Like I said in a previous Income Report I want to go into the struggles that I (and most Internet Marketers face day to day).
Here is what I wish the Internet Marketing Guru’s had told me before I got started making money online.
Lack Of Motivation
This is a big one for me. Once you are earning a certain amount of money it can be really difficult to motivate yourself to earn more. My whole thing with wanting to run my own business is having more freedom not about earning a specific amount of money. But I’d love to earn between £5,000 and £10,000 per month. But it can be really difficult to motivate yourself after you earn a certain amount. For me it was when I was earning about £2,000+ from my online business and £1,333 from working part time at my web design day job. Once I got to that figure my motivation to keep pushing seemed to disappear overnight.
I got over this by having a set amount of tasks that I needed to accomplish each week to keep growing e.g “I will publish at least 1 Kindle Book and 4 T-shirts this week“. Once you make that routine even if you don’t have much motivation you can still make good progress.
Things Not Going The Way You Planned
With any online business things will inevitably not go as planned. Sometimes you will not hit your goals and other times things will not go the way you want them to. But there’s nothing that can be done about that. You need to learn to accept that things won’t always go to plan and be ok with it. I still find it hard at times but I’m getting better as I get more experience in online business. Having the confidence of knowing that situations like this have happened in the past and I managed to overcome them helps a lot.
Virtual Assistants and Freelancers Not Keeping to Deadlines
This ties in with the point above but deserves it’s own section. I can count the number of times on one hand that a writer has kept to the deadline that they promised. The way I get around this issue is I assume that a writing project will take an extra week than what I have asked for and plan accordingly. So if I writer says that they will finish the project in 7 days I assume that I will actually get it in 14. I know that life gets in the way but when you’ve heard every excuse in the book in the span of 12 months you start assuming that what you are being told is not the truth. The truth is probably down to procrastination and lack of motivation (see above).
You Will End Up Working When You Aren’t Supposed to Be
Every week I say “I’m not going to do any work on Saturday or Sunday because I don’t want to think about my business“. Inevitably I will get an email from a VA or Freelancer that requires my attention. So I’ll have to get my laptop out and sort out whatever they need me to do. It’s August at the time of writing this post and I don’t think I’ve had a full weekend off my business since Christmas. That’s not to say I work hundreds of hours, far from it. It is something to bear in mind.
But Don’t Let This Put You Off Starting Your Own Business
Running your own business is definitely more rewarding than working for someone else. It’s one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. But there are struggles that most Internet Marketers won’t talk about because they are trying to sell you on an idea that if you start your own business your life will be perfect.
It’s the same thing that people in the fitness industry do “Get a six pack and all the girls will love you and your life will be perfect“. In reality some girls prefer guys who aren’t ripped and if your car breaks down your car still broke down regardless of whether you have a six pack or not. It’s all marketing and isn’t an accurate reflection of real life. So don’t feel bad comparing yourself to others because the reality is their life will most likely be drastically different than how they portray it on their Blog, Snapchat and Instagram.
I hope this post was helpful and didn’t put you off starting your own business. I just wanted to be honest with you.