What % of business fail in internet marketing

How and by whom would such figures be collated? It isn't possible to measure, is it?

I doubt even the 90% figure cited in the OP is legit... lol

Like Alexa says 'impossible to measure' and at what stage do you class it as a failing business? I'd say the majority of people who have tried their hand at IM don't get to the stage where they have anything like 'a business' for that business to fail in the first place.

I agree with Stevie C who says that most Internet business's where probably never business's in the first place. But I do not agree with the 'its imposable to measure' anything can be measured if you set clear definitions of what you are measuring and take a large sample group.

I think the answer by Steve B is probably the best one. All business (at least here in the US) have a fairly large failure rate. Failure can be defined as 'the owner stops doing it with the expectation of making a profit'. Im also going to guess that online business's have a even higher failure rate than brick and mortar business. The logic in that thinking is that on online business has a much lower entry barrier so it is more easy to get into. Think about it. If you mortgaged you house and spent $200,000 to open a restaurant your going to work your tail off to make sure it succeeds, but if you spend $12 on a website it is easy to just walk away from it without putting any real effort into making it work.

Nobody really knows this figure, though there are companies who gather this type of information, but as far as how statistically valid it is that is another thing entirely. These numbers are all over the place, depending on which research firm you hit up.

According to the Internal Revenue Service's 2009 figures an average of 27% of small businesses were still operating after 4 years. And when broken down by industry the numbers were all over the place. If you look at an industry like real estate and finance, 56% of those companies are still in business after 4 years, off course that's not internet marketing.

Another thing to think about when it comes to "failure rates" is how you define it too. Let's say someone started an infoproduct business and they put in 3 years of blood, sweat, and tears and they made some money, but not to the level that they desired.

So they shut down that corporation, do some soul-searching and then 8 months later they start a new corporation as an offline SEO service that also builds mobile websites for businesses. That company goes gang-busters and does extremely well.

The first business wasn't really a failure, but because it got shut down some statistic hound might view it that way.

People like to cite the 90%, 95%, 98% and 99% failure rates, but really, they're just repeating what they've read from someone who was doing the same thing. According to the Small Business Administration roughly 48% of business start ups are still operating at the 5 year mark.

To confuse people further, if you were to look up the figures from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics the vast majority of new business start ups are not operating at the 5 year mark. Hmmmmmmmm..........

Now let's talk about something a bit more positive. From my own life experience of being in business for myself for nearly 2 decades, the success rate of someone who has clarity, a business plan, tests and tracks their ad campaigns, and has the proper mindset has a 99% success rate.

People quit business for many reasons. For some, it's pure laziness, they don't want to pay their dues. For others, they cave into peer pressure as family and friends who are not supportive can take a toll on them. For some, they quit because they don't acknowledge what they might be doing wrong or they have character defects such as blaming everyone and everything for their lack of success.

So don't focus on the % of businesses that fail. Focus on the ones that succeed and emulate what they do, because ultimately, that failure rate figure is meaningless because it's impossible to know why all of these businesses fail and it makes more business sense to focus on the ones that do well.

RoD

The number comes from projecting a symmetry of previously established numbers for offline regular business start ups, sales workers, and new workers in network marketing companies. About ten years ago (sorry I didn't retain the links for this), I saw a SBA booklet stating that the failure rate of new small business was 90% after one year, and 95% by 5 years. SEC filings of a publicly traded MLM company showed that 70% of sales associates made no money after 12 months, 25% made less than $1000, and only 5% made significant money (above $1000) across that time frame.

Among new independent/individual entrepreneurs in a major sales field (real estate agents or stock brokers, etc) there is a 70% or higher attrition rate after one year, and up to 95% after 4 years, as most find they are not good at it, or not a good fit for the industry. Taken together, in whatever high risk/high reward field, and especially in anything sales related, there is a roughly 95% risk of failure within 1, or 4-5 years. Internet marketing was probably lumped in to this failure rate considering that was the consensus number from elsewhere, where the numbers are more verifiable.

I think the percentage would be high but it would be impossible to measure as like someone else said. A lot of newbies give up because it's a lot of work or either it's too techy for them.

The answer to that question is lack of Innovation.

When you see products that claim that someone else made XXXXX amount of money doing something or selling something, the truth is most of the time, its not going to work.

The reason why is obvious, when you have thousands of people copying something that only worked for a short period of time, (call it shelf life for business concepts) then its only natural that there is no objective way to profit from these types of methods.

A much smaller percentage of business concepts are successful and it is usually because of Innovation, Timing and Action.

If you do not have those three things, then failure is the most likely result.

Success is about hard work, careful planning and good management of your time.

Just a few things to consider...

Most people in IM fail simply because they give up. Those who do succeed are persistent and constantly learning new methods.

Yup.

People don't fail.

They give up.

Big difference.

Mark

99% of all statistics are made up.

It depends what you are referring to when you say Internet Marketing. Are you just talking about all of the marketers out there or are you talking about all businesses that use the internet to market themselves? There's a big difference.

I personally think that the failure rate should be quite high as most people simply do not have the right mindset when they start this business. Since there is no official stats, I will simply just use Pareto principle where 80% of the people will fail although I feel it will be much higher like 90%.