Why Making Money Online Isn’t Working For You

Making Money Online is a dream for many people.  There is no shortage of individuals flooding in every month trying to get in on the Internet Marketing gold rush, hoping to carve out a few million dollars for themselves.  Sadly, most people walk away empty handed and jaded.  They blame the “charlatans” that sold them on the dream, but didn’t deliver.

So many people that I talk to regarding making money online simply have no clue what is involved in running an online business.  This is because they also have no clue what’s involved in running an offline business either.  I have run numerous bricks-and-mortar / offline businesses in the “real world” and I’m very aware of the costs associated with starting a business – both financially, emotionally and time wise.  It’s not easy.  Most businesses in the “offline” world will fail – it’s almost a statistical certainty.

The difference in the online world is that upfront startup costs can be much smaller and specific advice can be found much easier.  In the offline world, unless you purchase a franchise, nobody will walk your through starting your own business.  You have to figure it all out by yourself.  In the online world, there are thousands of opportunities for you to start your own online business.  This is because the Internet is such a vast place and teaching someone else how to operate an online business doesn’t put you out of business.  Most people online are not as afraid of training their competition because the market is so huge.

Unrealistic Expectations

Some people will start up an online business of some sort, and they’ll put in $50 into the business and maybe a couple of weeks of work and then wonder why they haven’t made millions yet.  If that’s your expectation of starting an online business, you have seriously warped expectations.  It’s not that easy.  It’s also not that difficult, but it’s not going to happen overnight and the Internet is not a free, bottomless ATM.

How much would it cost you to start a Domino’s Franchise?  What about a McDonald’s Franchise?  What about a Wendy’s, or a Minute Lube?  What about opening up your own restaurant, or starting a mechanic shop?

Starting a regular business can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $500,000 in up front costs just to open your doors.  Then the monthly overhead costs can completely eat away any profits for years before you ever make a dime.  Yet, millions of people start up businesses all the time.  Why?  Because the upside potential once you get through the initial “crap” is so amazing.

It’s the same thing with online businesses.  You have to treat it like a real business.  You might need to drop $5,000 or $10,000 to learn the things you need to learn to be a successful online entrepreneur.  It won’t happen instantly overnight either.  It might take you a while to experiment and figure things out.  If you’re a fast learner, you can speed that up but you will still need to experiment and establish what works for you.

Pessimistic / Skeptical Attitude

Besides having unrealistic expectations, the other thing that completely kills people’s chances of having success online is having the wrong attitude.  If you approach every opportunity to learn how to make money online with the attitude of “Oh, it’s a scam… no way this is for real.”, you might as well quit right now and go back to your day job.  The successful online marketers are optimists, not pessimists.  That doesn’t mean they are stupid / naive and believe everything they read online.  It simply means they don’t automatically assume everything is a scam.

There are a lot of people making money online.  A lot of people are becoming online millionaires.  99% of them you will never even hear of.  They don’t have Blogs, and they don’t put out “How to Make Money Online” systems.  For every “Make Money Online” Blog or system out there, there are thousands of people making money online in the background that you don’t even know about.  They prefer to keep quiet and stay anonymous.

The opportunity to make money online is HUGE, and there are so many people making money online you can’t even imagine how big the number is.  Everyone knows the few dozen online Bloggers or top affiliates that have a public presence, but there are millions of people that stay hidden.  The amount of money that flows through the internet is staggering.

Pessimists will not see this.  They will see everything as a scam.  Anything that seems simple and easy, they will dismiss it for being to easy.  Anything slightly more difficult, they’ll dismiss it as too complicated to work.  In the meantime, millions of optimists are making money online.

Thinking Too Big

Too many people see making money online one-dimensionally.  Their ask themselves “Can I make millions online?” and they can’t honestly answer that with a YES because they don’t believe it’s possible yet.  So they give up.

Who the hell says you only have the option of making either MILLIONS or ZERO?  What about making $200/m online?  What about $50/m online?  Why does an online income have to always be viewed as a replacement for your job?  What about just making some extra cash for fun?

What if you thought about making money online totally differently?

What if you thought about your online business from a completely different perspective.  Imagine starting a Blog.  Your intention with this Blog is to share some part of your life that you’re passionate about, and of course you also want to earn some extra money from it.  You work on the Blog for one year straight, building up your article base, writing great content, helping out other people and enjoying yourself throughout the process.

You include Google Adsense on the site, offer some graphical banners for sale and maybe offer to write review articles as well.  After one year of running the Blog, you get it to the point where you are making $300/month pretty much on autopilot as long as you keep writing new content on a regular basis.

Now, you take that $300/month income from your Blog, and you go to the car dealership and upgrade your current car to a brand new car that you really like with a lease payment of $300/month. 

Guess what… your Blog has now paid for your car.  As the Blog continues to make money, it pays for your car payment.  Now, maybe you set your targets on something else.  You increase your income to $500/month from the Blog about 6 months later and now the income pays for the monthly payment on a small hitch trailer and a small boat you can take out on the weekends.

My point is that yo
ur online income does NOT have to only be about replacing your job or making millions online.  Making money online full time may be something I enjoy doing and many others, but there are also millions of people that use their online income to supplement the quality of their life, while still working at the job they are at.

I have a site of mine that I put some effort into years ago, and I haven’t touched it in over two years, yet it continues to make $50/month every single month.  I do absolutely nothing for this site right now, except just keep it hosted.  Now, $50/m might not seem like a lot of money, but that adds up to $600/year.  If you had $600 extra money this Christmas to do your Christmas shopping, would you enjoy that?  How about an extra $600 in cash to spend every year when you go on vacation? 

I think you get the point.  Instead of trying to figure out how you’re going to build the next multi-billion dollar online empire, why not just try setting up your first site that makes $10/month!  It’s really not that hard.  $10/m is an extra $300 at Christmas time.  Start there and increase it.

Stop thinking in terms of HUGE or NOTHING.  Start small and grow from there.

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