30 Amazing Lessons I Learnt About Making Money Online

I started online business in the year 2008 with a lot of curiosity to get rich quick. After-all, that’s what I thought the whole thing to be, “a get rich quick fix”.I did all I could to become rich like the successful and influential online entrepreneurs I use to hear of
, I spent most of my time with computer trying to figure out how to make money online quick, I buy almost every online business guides that come my way, and all sort of. But unfortunately, my first few years was like a child’s struggle with no reasonable results.

I was to either quit and be laughed at, or do everything to proof what seemed like insanity to most people around me right. Most people around me saw a big failure but I saw a different thing. I took delight in my “many time” failures and I was able to get the best of it’s offer (great lessons). I learnt a lot about how online business doesn’t work, and eventually I succeed in making decent and regular income online.

Below are 30 of the great online business lessons I learnt in my past years. They’ll certainly be of help to you.

1.      Don’t Search For Ways To Make Money Online

That sounds ridiculous right? But that’s the truth every experienced online entrepreneur will confirm with me. The first step to making real money online is to stop searching the internet for ways to make money online. The more you search, the more confused you are likely going to be with information overload. From my personal experience, it is easy to get enticed and in fact deceived online with juicy claims that have nothing to offer but craps. To be able to make money online, one needs to be diligent in searching for the best opportunity.

2.      One Application is better than many acquisition of knowledge

Yeah, this is another lesson I learnt in my quest to make money online. At a stage, I became more knowledgeable than most people making the real money. Many people I personally trained started making unbelievable amount online, while I was only dreaming to start making anything decent. I was busy acquiring and boosting about my online business skills but never took time to apply them. I kept searching for something better which I never discovered until I realized that what I needed was to start implementing my knowledge

3.      Don’t be moved by other’s success

Hahaa, let me explain this for your better understanding. It isn’t a bad thing to get motivated by other people’s success. In fact, most people swing into action only when they see people succeeding in what they are planning to do; but at the same time, one should be diligent with this act. At the beginning of my online business career, I often get over-motivated by the success of others, and at times I forget what the person in quote might have put into it before achieving the success. When I rush into what I think he did to easily achieve his success, I fall flat on my nose before I realized there is more to it.

4.      Don’t Start When You are Not Ready To Start

Another big lesson I learnt, which is now an advice for the aspiring ones is that, you should not dare to start when you’re not ready to continue. Online business, like every other business needs consistency. I started and quit many time, not because of anything; but because I was not ready in the real sense. The more this happened, the more discouraged and confused I became. Thank God I made it at last.

5.      Put all your eggs in one basket first

Some experts will disagree with this I know, may be including you. It sound like the direct opposite of what you are familiar with, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. But could you please swallow that belief for now and see if my personal experience would be of help to you? When you are just starting out on any endeavor, the best thing to do is to put your eggs in one basket first, and in fact shut your door and cover the basket jealously.

Naturally, you will always be presented with many alternatives that look better than what you are doing. These alternatives, in other word are “distractions”. And if care is not taken, one will always come to take away the success you aught to achieve if you are focus. Before you can spread your eggs in many baskets and get positive results, you should have at least; achieved a certain level of success with one basket. Do you understand? Ok, let’s proceed.

 6.      Be focus and Persist, even in the fruitless time:

When I started online business some years ago, I started with a lot of curiosity and high expectation to get rich quick due to the impression I got in the first place. When things did not work the way I expected, I lost focus and started looking for better alternatives. In the process, I wasted a lot of time chasing shadow without achieving anything reasonable. I later realized it pays to be focus and persist even when one is not getting the expected results. That’s the way to achieve significant result on any endeavor

7.      Follow a mentor, not a seller

 It took me some time before I realized that most of the so called online business “gurus” are mere sellers. I am sorry if this hurts. They are not interested in anything but the money they will make off you when they are able to convince you to buy their offer. The lesson I learnt is, when one is buying a product or service online, one need to research the seller to see if he’ll still be there after the sale is made. Check through testimonies if available and ask questions where necessary. Sellers are interested in the sales, but mentors are interested in your success with their products and services. 

 8.      Learn continuously

There’s no better way to improve on whatever one is doing than to keep learning. There is always a change here and there in online business. To be able to adapt to these changes, you needs to keep learning, even when you think you are doing well.

 9.      Don’t go into debt to fund your business

 This is especially when you are just starting out without any income yet. Minimize your start-up cost, when you start generating income and you can predict what you stand to gain if you invest more, then you can decide to invest some more money.

 10.  Keep it Simple

Yes, keep things simple. At times, the more you try to be professional, the more complicated things appear to you. If that happens, it’s a sign that you’re also looking complicated to your audience. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try to be professional with your online business. In fact, you really need to. But when trying to be professional, try to do that with as much simplicity as you can. Pause at every point in time to look for what you are making too complicated for yourself and your customers, and make them right immediately.

 11.  Treat your online business like business

You see, this is a great hindrance to many aspiring online entrepreneurs who try to make money online. It affects me a lot in those days when I started trying to make money online too. Because it’s a kind of home business that allows one to work at his or her comfort, many people take the opportunity for granted; and in the process, they fail to get the best of it. Online business is like every other business and it must be treated like that. It only comes with a lot of advantages that are not present in other form of business. These advantages are to be harnessed, rather than to be taken for granted.

