Biggest Online Home Business Mistakes
6. Schizophrenic Marketing.
This is one of my biggest pet pieves because I see it all the time and it's a major factor in making your online business a success!
Schizophrenic marketing is when you jump from strategy to strategy without fully implementing anything or giving it enough time to work for your business. For example, you write one or two articles, but didn't pick very good topics and determine that it must not work. So then you skip over to a search engine optimization strategy, but that doesn't yield immediate results. So then you decide to try pay per click for a couple of days, but that's too expensive and you have no clue what you're doing and don't make any sales. Then you decide to start an affiliate program, but that's more work than you thought so you leave it half-done... you get the idea here.
You've got to pick one marketing strategy, learn what you need to know to use it, fully implement it, and determine where it needs to be adjusted. Once you've got one down, you can start a second strategy. Jumping all over the place with your marketing won't make you any money, will leave you frustrated, and takes a lot of time and money.
7. Not testing and tracking EVERYTHING.
As an online home business owner, you've got to test and track everything that you do in order to know what's working and what isn't for your business... but it's the one thing that a lot of home businesses fail to do. If you're just starting out in your business, you may not really understand what I mean by testing and tracking, but you'll want to test different copy on sales pages, track where visitors are coming from, test and track advertising campaigns, etc.
Without testing and tracking, you could be spending money on things that aren't right for your business, or not spending time on the activities that really pay off for you.
8. Failure to determine your target market.
This is something I talk quite a bit about on my Blog. You've got to know who your target audience is in your niche so that you can give them exactly what they want and make money in the niche.... it makes sense, right?
But this is, by far, the biggest mistake that I see new online businesses make. They don't properly define their niche, research it, or determine their target audience and then they wonder why they aren't making any money.
9. Making sure your target audience has money and will spend it.
This is another huge mistake new online businesses make and goes directly with the mistake above. You've got to make sure that your target audience has money and that they will spend it.
For example, if you're selling test answers to elementary school students... who's going to buy them? Elementary students don't have access to credit cards (usually) to make online purchases and their parents aren't going to buy test answers for their kids. So what would you get in this niche? Goose egg!
That's an extreme example, but it makes the point. Be sure your niche and target audience has money and they will spend it. If your niche doesn't pass this test, then you'll never make any substantial money with your website.
