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Creating a sustainable income online did not come instantly for me when I first started out a few years ago. You often hear lots of people touting their success stories of how they made thousands of dollars in just one month.

Whether some of these are true or not I don’t know – but it certainly didn’t happen for me.

However, I could have made my life a whole lot easier by avoiding these mistakes.

1. Too Many Ideas.

The internet is full of opportunities to take a bite at, and my eyes were too big for my belly and I bit off more than I could chew.

I always found myself writing down ideas, researching them, and deciding how to implement the idea, but then never actually implementing the idea because I was already too busy.

Now I just make a very quick note in my ideas folder and leave it at that. When it is time to expand or start a new project – I just open up the ideas folder for inspiration.

2. Needed to Focus on One Thing and Get it Right.

Running several or even two projects at once when I started out was really stupid. Each website or project will have a learning curve and take time to master.

It might take you 6 weeks to master and begin to start making money if you worked on one technique full time.

If you do 3 other projects at the same time that will also take 6 weeks to learn and start making money then it will take you 6 months (4×6weeks) for these 6 projects to actually come together and start to pay off.

Chances are because it takes so long you’ll end up giving up on some anyway and get distracted by something else.

Doing so many things at once slowed down my progress and stopped me from generating a solid income quickly.

Once I picked one thing, stuck to it, and gave it 100% for a few months my income really started to take off. Then all I needed to do was look to outsource certain parts of running the business to free me up for new projects.

3. Save Your Money To Start With!

Before I started venturing into earning money online I had managed to save about $14,000 of my student loan after leaving university.

I thought I had a great idea and went ahead and spent the $14,000 very quickly. My idea was great, it still is great and I’ve continued to develop it beyond what I ever first intended.

However, I didn’t use the initial $14,000 effectively, and although it got a brilliant new site started, I made so many mistakes that the money was practically wasted.

If I had sat on the money for 6-12 months while I secured an income online, built the idea as much as I could without any money, and got a better understanding of the whole industry I could have spent the money a lot more effectively and made a lot more money more quickly as a result.

In the end I started making an income not from the money I spent, but from my own hard work. I actually needed very little money to get off the ground once I began to focus. 

Throwing money at something you don’t have experience with won’t make you learn any quicker and probably won’t make you earn money any quicker either.

If you have some cash sit on it while you work hard and learn the ropes. In 6-12 months time you should be 100% certain how to use the money and know (and I mean really know) that your investment will pay off.

4. I Ignored Info-Products

When I started out online I was hugely skeptical of anyone selling any information that would help you become successful online.

While I quite happily wasted $14,000 testing out a new idea, I was not prepared to pay any so called expert for any information that might help me.

I thought all the information I needed was out there for free and I didn’t need to pay for someone to tell me something I could find for free.

There are three reasons that this mentality significantly slowed down my progress:

Reason #1: Finding information for free costs time, and time costs money. I spent long hours scouring forums & blogs for useful information.

While this can be good practice, spending $50 on an eBook that covers all the information you are looking for will save you a lot of time.

Reason #2: There is so much misinformation on blogs and forums because so much is just personal opinion or people trying to sound clever when they don’t know what they are talking about.

You end up with the blind leading the blind and the information you get can be extremely misleading causing you to make costly mistakes with your business.

Reason #3: People won’t give away quality information for free. No matter how hard you look in forums there are just some tricks that you won’t find publicly, at most there will just be hints.

The gurus sell information, membership clubs, and guides because they have true value, and if you act on them they will make you money.

There are plenty of bad apples out there to watch out for so check out what you buy.

Also you definitely don’t want to be the type of person that buys tons of info-products you don’t need or use.

Analyze an area you are having trouble with, or something you would like to learn more about, and find a product that meets your needs.

Go through one course/book at a time and put the teachings into action.

5. I Didn’t Start in a Niche I Enjoyed

When I first started out online I quickly went for a niche that I thought I could make the most money in quickly.

It took me some time but I did finally start to earn good money from this niche, but as soon as I did I realized how much I hated it and certainly did not want to carry on working in this niche any longer.

I ended up selling the sites I created to a friend and started working in a niche that I was truly passionate about. Because I was more passionate about the niche I was able to build higher quality sites and make an impact more quickly.

I should have just done that from the beginning.

Update: Also note that choosing a niche just on what you like is not good practice either, you need to pick a niche that is profitable and has a strong demand (and preferably low competition). But at the same time don’t choose a niche you really hate like I did.

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If I had followed these bits of advice when I first started out I am sure I would have started bringing home decent money within 1-2 months.

What mistakes have you made?

This entry was posted on Friday, November 16th, 2007 at 9:32 am and is filed under Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.