Remind Me Please... Why Online?

There's little to no capital needed to start an online business. Most offline businesses require a good amount of start-up capital and overhead.

An online business is a lot easier to start on a part-time basis, too. Many people want something they can work in around their regular job.

Dave, please explain to me what kind of leverage can be had in the online world that offline businesses can't offer.

But this can really be said about any business owner who is working ON their business (and not IN it)

-LB

I disagree that the learning curve is steeper. If you are a self starter then it isn't very difficult to learn. Also, I think you'd be surprised at the number of people who take major in one thing at a post secondary school and wind up doing something completely differently. I have a friend who took public relations in school and now she works at an oil company doing logistical work. It's all about the ability to learn, not what you've learned at school. If that's what your mindset is, you'll miss out on so many opportunities in your life.

There are a lot of people out there who have AdSense blogs in micro-niches that pull in more than $10K per month. They have a network of hundreds of these sites each taking in a few bucks a day. If you have 100 sites making $3.34 in adsense per day, there is your $10K per month. All you really have to do to maintain that is keep an eye on your SERPS every now and then and then either do the backlinking yourself with tools like SENuke or you outsource it.

In terms of online vs brick and mortar you're going to see a big change over the next 30 years. As the internet generation becomes the older generation you're going to see a big shift to online. I purchase 90% of my electronics through Amazon, best buy, etc. because it is convenient. My parents would do this too if they weren't so afraid of using the internet to make purchases.

Also, you should read up on things like BlockBuster's bankruptcy due to NetFlix to see how incredibility powerful and disruptive online can be. All I am saying is that you never hear about a brick and mortar store causing an online company to go bankrupt, it is always the other way around.

In terms of the percentage of people being able to make money from an online business, you're talking about the offline business model that has been around for thousands of years vs. online business models that have really only been around for 20. Like I mention above, give it some time.

As for low overhead, I think we can all agree that if you look at any business that is offline and look at that same business that is online, online will always have a lower overhead. You don't have to worry about stocking shelves, you don't have to worry about personally serving every customer, in the end it is just more automated no matter how you slice it. Automation = lower costs. Period.

As for sales. If you want to have a sales job you can do that online as well, but many people like the idea of customers coming to them and only needing to work on offline and online SEO.

Certainly. Of course, ROI is return on investment. In my offline businesses, I had to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars and many months setting it up before I could even open and hope to make any money.

In my online business, the TOTAL amount invested in training, domain, autoresponder, hosting and some incidentals did not EVEN equal to 10% of the first payroll I had to pay in just ONE of my offline businesses BEFORE I EVER EVEN OPENED.

So as a percentage of what I had invested (ROI), IM is amazing.

I found a niche, build a landing page, set up an autoresponder, got traffic, gave valuable information to my list, every so often promote something to them of real value for the price. Then do it again with another niche.

I hope that is short enough.

So, if I understand you correctly, you are frustrated and there are a lot of other people who are, too.

Then may I ask, quite sincerely without meaning to be cruel, what exactly are you looking to find out?

Do you hope to find a good reason to stay in IM?

I personally believe that the failure rate of most business regardless of what type is quite high. I also think that when you have less invested in it, therefore more people get involved, the number of failures may be higher but the percentage is probably the same.

I am in no way saying that people who enter lower cost businesses do not work hard. I'm very sure many do.

However, I might add, that for me, when I started my first offline business for example, I
HAD to make it work. I had put every dime I had into it and even though it went over time and over budget to get opened, I JUST HAD to make it work. Three days open, paying employees and no business even with all the ads I sent out....I took flyers and went door to door to businesses and told them about it.

I just HAD to make it work. I HAD to do whatever it takes to make it work.

And I will close by saying this, which I've said to relatives, friends and even my own employees many, many times----

If you do not love what you do, do something else. Life is too short to be miserable.

:-)

I don't understand you. People have given you lots of reasons why they do it, and you just shoot them down and then continue to ask WHY? Maybe you need to internalize that question and ask yourself WHY you do it. Because the reasons that others are doing it don't seem to please you.