services
• Freelance services
• Drop-shipping

The model you choose is a critical element that determines your overall success in the process of online money-making niche.
If you have the following skills, they are freelance services that are always in demand:

• Web design and development
• Creating mobile applications
• Search engine optimization
• Social media marketing
• SEO-optimized content writing
• Copywriting
• Graphic design (logos etc)
• Programming

The easiest of these models is affiliate marketing, probably because it is so easy to get involved with affiliate marketing there are a lot of online business owners doing it so you are going to have competition.
The concept is simple. You are paid based on people who buy products you recommend to them. Such it is purely performance-based sales commission.
To get started in affiliate marketing, you will need to sign up for their affiliate program and promote using a traffic generation medium to get potential buyers. Each time that someone makes a purchase using your affiliate link, you will earn a commission from the product vendor.

You can promote physical products or digital products. Physical products are an easier sell but the commissions tend to be low. It is harder to sell digital products but the commissions are usually much higher.
We have many affiliate marketplaces you can sign up with, such as Clickbank, Digistore, ShareAsale
Do you have or you have written some books, then you can publish on Amazon or self-publish on other platforms like – Selar.co, Kobocourse

Dropshipping is a third-party arrangement where you sell physical products on your website and a dropshipping company fulfills all of your orders to your customers. The easy part is, that you don’t need to purchase any stock as you just promote the products that the dropshipping company offers. If the commissions are not that high for this business so you need to sell a lot of products to make good money.

Dropservicing is a fairly new term but the concept has been around for years. It is really service arbitrage – you purchase a service from a freelancer at a low price and sell it at a higher price to the customer.
All these online business models have the potential to make you rich but you must be focused on the right.