Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Make Money Online - 5 Mistakes to Avoid

By Mark Thompson

Don't believe what all the Guru's tell you it's not easy to make money online. Via my Blog and forum I get to chat to lots of people who all have one thing in common they want to make money online. Often this is to supplement a poorly paying full time job, to bring in some extra money to help out with bills or just so that can get away from a mundane 9-5 job. Unfortunately about 95% of these people won't get to realize their dreams and be able to make a significant online income. There are 5 basic mistakes that people make when they set out on an online career. The sad thing is that most of these can be easily avoided with a bit of planning and preparation. Let's look at the mistakes and how you can avoid them.

1. Failing to Plan.

Working online is like any business you need a business plan. You also need to know your strengths and weaknesses. If you don't feel you can write articles and you don't have the funds to pay for a writer then you should avoid anything that needs a steady flow of unique content or articles. Find a source of income that will allow you to use your abilities. Don't be afraid to treat the first 6 months of your online career as an apprenticeship and learn new skills which will help in the long term.

2. You Believe all the hype in sales letters

It's a successful Internet marketer's job to make you believe what you read in their sales letters. Having read the sales letters or email you'll be certain that you need whatever product they are promoting this week to be successful. STOP! You don't. There is no replacement for hard work. Learning how to do things yourself without relying on some tool will be the best long term investment you can make.

3. You fail to control your spending

I've met lots of people who have spent thousands of dollars on tools and e-books and have yet to make any money. It's simple economics if you spend $1 you need to make $1 to break even. Before you invest in anything visit forums and see whats working for the members. Ask questions and test their methods yourself, if they make you a profit then consider investing the profit into tools that will help increase your income.

4. Failing to Focus

Earning money online takes time, if it was easy everyone would be doing it and then who would deliver your mail and work in your local stores? Most people tend to forget this and if they don't earn money in a few weeks they convince themselves that the methods don't work and try something else. The methods do work but they take time and you need to learn all the skills required before you can master them.

5. You think you know all you need to know.

Technology and the Internet are changing at an ever increasing pace. 18 months ago Blog and Ping was the best way to get your site indexed and ranking in the search engines then almost overnight social bookmarking and RSS feeds took over. You need to keep an eye on upcoming trends and ways of marketing. I've had well known marketers email me recently telling me that Hubpages or Twitter was the next big think in marketing...sorry guys I've been using them and writing about them for the last 9 months.

Making money online is not easy but that doesn't mean it's overly difficult. If you find you are making some of the mistakes above then now you know what to do to rectify them. Take some time to Annalise what you are doing and where you are going worn and you will find that you'll soon be on the path to a good online income.

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