How To Kill Your Online Business - 3 Common Mistakes And How To Avoid Them

Yes, it is possible to make money through an online business

, but it isn't as simple as setting up shop and waiting for the money to roll in. An online business is just that, a business, and most new businesses fail within their first two years. Online businesses have many advantages over the brick and mortar kind, but they also have a few problems of their own. Here are three, with advice on how to avoid them.

1. Selling The Wrong Thing

Sometimes you have a good idea for a product and you can see that people need it. But need is not the same thing as want and people don't want something they don't know that they need.

An example might be cosmetics for men. A beautician who understands what products can do for skin tone and wrinkles may feel that cosmetics for men are a wonderful product for which there is a clear need. Men taught to use moisturiser in their 20s might look more youthful in their forties and fifties. But this is not a traditional product for men who need to be educated to want the product.

Educating consumers can bring in big profits, but it is very time consuming and extremely expensive. Online retailers have the advantage that search engines record what people are searching for. It is easy to see if there is a demand for your product by consulting various Internet tools, such as Google's keyword research tool, but a surprising number fail to do so.

Do your research and be sure the product you want to sell is something customers want to buy, and want to buy it online. Start with the Simple Market Research from ideatimeonline.com and take it from there.

2. Hiring an Expert

The world of e-commerce can be surrounded by jargon. First there is the e-commerce platform (your online shop or store). While you might consult a lawyer when signing a lease, you wouldn't lease or buy a brick and mortar store without knowing something about it. Many online entrepreneurs believe that because the Internet is 'technical' they don't need to learn about it, they can simply hire an expert. This is a good way to get scammed.

More and more experts will tell you that you need more and more information, software, licenses and expensive tuition. Do your research to find trustworthy sources of information and stick with them. You do not need to pay thousands for courses on how to make money online, but you do need to learn something about the process. If you don't want to learn, be prepared to spend a lot of money or open a conventional store.

3. Shortcuts Take Longer

Once your web store is established you will have the problem of making it visible to the Internet. This is called search engine optimization or SEO. There are vast amounts of information around the Internet about how to jump to the top of Google. Some work, some don't (often because they are very out of date).

In the early days Google and other search engines relied on keywords coded into a web page to decide what the page was about and how to rank it. The system worked well, but of course some had to abuse it, by stuffing keywords on the site and sometimes using keywords which people were looking for, but had nothing to do with the site at all.

The result was that all the search engines had to find other ways to rank pages and the search engine wars began, with search engine designers creating algorithms to work out what a page was about, and some SEO experts trying to fool the new algorithms.

The result is that Google and others tend to rank pages for a keyword when they provide good content relevant to that keyword. Taking shortcuts to this has a tendency to backfire and can get a site eliminated from Google's index altogether. The result: no traffic, no visitors, no sales. In some cases shortcuts don't just take longer, they are shortcuts to disaster.

There is money to be made online by those who are willing to take the time to do their research, learn about what they are doing and put in the time and effort to make their site visible to potential customers.

A web business can easily take a year or more to get established. If anyone tells you something different, walk quickly in the other direction.

Did their sign say SEO or did it say 'snake oil'?

by: Kirsty Hale

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