Smart entrepreneurs love to know which mistakes are common so they can avoid them. Honest entrepreneurs love to talk about mistakes they did so that they can avoid repeating those mistakes.
For many years, you have toyed with the idea of starting your own online business. You have searched for a lot of information in form of articles, podcasts, eBooks, and reports and talked to many people.
In short, you notice that a lot has been said and written about starting an online business and when one is looking for how to start an online business information, he/she is bombarded with a lot of information. There is a lot of value in those pieces of information but not many people talk about mistakes to avoid when starting an online business.
The world of self-employment can be amorphous and unpredictable and it requires a lot of patience from you. You need shifts in mindset, you need to cultivate some smart habits and there are certain things you need to pay attention to.
What shifts in mindset do you need to cultivate? What smart habits in working by yourself and for yourself do you need to develop? What things do you need to pay attention to and what should you avoid? What activities should you invest your time in? What tools and systems should you put in place? And more.
As you prepare to embark on self-employment journey, I would like you to ask yourself the following questions:
- What can you offer the world? Do you have new and better solutions to an existing problem? Do you have better solutions to an existing problem?
- Is the business big or small? How much is it going to cost you?
- Are you treating the online business as a real business or just a hob?
- Are you going to build a website or blog? How are you going to meet your clients?
There are no right or wrong answers to these questions. They should just act as a guide to your online business journey.
Now on to the mistakes I want you to avoid, they say that mistakes are good for business but only if you can learn from them. I do not dispute that fact, in fact, it is the most important pillar of business success. However, I think we can avoid learning from our own mistakes by learning from the mistakes of others. This could save you time, pain and financial loses.
In this article, we shall look at the blunders committed by online entrepreneurs and how you can avoid those mistakes. If you can avoid them, then you stand a chances of making your online business a success. It is a $1.5 trillion industry you are about to embark on therefore there is a lot of potential only if you can avoid these critical mistakes.
Today I want to encourage you to take heed from the many blunders I committed in my first two years of self-employment, especially coming into it from years working as a corporate employee.
Mistake #1: Waiting too long to launch a product/service
I have a friend who has been asking for advice on how to launch a product he designed about 36 months ago. I have been encouraging him, inspiring him, mentoring him and all those kind of things but he has yet to launch his product 3 years later.
Perhaps I shouldn’t waste much time on him but I believe in him. I believe his product will be a success because it is built on a very practical and smart concept. From my end, I think I have done my best to give him all the information and resources he needs to launch his online business but as the African brothers say, ‘you can take a cow to the river but you can’t force the cow to drink from the river.’
As much as I believe in his product I know that it wouldn’t be long before the product become obsolete or someone else comes up with a similar one in this fast changing environment. Had he started 2-3 years ago, he would be miles ahead and making millions of profit by now.
Incidentally, he is not alone, there are thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs like him who wait forever to start their online business because of one reason or another. Really, it doesn’t matter what your reasons are, waiting too long to launch a product or service is an expensive mistake. I have committed this blunder too many time and I know how expensive it.
Some people just don’t have the courage to resign their jobs and start doing something they have always dreamt to do. Others talk themselves out of creating a product because they are not sure people will like it; they are simply afraid to fail. Some people think they have still not gathered enough resources, money or subscribers to launch an online business.
Whatever the reason, this is an expensive trap you should avoid at all cost. You just have to start. You just have to create a product and find out whether people actually like it and if they don’t, create another one. There is only one way to find out.
Miskake #2: Lacking Focus
When you first launch an online business, you can easily get distracted by glittery objects—those opportunities that cry for your attention even though they may not be part of your core business. When I first started out, I had no money, so I was always chasing the next hot thing that was going to make me rich overnight, at least going by the hypes.
Unfortunately, I was roundly disappointed. I tried selling a number of things ranging from personal development books, courses and tools. When one model failed, I’d try the next one and the next one did not work. I then tried affiliate marketing. It did not work and I found out that people exaggerated the amount of money one can an as an affiliate marketer or was it because my methods did not work?
According to Under30CEO, novice entrepreneurs can pivot too many times in the early days. This is another of saying most novice entrepreneurs lack focus in the early days. If you are always chasing after the next shiny thing, you will never catch the most important thing. Now, my advice to those starting out is, “Pick a very specific way to make money and stick with it. To avoid tinkering with opportunities, have enough money to start your business.’
Mistake #3: Having the Wrong Expectations
I always though starting an online business and making a million dollar in sales is easy. The problem is that I read too many rags to riches stories and forgot the fact that for every success story, there are probably thousand fail stories. The businesses that fail don’t get broadcasted in TV or written in blogs so we end up overestimating our chances to succeed.
