Starting An Internet Business? Avoid These 5 Killer Mistakes

If you are thinking of or already starting an internet business, knowing what mistakes to avoid is as important as what to do in the first place. It is true that we learn from mistakes, and the best way to learn is from mistakes of others!

1. High Expectations

When you look around to start a business online, all you hear is how easy it is. Here a drop out college student makes $42,653 in a month, there a young kid makes $22,000 in two weeks. Another guy cleans out $5,000 a month. They make it look so easy. And you want to believe in this dream. You go from site to site and start thinking: “Gosh, it must be easy. If they can do it – I can do it too. How much do I want? $5,000 a month? OK.”

You want to believe that you can get $5,000 a month starting next month. It’s so appealing.

The Ugly Truth: Yes, it is quite possible to get to this level, but… not right now. You simply have to work your way up. I know, it’s not what you want to hear, but it’s the way it is. You can make money online and start your business very soon, but it will take some time to get to a level where you can quit your day job. Don’t expect to hit it in a week or two. Be realistic, adjust your expectations and this way you’ll have far better chances to make it on the Internet. Don’t aim at $1,000 a week when you are starting, then get just $50, get discouraged and quit. Set your starting figure low: $100 a week. Hit it, exceed it, feel happy and grow.

2. Millionaire In Six Months

If you’ve read the first mistake, it takes time to work your way around Internet business. You hear “gurus” telling stories of hitting jackpots and making hundreds of thousands in a month. You want the same. Not so fast. In most cases it took them years of preparation to get to this level.

The Ugly Truth: Yes, you can become the next Internet millionaire, but chances are it won’t happen just this year. You have to figure out this business, learn a lot and do even more. It all takes time. Be realistic and prepare: it’s a long road, not a lotto strike. Allow yourself more time to get started and run and you won’t be discouraged if you don’t get your million in a year.

3. You Don’t Need Money

You hear it all the time: all you need to start a business online is $20 for a new domain name. You can even start for free. By promoting affiliate offers.

The Ugly Truth: Firstly, you need to learn and learning costs. As the saying goes: “If you think learning is expensive, try ignorance”. Realistically you need to know what to do and how to do it right. And this knowledge will cost you. If you are lucky enough to find from the first time a course that suits you, you’ll spend $37 to $97 to start. If you keep looking, the numbers will add up.

Secondly, the most effective ways of setting up and running your business are usually not free. Things like advertising, hosting, auto-responder and the like all cost you money. Just like with any “normal” business, you have to have financial reserves to start your own Internet enterprise.

4. Push-A-Button Systems

There are so many “just push this button” systems on the Internet and they are all so appealing:
• You don’t need to know HTML
• You don’t need a website
• You don’t need money
• You don’t need any knowledge

You get the picture. You buy the system and…

The Ugly Truth: How often have you bought a “You don’t need a website to start making money right now” system just to find out that you need: a) to register your own domain, b) set up your WordPress blog and c) start promoting it?

Sales letters are just what they are: they sell. Don’t really trust all that they say, be sceptical and try to find out what a system actually does. If you don’t understand how it works – don’t buy it, you won’t be able to make it work.


5. I’ll just read this…

Two words: information overload. When you start your Internet business you want to get as much information as you can to get it right. It is essential, of course. So you buy a course, you read some forum postings, subscribe to newsletters and… get addicted. You like to read, you like to learn simply because that’s what we are all used to. That’s what we’ve been taught half of our lives: to read and learn. And once you’ve finished a course, you find another, you read e-mail, they recommend you something new. It always looks like you are missing something, one more bit and you’ll get the whole picture. Then you’ll start…

The Ugly Truth: To start your business on the Internet, you need to know basics. And they are simple: get your domain, set up a site and start promoting. You already know how to do it. You’ve read it all over the net. Now do it! The simple truth is that you need to start doing things as soon as you can. When you do something two things happen: you get results (and negative results are valuable results too) and you learn. That’s why it’s so important to start doing things as soon as you learn something.
You’ve read an article on Facebook advertising? Go and try it! If it works for you, it works. You get results. If it doesn’t – find out why and try to fix it, you’ll learn so much by doing this.

Now that you know, look at your own plans to start an internet business, do some adjustments, be realistic, don’t blindly trust “gurus” and make your own action plan.