What Seperates Those Making $5000+ a Month and Those Making Barey $100/mo

What separates the struggling 80% from the successful 10%?

I've been chatting with many bloggers, webmasters and internet marketers (successful and unsuccessful) over the years. I have found:

(note: most of my money is made from blogging and outside of the internet marketing niche, mostly consumer orientated stuff, so my views may be a little skewed as a result of my bi model)

- Most have been doing it for a long time. Usually two years or more. I don't think I've ever met anyone personally making decent money who's only been involved in online ventures for under a year. But the time doing it doesn't always bring success, other qualities seem common too.

- Before they started to make money they never had (or lost) the obsession with wondering if they could make money. They either just went out a did it for fun with a strong passion for their niche, or knew in their own mind they could make money from this if they tried hard enough.

- They are not obsessed with SEO and recognize that content is what matters in an online publishing business. They have a much better understanding and focus on providing value than those who struggle with blogging.

- While not obsessed with SEO, they'll most often have a good understanding of the main principles.

- They are not looking for the next SEO trick or get rich quick scheme. These are just distractions. Instead they focus on building a real and sustainable business rather than jumping from trick to trick. Sure they may use tricks and advanced strategies to help their business, but they see them for what they are, and not money making traffic, pumping miracles.

- They've stuck with one idea or one site, and focused heavily on that, rather than jumping from one idea to the next. Typically they have spent over a year developing and promoting one site as their main project.

- The ones pulling in the biggest cash have typically outsourced some areas of their business, usually writing.

- They know their niches well. If they now own multiple sites, there is usually one key site which was their first success, and they know the niche of this site extremely well.

- Does this describe you?
- Have you noticed other traits of successful online entrepreneurs?

Sorry: I did post this in the Warrior Forum too, but I'm a member of both communities and wanted to share this in both places.

 

Nice list of qualities! They all seem to be pretty dead on, especially when you talked about sticking to a single plan. It also seems that even when people start to make a lot of money online, there might be a bit of hesitance left about taking action, but this time out of risk. Once you have a lot, you'd want to be careful about risking it all on something new.


I'd also like to add one:The determination to not give up when things don't go their way. There's a big difference between having a disaster and solving it, OR having a disaster, fixing it up, finding out WHY it happened, then never having to repeat it again. And of course a world of difference from simply giving up.

I doubt anyone would mind a cross-post. It's always an interesting topic to discuss.

 

That's a pretty good assessment.

The only thing I mildly disagree with is sticking to a single method and riding it too hard if it isn't working, as least at the start, as it takes a while (sometimes a long time) to find something that works (whatever your combination is of product/method etc....). Otherwise, that pretty much sums it up.

 

Couldn't agree more with the list - great stuff. I think a high level of discipline and determination are also required. Its very easy to go into a project with lots of excitement and high hopes but even easier to drift away from it when the results fail to yield quick enough. In my opinion its all about getting past that point. Starting to see the fruits of your labour spurs you on even more, but it always takes time to get there.

 

How true.
It's astonishing that some are always looking for the latest SEO tricks...

 

You have a number of good points...

Few other qualities are.....

1.TAKING ACTION.....-many feel they are working hard or diligently but they are not focused and it's usually because they don't have a model or business plan. This usually results in one jumping from one thing to the another very quickly.

2. BUILDING A BUSINESS....You have to learn the aspects of business. Fundamental to this is providing value to the customer and not to be solely focused on money.

3. MASTERY: Master one aspect at a time...."There are many paths up the mountain" and so it is with marketing...an example is picking one or two ways to drive traffic and learning them inside and out. You want to do this because once you attain some success you can always tweak them and make them more efficient. After that you can add more.

 

Great post, thanks for sharing that useful information.

 

Nice post. I think I've got basically all those points covered though I'm only making $100 - 500 per month right now. Up to a few months ago though I was just running a couple sites for fun. I've since refocused to also try to make as much money as I can (well still enjoying what I do) so hopefully that number will go up in the next 3-6 months.

 

I think consistency is the most important thing. I stagnated for months but my online income will beat any other month I've had by at least 50%.

 

I would say those that are not taking action and are constantly looking for the next shiny thing or magic bullet are the ones that are making little to no money every month.

 

Anybody who pops in to these forums asking which wordpress plug-in will make them rich will fail.

I think people who are solely in internet business for the money can do well. It's a game of persistence - those who can formulate a plan, stick to it, and adapt to new business conditions will win, regardless of their motivation.

I've only started achieving my own modest success ($300/month for now) after 18 months of crappy results and half-baked sites that I didn't stick to.

 

Really interesting ideas. I want to mention as blogsaboutcrap said it need a lot of persistence and analysis!

 

Persistence, ambition, also common sense, being able to put a plan into action, not getting lazy. The hard part is not making money, once you make it you have to learn how to KEEP it and manage it and not spend all of it. When I was doing well in affiliate marketing I was making over 10k on good months.

 

I think too it's about confidence to know you are valuable and that you have something to contribute. Too many beginners talk themselves out of good ideas because they feel that they might not be qualified to be involved in a particular niche.

 

good solid list. great rich schemes will ultimately fail

 

I agree with this post. The hardest part of making money online is not knowing exactly what to do. Unless you have someone showing you exactly what to do, or unless you have a program to show you exactly what to do, you are going to struggle making money online.

It' s going to take a lot of trail and errors before you get things right. Also, taking action is another barrier that keeps people from making the kind of money they desire. If you just sit back and procrastinate you will never get anything done. You have to work hard to promote your site and nothing in life is easy. The only thing I worry about when it comes to marketing is, getting traffic to my site and having a sales page that will convert visitors.

But the hard part was learning how to get to that point and that's where most people fail at IMO.

 

Some people just aren't business people, but they enjoy web development and making websites and logos and stuff. I think people forget that we're all playing a greed game were even the guy doing $100,000 a month would still like to take over your little micro niche making you $300 a month through these super long tail keywords you found. This industry becomes more competitive by the day and there's guys that just want to bleed every last click there is to have on the internet and they have the budget to do it, they can spend $30,000 on PPC a day and $50k a month on SEO there are people out there that spend that kind of money. You have to some how work out how you can compete against these people.

I mean what do rich people want? To become even richer, duh!

 

I agree in theory with what others have written, but this was the one thing that struck home for me. It's possible to ride something too hard and for too long only to realize after putting in 3-5 years of dedicated, committed work that it's not ever going to pay off.

You can't recoup the time and money, it's gone for good. Then it's start over? That's not what newbies want hear because they are focused on the 'make $100 a day" junk that is being peddled online as the internet business model. No one else seems to want to touch the real problem - not every internet business is profitable. Period.

I contacted personally 4 online 'super marketers' about their business model, and they responded. But not with what you think - Not one of them had broken the $15000 a year mark with their internet business. These guys and one gal have been peddling the same "I'll show you how to make money online" garbage for nearly 10+ years...but they haven't made over $15000 a year!

Not saying the other comments aren't spot on, because they are. But let's not forget there is also a reality check. If it's not paying back your initial investment in 6 months, you have to decide if you will continue riding that horse or call it a wash.

 

Hard work, great content, multiple revenue streams, and a hook.

 

It's all about your connections.