A reader asks: Why isn’t my online business growing any faster? I’ve been working at it for several months and while I’m making some money, I would have thought by now that it would be making a lot more? Any suggestions?
Well, I don’t have any specific suggestions because I don’t know enough about the details of what you’re doing, but I do have some things to say about your question.
First, you (like most people, like I was) are probably a victim of the over-hyped, snake oil, "the only thing I sell is how to make money products" marketing exaggeration that permeates the "online business" world today.
There is no end to the garbage gimmicks and the pie-in-the-sky lies about how you can spend five minutes a day doing virtually nothing and make forty million dollars an hour IF, IF, IF you will spend $37.00 to get the "secret" techniques and "proven methods" of some pimply-faced, 20 year old who dropped out of college and now makes 14 billion dollars a year (they claim).
It’s nauseating. However, they ARE good (or copycats) at marketing, and they DO make a lot of cheap, undeserved money by promising things (lying) to people who may be sincere, but are sincerely ignorant of the truth. Or, they might just be in the group of the "impulsive greedy" who are a big portion of the market who buys that junk.
So, that’s the first thing I want you to think about. Are you a victim of this mentality? Did some "online marketing guru" somewhere along the way make you promises of easy, fast riches? To whatever degree that is true, purge your mind of it. Unless you want to rip people off by lying to them, the road to success online is no different that the road to true success in any business.
Which bring me nicely to my next point.
Nowadays, people want meteoric success in whatever they do, especially money. In our modern world of "give it to me NOW, give it to me FAST, I deserve it", we are easy prey for the mentality that success should come fast and easy.
That’s not reality. Nor, would you want it to be. Success that is fast and easy for all, is no success at all. It’s just status quo. Think about it. If everyone could just get online, throw a business on a website, and make a million dollars after a month in business, then everyone would be millionaires effectively normalizing that kind of "success" and raising real success to a higher level.
Money is relative. Right now our lifestyle and economy revolve around an income norm of "tens of thousands". If everyone could easily make "tens of millions" then all the prices and expense would simply rise accordingly and millions would have no more purchasing power than thousands.
That’s why, as a rule, financial success is typically neither easy, nor fast. You have to change your mentality and expectations. Real success comes with time, discipline and diligent effort.
The Flywheel of Success
Picture yourself diligently pushing on a giant flywheel. Each day you do the right things; you discipline yourself to do the activities that will grow your business and with each action, you nudge that flywheel.
At first, the flywheel starts to barely turn. Then with each nudge it picks up speed. As it picks up speed and gains momentum, the pushing becomes easier and the speed continues to build. It’s like the proverbial snowball rolling down hill.
Early in your business, you push hard, and the wheel turns slow. Keep pushing. Keep doing the things you must do every day to give that flywheel a push. You will gain momentum, pick up speed and eventually your business will be "flying" high. Your little pushes each day result in great amounts of speed and force because of the "flywheel effect".
I don’t know enough about your business to give specific advice about your tasks, but ask yourself:
Am I disciplined and diligent each and every day in doing whatever I can reasonably do, with correct priority in my overall life, those things which I know my business needs done to eventually be successful? If you don’t know what those things are, you need to STOP right now, and figure it out. How can you have a business, and wish for success, if you don’t even know what you have to do in YOUR business to be successful?
Okay, you want an example right? Here’s my personal answer to that question: for my online business to be successful, each and every day I need to 1) create fresh content that people will be interested in reading; 2) respond to my readers and create an atmosphere of sincerity and genuine care about them; 3) continue to develop products that my readers will benefit from and be willing to purchase and 4) evaluate everything I’m doing on a daily basis and look for ways to improve it.
If I want to be successful at what I have chosen as my online business, then I have to do those four things every business day with a relentless commitment, no matter how I feel, no matter what the temporary short-term response.
What is your short list for success? Do you have one? For life or business, you should have a purpose EVERY DAY so that you don’t waste the precious time God has given you.
What are your questions?