Can Everyone Make It In Online Business?
I opened up my Twitter direct messages a couple of weeks back. This wasn’t some inclusive measure: I just didn’t know they were closed.
Since then, I’ve had some people ask great questions, give me advice and generally, it’s been a good experience.
But I’ve also had some people ask really dumb questions.
Now, some people will tell you that there are no stupid questions… and all this means is that they haven’t been asked any lately.
There are stupid questions – questions which are rude, designed to waste time or otherwise show a distinct lack of care for the person you’re asking.
An example: Don’t ask someone a long-barrelled, multiple-part question on something they’ve already written about that you could probably find out yourself with a simple action.
Anyway, a bit of a digression, but it led me to think about the question, “Can anyone make it in online business?”
I’m not going to pretend here and give you the motivational sermon about breaking the 9-5, living free and sticking it to the doctors and dentists who keep you alive with pearly white teeth.
This is my best, most honest answer – as well as how you can ensure you’re one of the people that succeeds.
First Of All…
Some people have no interest or desire for online business. Or business at all, for that matter.
That’s perfectly fine. I’ve no interest in being a celebrity or a professional athlete.
It weirds me out when people say things like, “I don’t get why people work jobs when you can be an online hustler.”
In fact, that’s almost a certain sign they’ve drunk Jim Jones-style the sales letters that gurus publish for them.
Plenty of people are happy with jobs and jobs make the world go around.
And some people don’t like risk. Some don’t even like computers. And some want to have a guaranteed paycheque, going home at home time and knowing that they have the same thing to look forward to the next day.
A successful entrepreneur has a particular set of qualities that work within their environment with the right idea. Let’s not pretend it’s a magic calling nor something everyone’s going to do.
Let’s move on.
Three Qualities An Online Business Person Needs
Now we get to the controversial bit.
There are three things a successful online businessperson needs:
- Brains
- Effort
- Capital
You need at least two of these at any given time.
Plenty of people can have brains and fail. Brains don’t guarantee you’ll succeed if you sit online, retweet Tony Robbins and think that success will come to you.
Effort on its own will lead to you at best being underpaid and at worst, doing a ton of stuff that doesn’t get you anywhere.
And plenty of people throw money at businesses online; they’ll buy turnkey websites and wonder why the traffic falls and the sales dry up.
You don’t need all three.
With effort and capital, you take a high testing approach: try affiliate marketing; throw many things at the wall until one sticks. You’ll burn up your capital but if you don’t want to think, that’s what happens.
With effort and brainpower; you work hard, build assets over time and spend time working out business models that succeed with no capital (like freelancing) or you work out how to do stuff cheaply (i.e. building an affiliate list with Twitter + Free Mailchimp.)
With brainpower and capital, you can pick the right online businesses that require little attention or you can buy existing sites and outsource the work.
It’s Better To Have All Three
I imagine a few people looked at that last sentence and said, “That’s me! I’m smart and I want to be the investor with the minion army of freelancers working for me.”
It’s far better to put in the effort yourself.
Here’s how to develop effort in online business stuff.
Gamify your business goals. Pick small goals at first so you succeed. Get rid of social media, television and other stuff that distracts you. Put all the money you earn into a fund for expansion and don’t spend it.
Here’s how to develop capital.
If you have no capital, then you must expend effort and brainpower.
Learn copywriting as your first bet, and in a wider sense, learn to sell and persuade people to do what you want.
Get some skills that you can exchange for money. This can be copywriting itself, or it can be something as simple as washing windows or helping your neighbours with their shopping.
Or it can be as complex as some skill that’s taken you years to master that you charge for.
In any case, you make more money than you spend, and you put it towards raising capital. This might be easy, it might be tough. But if you want a pool of money to draw from, you have to save it or steal it, and I don’t recommend the latter.
Here’s how to develop brain power.
You don’t have to be a genius to succeed at online business.
You have to be smart enough to seek out resources that’ll help you. Then you have to be smart enough to distinguish between good and bad sources. And finally, you have to follow the resources you’re given.
Then, and only then, can you say, “I’ve done this. What can I do better?”
And you experiment and improve and learn new things.
At a certain point, you’ll find that instead of referencing other people, you’re reaching into the back of your own mind for answers. At some point, instead of saying, “I need to find something that’ll teach me X,” you’ll find yourself saying, “Hey… here’s an idea. I wonder if it works?”
And that’s how you develop the three necessary qualities for online business.
Final Thoughts
“But Jamie, 90% of businesses fail!”
Yep. And 90% of businesses fail because a lack of the above.
There’s more that goes into it, clearly, but if you have the above three qualities and you keep at it, you will succeed eventually. Maybe not to start with, but it’s like applying pressure to a problem: Eventually pressure breaks the problem.
90% of businesses fail, and you have two choices:
- Assume you’ll be one of the 90%.
- Assume you’ll be one of the 10%.
If you intend to be one of the 10%, then the fact that 90% eliminate themselves is a good thing for you.
And I don’t know why you’d automatically assume you’ll be part of the 90%.