Working at home and making money on the internet can be a difficult task, especially for those new to the challenge. One of the biggest hurdles to overcome is the learning curve of what works and what does not. This article will outline a few of the dos and don’ts of online entrepreneurship as well as addressing some of the most common reasons for success and failure. This article will serve as a guide to the things you need to do to become successful on the internet. This article is not intended to be the “Holy Grail” or “Gurus Guide” to online success or internet marketing. Rather its intent is to serve as a guide so that you can learn from the experience of other successful online entrepreneurs and marketers and capitalize on all that these successful folks have learned.

With any business, the early stages are often the most difficult and trying, it’s no different in an online business. One of the biggest hurdles to overcome is your own self doubt (ex. Can I really make any money or a living in an online business?).

Getting to the point where all good entrepreneurs get, that point where you simply will not give up until you succeed is a state of mental being that is a true measure of the character of a self made man/woman and is no small feat to accomplish. The internet changes nothing. The success of an individual entrepreneur and all the ups and downs (character building events) that occur along the way to success still happen in an online business. Often times the only difference is that you may not have many peers to turn to and the process may be accelerated a bit due to the online (partial online) nature of the business. One of the biggest differences is that often with an internet or home based business it’s easier to quit.

Let’s think about that. If there were an investment of $250,000 in a franchise or other type of traditional business operation and dismal, underperforming sales and profits numbers resulted early on, wouldn’t the entrepreneur be inclined to get out and promote the business or franchise and get it to perform? Wouldn’t a wise and successful businessman/woman change their approach until they find one that works? Wouldn’t they just refuse to accept that shoddy performance? Of course, at least any good entrepreneur would, or else they know that they may lose their business, their investment, and possibly their livelihood. Yet with a somewhat inexpensive online operation, how many would likely just throw in the towel? I fear many. Worse yet, those same folks that throw in the towel will most assuredly point the finger at the franchise, the business, the internet, the opportunity, or anything else they can find fault with to blame their failure on. But they will never examine the one true cause, their own lack of real passion and desire to make their business succeed. The entrepreneur spirit to simply be unwilling to accept defeat is a concept that is not within their grasp.

Are there businesses and opportunities that are poor and where failure is likely because of the business or the opportunity? Sure. In fact the business, product, or market may themselves be the problem. However, experience dictates that it is far more likely that the entrepreneur with proper mental clarity, dedication, and desire to make a living online could have made just about any business successful, and if they could not, a dedicated mentally tough entrepreneur would simply find another business or change their current strategies until they found one that worked. Pointing the finger and placing blame gets you nowhere. So before saying “It isn’t working for me” or “This business isn’t going to work” look in the mirror and ask yourself is “It” suppose to work or am I suppose to work it with a tenacity that does not allow me to fail. There are certainly plenty of ways to make money online. Anyone not doing so that says they truly want to; simply has not worked or looked hard enough.

In fact, let’s examine for a moment the fact that the better business bureau doesn’t even allow most work at home businesses to participate in their program. This is because they take the broad sweep approach that all home business opportunities must be scams with their “Make money from home” claims. One of their primary complaint businesses is the Paid Survey opportunities that are so prevalent online today. But can you make money at home taking surveys? Absolutely yes. Can you earn $50-$100 per hour? Absolutely yes. Do the companies that offer you paid survey opportunities provide you with unlimited surveys to take any time you want? Absolutely not. What they have done is compiled an information list of all the companies that will pay for survey and focus group participants. You are purchasing the information, the database, the list if you will. Then it’s up to you to apply to all these companies to participate in their surveys. Finally, if you meet the criteria of a particular survey or focus group you may have an opportunity to participate in a survey that takes you an hour to do and pays $50-$100. To make a living doing this requires near full time devoted to contacting all the companies on the list and applying for the survey opportunities they may have. You would need to apply to many survey companies and for lots of survey opportunities to make a full time living. Are there hundreds of companies that offer money for surveys? You bet. However, it’s up to you to dedicate yourself to working and staying on top of the opportunities they offer and apply for them. Remember, you purchased the list and you can use it as you see fit. The opportunities exist, what you do with them, or if you even find and apply to them is completely up to you. So before you go crying that the company that sold you a $39-$49 list to make money for your opinion, remember to look in the mirror and decide if you actually ever even put in the effort to make any money with that list.

Another big concern is for the welfare of those who buy into the myth that all you need to do is jump on board with some program and all the work will be done for you. The internet does not do the work; it is a tool for assisting you to do the work or in some cases it’s the face of your business to the world. The real business building process still involves the business person. Otherwise, why would the system owner need entrepreneurs or participants? They would most certainly just implement it for themselves and never need you. This is especially true in network marketing or MLM, which in and of itself is a very viable business and product / service distribution model.