Do not go into online business with the mentality of overnight success because such thing doesn’t exist. A lot of hard work, sacrifice and money is needed to succeed. In fact, it is harder to succeed in online business than it is when working as a corporate employee.
When you are self-employed, you can work as much as 80 hours a week. I know of people who work 90 hours a week and they still look energetic and full of life. Don’t come into the online business with exaggerated expectations. Ever heard the cliché ‘a pessimist is never disappointed?’ Apply that in your online business philosophy and you will go far.
Mistake #4: Wasting time on the small techie stuff
I regret the countless hours I spent sweating the small techie stuff that didn’t make any meaningful difference in my life. I’d spend hours tweaking a stupid plugin and then end up deleting it a couple of days later. Although I ended up getting a couple of those widgets right, the reward was too little compared to the amount of time I wasted. You should focus on what matters when it comes to your product design and website. Also focus only on widgets and plugins that are important and leave out the extra. Furthermore, crowding your website or blog with too many plugins, widgets and tools can be detrimental to your rankings because they tend to slow down the load time of the site.
Mistake #5: Starting without a plan
Do you remember the following passage in Alice in the wonderland if you have read it?
Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don't much care where
Cat: Then it doesn't matter which way you go.
Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don't much care where
Cat: Then it doesn't matter which way you go.
Starting an online business with a plan, a goal, or a strategy is very much like beginning a journey without knowing your destination. Success means getting to a certain point—but if you know not where that point is, how will you know that you have reached your destination.
You need a plan but this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t change your mind along the way if you think your original idea needs refining. If you start without a plan, you can end up wasting a lot of time
Mistake #6: Looking for a magic button to press
If you have come across some landing pages of self-titled gurus who can tell you the secret of becoming an instant millionaire—but only if you can pat with $49.99. I have never bought any of such programs but I have heard lots of stories about them to know these programs are actually crap. People who buy such programs or software or courses, whatever ‘the guru’ is selling forget four fundamental things:
- There is no such thing as overnight success
- You cannot make money without offering a real product or service that produce value to people or solves a real problem
- If something sounds too good to be true, it is. Forget the screen shots of hundreds of dollars of daily earnings they display. Those are just baits.
- Gurus are not real people but robo-selling machines that are tuned to sell $49.99 ebooks, programs or course to gullible folks looking for easy way to make money.
Do not fall into the temptation of buying a course or ebook from self-title guru telling you that you can make instant million from the internet. Save your money and learn from abundant free resources available on the internet.
Mistake #7: Not spending enough time on the content
Content is still king. No one has dethroned the king. The king is still very strong and there is no signs that there will be change of regime any time soon, so Long Live the King! If content is king, why are people not spending time to ensure that their content looks good and second to none? Many online battles are lost and won with the content.
Your content is the single most important factor in the success of your online business. Quality content attracts lots of organic visitors to your website, allowing you to make money through affiliate sales, AdSense, generate leads and increase brand awareness.
Read More: Super Tips to Write Great Content for Marketing.
Mistake #8: Preaching water and taking wine
I just read a blog that talks about ‘How to drive 1,000,000 visitors per month to your website.’ When I checked how many visitors the blog itself was getting per month through StatsHow, I was amused to find that the blog barely manages 20 visitors per month. Well, the blog’s credibility flew throw the window.
That is exactly what happens when you teach something you don’t have experience. Customers are not zombies—they are very intelligent and can read through lies. Don’t start a blog about ‘How to earn $10,000 per month when your blog barely manages $5. That ain’t right. Concentrate on offering services where you are expert in. if you are not an expert in anything, be patient and take time to learn a skill or two before you start teaching others or offering a product or service.
Mistake #9: Not Listening to Customers
When Fan Bi and Danny Wong started the Blank Label in 2009, they knew that most of their customers would be young, hipster guys. A little two years later, they were shocked to find that most of their customers had been conservative middle-aged persons.
Sometimes our market assumptions are brutally proven wrong and the onus is on us to adjust our strategy or approach. Many entrepreneurs make the fatal error of expecting the market to adjust to their views and beliefs. It doesn’t happen that way. Remember, no one cares about what you like. The center of attention should be the customer.
Talk to your customers relentlessly and know what they like. Know what products they love, what designs they prefer and how they would like to be survived. Read their social media comments. Open their emails and listen to them when they call. It is not about you anymore, it is about them.
Mistake #10: Not changing
Things change fast. If you don’t move with change, you will be crushed or left behind. I can predict with a degree of certainty that the technologies we use today in online business will be vastly different from the ones we will be using in five years’ time. Some will become obsolete while others will become less effective. A bestselling item today can become a villain tomorrow.
Reading Recommendation: How to Reignite your Startup and Small Business Idea