 12.  Build a direct market for yourself

What do I mean by direct market? The internet is a worldwide market and free for everybody. You only have control over the community you are able to build four yourself. Your direct market in this context is therefore what we refer to as “list” in the online business world. You can develop personal relationship with your list, you can access them any time you want, they are more loyal to you, they are easy to convince because of your relationship with them, they patronize you anytime they need what you offer, in fact; the advantages is inexhaustible The faster you start to build your list online, the better it is for you. I didn’t realize this for my first few years online, and it was highly regretted. I would’ve been able to make as twice as I used to make if I had built my list earlier.

13.  Don’t worry about perfection, make it good enough

I wasted a lot of time, trying to make my websites the most perfect in my niche. Meanwhile, I didn’t achieve anything close to that. The truth is, you are not the only determinant of your perfection online; the bulk of it lies on your customers/audience. Just try to be good, that’s all; the perfection will work itself out.

14.  Always give yourself a deadline

On every project you have, always give yourself a deadline for executing them, and achieving whatever you want to achieve with them. It makes you feel more obliged and committed.

15.  Be people oriented, rather than profit oriented

That’s very right with every business; except you are your own customer. Try to do everything to satisfy your customers. Make them happy at all cost. When you make people in your business, they will make you all the money automatically. If you only try to make money, you are more than likely to forget the most important stuffs that would have made you more money – your customers. And it won’t take much time before you fail.

16.  Try to understand your audience:

In any business, some people are always busy making themselves unhappy and are always ready to fight you for their weakness, even when you are trying everything to make them happy. When you discover this kind of people, do not hesitate to ignore them or else, they will waste a lot of your precious time. It is more important to connect with the RIGHT people among your audience, than to worry about raw numbers.

17.  Be personal when you need to

If you are a blogger for instance, don’t use “WE” where you are supposed to say “I”; and make sure you speak directly to you readers. Your audience sees through your approach.

18.  Outsource where necessary

It doesn’t matter whether you know how to do everything you need to do on your business. Outsourcing can be a great time saver for you to be able to do more on your business and achieve better result. Apart from that, outsourcing allows you to have a touch of other professionals on your business. If you want to do more than you are able to do by yourself, then consider outsourcing.

19.  Create an office for yourself

Despite the fact that internet business is a form of home business, having a separate office will make you to be more productive. It affords you of distraction from friends and family. This does not necessarily have to be a big office in a special location. In fact, one of the rooms in your apartment can do the job. The idea is just to keep you away from likely distractions from family and friends.

20.  Don’t buy online business offers because of hope

I wasted money on a lot of  eBooks, videos and softwares because of what I thought they would give me “hope”. Once I read any appealing ad,  I go for it until I learnt my lesson. My advice is, buy because you know immediately what you’re going to apply it to, as well as the end result.

21.  Don’t ever make promises that you can’t deliver

 In any business, one of the fastest ways to fails is to make promises you know you are not going to deliver. You can only have a single and few shots with this; and shortly you’ll fail without opportunity to retrieve your abused image.

22.  Don’t run after a customer that’s running away

I said something close to this earlier. Just try and do everything to be right, put your customers at the centre of your thinking, but understand that customers can be very wrong at times; and no matter what you do, you’ll likely encounter a funny customer that will be almost impossible to satisfy. Once you discover this kind of customer. Don’t run after them  too far, or else you will only waste your time to create unnecessary scene and nothing more.

23.  Automate as much as you can

When you grow your business to a level, try and automate as much as you can. It frees up some of your time and allows you to be more productive with other things. Example is your tweets on twiter and facebook updates. I use twiter facebook apps to connect my twitter with facebook. Tweetily automatically tweet for me at scheduled interval and a copy of my tweets automatically display on facebook as my status updates.

24.  Beware of friends and family comments – They may love and advice you down 

Some of my readers actually found it funny but I write everything from my personal experience. This is especially if your result is below their expectation, or they have different belief about your chosen business. I had a very hard time convincing my friends and family about my chosen business endeavor “online business”, and to worsen it, I didn’t achieve anything meaningful for a long time and I almost got intimidated with a lot of advice to quit and go for a day job where I am guaranteed to have a pay check at the end of the month. Thank God I persisted. It is good to belief in one’s self once you’re convinced of what you want to do.

25.  Do more of what’s already giving you result

This is self explanatory I think. At times in business, you’ll be presented with new opportunities that look great and you want to give it a trial. In the process, you leave what’s already giving you results or you simply reduce your commitment. And before you know it, you’ve wasted a lot of time and nothing really comes up.

26.  Offer your best for free

This sounds foolish to most people, but it simply works. When you offer great quality for free, it makes your customers to respect and trust you. At times they become your advocator, recommending you across the internet. Even if you later offer something that’s of less quality and ask them to pay for it, they will gladly buy, and you will get a lot of referrals without stress.

27.  Learn how to say “no” and not feel bad about it

I could remember the time I started offering writing service online. I was so desperate in need of new customers. When those that I came across ask about my rate, I’d tell them but most of them would beat it down to what’s not really convenient for me. Because I was so desperate for new clients, I don’t normally say no, and in the process they keep pricing me lower than the quality I offer. The day I was bold to start saying no to these uninteresting offers, I thought they would run away, but the reverse was the case. Even as some of them decided to run, I was known for my quality and standard, most of them was happy to stay with me and recommended me to others.

28.  Keep your workspace clean. Clutter office makes clutter mind

29.  Working smart is more important than working hard.

30.  Some people are meant to be employees and not entrepreneurs. And there’s  nothing wrong with that.