The internet does a fantastic job of helping us to find new customers and prospects. It can even help us stay in touch with them and continue to market our other products and services to them. However, as in any business, the real growth of the business occurs in developing a customer base, the product or service distribution channels, and those personal relationships that foster that growth. The internet can not do this for you. It can aid you in doing this and is a useful tool. A personal relationship takes real time, personal interaction, conversation, and communication. The internet can facilitate many forms of communication. However, it does not replace that personal phone call, that face to face meeting, or true personal and value focused interaction that solid business and personal relationships are founded on.

Using the internet as a way to provide additional income with affiliate programs, e-books, etc… is one thing. Many of these are one time sales and are heavily dependant on thousands upon thousands of folks seeing what you have to offer and a small percentage of them making a purchase. If you can do huge volume and drive massive traffic to your offerings online then you may be able to make a full time living with these types of programs alone. The problem here is that the vast majority of folks getting involved in an online business will not be able to drive the masses to their offerings or web site. They can not feasibly expect to make a full time living right out of the gate, nor in many cases even long term. That is because they will not, even with substantial resources, be able to drive internet users to their offerings in mass to generate the volume of one time sales required to make a full time living with affiliate programs of this nature. In addition, in an affiliate scenario this leaves you with a one time sale and someone else still has the customer. So where is the residual income for all your effort of customer acquisition? Why would a sensible business person have a customer acquisition cost of $5, a product cost of $25 and call a $39 sale a big profit unless they can do this at least 50 times per day. Remember, 50 sales of a $39 item per day may well require that you drive 3,000 or more visitors per day to your offering. If your site contains multiple products, services, or affiliate programs in fact this number even increases. Further, in an affiliate scenario you have really not built a distribution channel or customer base but rather you have simply found a customer for someone else to continue to market to. Moreover, driving this type of traffic and visitor count to your site or offering means advertising, search engine positioning, and other online and technical related techniques to get the massive traffic required to build or sustain a business. You must do all this simply to eek out a living and then turn right around and have to do it again the very next month. This of course will drive up your customer acquisition cost and in addition much of this type of technical positioning is ever changing and quite challenging indeed for the novice marketer.

Growing a business with a sustainable residual income that continues to grow and thrive for years to come and utilizing the internet as a tool to do so offers significantly greater rewards but can certainly be just as difficult as building any traditional business. There is no fully automated means by which to develop this kind of business. To build and grow this type of business requires effort and developing personal relationships with repeat customers as well as suppliers and a distribution channel. These are the things that highly successful entrepreneurs know and love to do. Even all the so called internet gurus that have supposed fame and fortune online have this in common. Nearly every one of them to the last, stays in contact with customers, distributors, and suppliers. They almost always add an element of personal touch, most do not use the internet exclusively, and nearly all make contact with their business associates, customers, and partners in a personal manner (either face to face, over the phone, by mail, and frequently also using electronic mail) on a regular basis.

Electronic mail is a great medium, as is postal mail, but they can not replace a phone call or face to face meeting. In fact some of the most successful self professed online marketing gurus have outbound telemarketing sales teams calling customers once that customer purchases their initial product or service, or takes them up on a free offer. They do this in an effort to up-sell another product or service. This is business folks. A phone call, a personal contact, that little something that the masses are unwilling, unable, or simply refuse to do is what all successful entrepreneurs are doing and are always willing to do to grow their businesses. That’s the difference between a wealthy marketer and a struggling one. The lesson here is you must pick up the phone, speak to your customer or prospect, show them you care and be value focused not dollar focused. Feeding prospects into an automated system may generate some sales but it is unlikely that it will ever build true wealth for you. Maybe for the automated system owner it can, but even they had to start somewhere and be talking to people (Customers, Suppliers, Distribution Channel, System Development Teams, etc…). Even they had to go through this important phase. Again, this is very important to understand, the lesson here is that to make it big you have to add that little personal touch and be value focused not dollar focused. This applies whether you are selling a consumable repeat order type product, multiple products, a business system, traditional offline business products or services, or even Network Marketing / MLM products or services. In every case the same rules of business apply. It’s a leadership and relationship game. Focus on these and you will be far ahead of the masses that are trying to make it in cyber space.

As for what to sell online it is the opinion of this author that one must engage in a business that offers products or services that are consumable and unique thereby generating a residual income, repeat customers, and building a distribution network for current and future product or service offerings. For the purposes of this article consumable services means those that are renewable at regular intervals. Web hosting, communications and internet access services, and web site content subscriptions are but a few examples of these. Consumable products mean those items that are in demand, used regularly, and need to be reordered on a regular basis for use in and around the home or office. These include household supplies, food, vitamins and nutritional products, and the like. Barring a major fad or revolutionary breakthrough new product offering, one should concentrate efforts on these types of products and services. New and unique is also good when it comes to products or services, but recognize that these new (Not yet in demand) items carry significantly more risk as there is no guarantee that these will ever become true in demand consumable items. For a true entrepreneur this may not be an issue, because with a good product that entrepreneur will create the demand. But if you are just starting out as an entrepreneur and you don’t have that unwavering dedication, then you would be best served by staying in the realm of proven brand name companies, with solid training and leadership building systems in place as well as in demand products or services.