Why Is Making Money Online So Hard? (What You Need to Know)

You see so many gurus talking about how they made thousands of dollars through various methods of online business including trading Forex, taking Advantage of arbitrage opportunities, eCommerce, dropshipping, blogging and Private labeling.

They take their results and throw them in your face like it took one month to get to where they’re at. The sad part is half of them don’t even show real results.

In this blog post we will go over why making money online is so hard and what you need to know before buying into the hype.

You’re Trying To Make Money From Nothing

Think about it, popular stores get thousands of visitors daily through foot traffic to make the money they do. It takes good marketing and a great store design to make good money.

Online you don’t have foot traffic and you need to do things in order to create a community from scratch.

That’s why it always seems so hard to make money online. It’s because you’re comparing going out and getting a job where they can pay you right away with building a community in order to make money (which takes plenty of time).

You Have a Lot To Learn

No matter the online business venture you take on. There will be a learning curve. Lets give a few examples below.

Blogging

With blogging you have to learn how to do keyword research, content marketing, SEO and social media. Even when you learn all these with blogging, it still will take a good amount of time to start making money because it realistically takes you about eight months just to start ranking in google.

Forex Trading

You will need to understand how the market works and where the opportunities are. Even if you don’t trade Forex the learning curve is still steep in this area.

Ecommerce Stores

With eCommerce stores you have to learn about product research, what your target demographic likes, supply chains, shipping and logistics. You also have to learn how to drive traffic with ads and different traffic sources such as influencer marketing.

Affiliate Marketing

You have to learn how to give value to your audience instead of just being a spammy sales page. You have to learn how to pick the right products so you don’t fail with your audience.

Above are just some of the many examples when it comes to making money online. If you truly want to make money online you need to be willing to learn and sometimes it takes some time before you start seeing results.

What Are The Keys To Making Money Online?

There are many factors to making money online, below we will go over the most important ones you need to keep in mind.

Discipline

Sometimes motivation isn’t enough. You need to be disciplined. Even if you don’t feel like writing that blog post, or filming that Youtube video, you need to do it. You need to be able to manage your time if you want any chance of succeeding with an online business idea.

The people who put the work in day in and day out no matter what are the people who always come out on top.

Never Stop Learning

The online business realm is changing almost every single day. You need to make sure you’re staying up to date with the latest trends and strategies. Just because something worked last year, doesn’t mean it will work this year.

Going back to blogging as an example, guest posting used to be one of the only ways people could drive traffic and natural links to their site. Now that Google has started penalizing spammy guest posts. You will need to find new ways to drive traffic and build links naturally.

If you want any chance of succeeding with your online business idea, you have to make sure you are staying up to date on the latest trends and strategies.

You Need To Be Prepared For Failure

This is probably one of the hardest parts to understand about making money online. You need to be financially and emotionally prepared for failure because it will happen. Even the most successful entrepreneurs have failed numerous times before they find success.

If you’re not willing to put in hours upon hours of work knowing that you might fail, then maybe starting an online business isn’t for you just yet.

Take The Time To Create A Plan

Having a good plan can go a long way especially when it comes to online business ventures. You need to think about the different factors such as how you’re going to market your product or service, what strategies you’re going to use and how you’re going to grow your community.

If you take the time to plan, you will see the different factors that come with starting an online business more clearly.

What Should Be The Main Focus When Trying To Make Money Online?

When trying to make money online some people get caught up on one specific thing and forgo all other parts of their business. This is usually a big mistake because there are many other factors to consider than just creating a product and promoting it.

When trying to make money online you should always focus on these three things:

Building A Community Of Fans And Customers

Having a community is one of the most important aspects of starting an online business idea. The more people who like, share and talk about your product, the more organic traffic you will get.

Although having a large community is important it’s not the only thing. You also need to make sure you are providing them with quality content so they keep visiting your site and eventually become loyal customers.

You always want to give back to the people who support you, even if it’s just by constantly providing them with valuable content.

Marketing Your Product Or Service Effectively

There are many different ways to market your product or service, you just have to find what works best for your specific business idea. One of the main things you will need is a solid marketing plan . Just having an online presence isn’t enough nowadays. If you want any chance of succeeding with an online business idea you need to be able to drive traffic and convert those visitors into actual paying customers.

Creating A Product Or Service People Want To Buy Or Pay Attention Too

If you don’t have a product or service that people want then there is no point in wasting time trying to market it, right? Creating a product or service that has good quality content will make your marketing efforts that much more effective.

Having a good product or service is the main factor to starting an online business. If you can’t do that then everything else you do really won’t matter all that much.

Another thing is attention. If you’re not selling a product and you’re starting a YouTube channel or Blog, you still need to know how to capture people’s attention. If not, all the work you put into creating content will be worthless if no one reads or watches it.

You Need To Think About The Long-Term

One of the worst things that can happen is getting extremely excited about your business idea, starting off strong and then crashing after a few weeks. If you want to be successful with your online business, you need to see it as a marathon and not a sprint.

It’s usually best to start small and work up from there, instead of trying to do everything all at once. Just try starting out by creating one good product or solid customer base, something that can sustain you while you’re building up your other platforms.

If you don’t think about the long-term, then you will end up burning yourself out and quitting before things really get going.

One thing you need to do is think realistic and be consistent. If you’re starting a Youtube channel say to yourself in the beginning that you’re going to make one video per week for the whole next year. Then JUST GET IT DONE!

There Is No Shortcuts

Just because you see someone with a ton of views, subscribers and money doesn’t mean they didn’t work hard for it. The people who are doing the best right now started off just like anyone else; they were once nobodies and had to figure out how the business world works.

So stop believing these myths about making money online and get down to work. There’s no easy way around it!

Set Specific Goals In Specific Time Frames

You want to set a revenue goal, a views goal, etc. It’s good to track your progress but you’ve got to make sure you’re also able to meet those goals in order for them to be effective.

Do Not Give Up Your Day Job Too Early

You need something secure before quitting your job because there will always be ups and downs when starting a business. If you quit too soon, you might find yourself broke and unable to do anything about it.

So if your side gig isn’t making as much as you want it to yet, then just keep working on that day job until things start looking better for your business idea. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket!

There will always be stories of people going from rags to riches overnight, but those are just stories. In real life it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to see any results. You have to be patient and not get discouraged too easily.

Conclusion:

We hope this blog post will help you understand that starting an online business means putting in a lot of work, and not expecting overnight success.

If your going to start a YouTube channel or Blog then you better have the time and effort to produce good content consistently, if not then it’s not worth doing at all!

Let us know how long it took you to make money online or what online business you plan on starting in the comments!

Take a look at our other most recent blog posts below:

Why Is Making Money Online So Hard? (What You Need to Know)