8 Lessons When You Start Your Online Home Business

Did you decide to start your online home business in pure ignorance (like I did)?

Did you do a Google search for ‘Make Money Online’ and come up with thousands of tempting offers that told you how Grannies, stressed parents, commuters who hate their job, people who just lost their job, reformed drug addicts, homeless people, ex-convicts – ALL of them – have transformed their lives and are now making a crazy income online.

Oh, and there’d be a picture of a happy ‘Select closest person to yourself’ from the above list, sitting at the laptop with a friendly teacher leaning helpfully over their shoulder and showing his latest student making money – before your very eyes.

“Well – if THEY can do it… so can I,” you think confidently “I have so much more going for me”. In MY case, what convinced me that earning an online income would be ‘easy-peasy’ was that I’d been an IT professional for more years than I want to admit to here.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Where to start!
Let me try and break it down into the 8 lessons I had to learn before I started succeeding online:

1. Stop looking for magic money

I’m ashamed to admit this one, but even as someone who has run a successful off-line business, somehow I suspended common sense when it came to looking at online business.

So, think of real life now…. When did you last walk down the street and magic money was there, dropping at your feet? Well that’s just silly. But somehow the online adverts set you up to expect this.

Or, more realistically, when did you turn up for a new job, or a freelance assignment, and your kindly new boss just leaned over your shoulder, handsome with his flashing teeth, explained everything patiently, and money poured into your bank account?

If that’s happened to you ever, and you can prove it with bank statements, I’m interested.

More likely, what happened to you (and to me) was that you were showed to your laptop, given a ten minute induction, and then told to ‘Figure it out, and show me at the end of the day how much money you have made (for your boss).’

If couldn’t learn how to do it on the first day, you might have been given another ‘induction’, with a black mark against you.

But in pretty short order if you didn’t figure out how to make the boss any money, you’d be out.

I’m sure you’ve got the point, but just in case, two important things to note here:
You needed to do some WORK in front of that laptop (or on whatever assignment you were working)

The money you made was for the boss – your reward was – if you were lucky – a fixed salary or fee.

You doubtless understand that short of an inheritance or winning the lottery (how’s that working out for you?) there’s no magic money in real life and offline business.

So why would you suddenly suspend belief to imagine you can make money online with no effort?

2. Find someone trustworthy to follow

This is easier said than done, I’ve been too trusting too many times and tempted by the possibilities described above. I won’t name names because John wouldn’t be foolish enough to publish my bad experiences.

But the worst was when I joined a ‘Product Creation’ course, along with several others, so it wasn’t just me who fell for it. What actually happened was that the training was a series of links we could have probably found online. We all got stuck. The friendly help and support was suddenly a black hole with emails never answered and the ‘direct hot-line to my mentor’s personal phone’ always went to voice-mail, and the calls were never returned.

In the end, the whole group of us were so stuck that we were each assigned a ‘ready-made product’. That might sound great ….. but what a disappointment.

I never actually saw ‘my’ product!

When I pointed out typos in the sales page no-one was in the slightest bit interested in fixing them

Anyway – ‘my product’ was emailed to my mentor’s personal list – and I got $0 commission from that sale BUT I got the buyer’s email address on my auto-responder. Whoopee dooo. The ‘plan’ then was that I blitzed ‘my’ list with the other rubbish products produced for other members of our group, as did everyone else. I never earned a penny from that venture and I don’t think any of the others in our group did either.

In fact, last time I heard from them was an invitation to join a court case to extract damages from said marketer. At the time my partner was dying of cancer so I declined and never heard whether they got their money back.

So don’t be duped by a shiny web-page with no real substance to prove the marketer’s credibility. First, listen to some of their training, and see if they sound as if they know what they’re talking about.

For instance – join this free webinar and watch John Thornhill explain his proven system to create 6 figure automated income streams using the world’s number 1 digital marketplace >> https://JoyHealey.com/WebinarClickbank

3. Stop trying to figure everything out by yourself

For too long I clung to this stubborn belief that somehow it was nobler to learn everything by myself. Yes, there were courses I could buy to teach me xyz, but “I’m an intelligent person, so I should be able to figure that out myself”.

Imagine if a biology graduate, aspiring to become a brain surgeon, took that approach! Don’t you think it’s more efficient that they learn from someone who’s done it before?

The ‘learn it all myself’ approach might have been OK if there’d just been ONE skill I needed to learn. But I was oh so ignorant of how many skills would be needed.

– Researching and testing a market-place
– Copy writing
– Web site / blog design (and choosing a decent hosting company)
– Sales funnel creation
– Social media marketing
– Email marketing
– Writing email follow-ups
– Video creation
– Accepting money online
– Handling after-sales support

And that was all after the one single part that I actually enjoyed – the product creation.

No wonder I faltered – I created a product without too much effort. It was all the technical stuff that went alongside it that drove me to distraction (and ultimately to quitting).

If only I had had John Thornhill’s training to guide me gently through the process.

4 Start Outsourcing ASAP!

This follows on from the previous mistake really.

Of course you don’t need to get a full time assistant right away, but you should always delegate as much as possible, freeing up your time to focus on the core aspects of your business.

Which is easy to say – but how to find someone you know will do a good job?

Do you reckon a master marketer like John Thornhill spends his days doing each and every task in his business? Nah! I bet he has tried and trusted contacts who will do an excellent job. And when you’re on his course, you can ask his advice on choosing the right one for you.

There’s no point spending hours/days learning image editing software, video editing software and everything else under the sun when you can hire someone to do a much better job for less than you could earn in that time.

This goes for almost all aspects of your life. If you can make more online per hour than it costs you to hire a cleaner, then why wouldn’t you hire a cleaner?

An example from my own business life – I spent hours (maybe days) creating a series of email follow-ups. But I’m no copy-writer and the response was luke-warm.

But a project I worked on with John came with a series of done-for-me email follow-ups. Open rates and click-through rates soared. Now I don’t know if John wrote them himself, or if he out-sourced the work to a copy-writer. I don’t actually care. All I know is that it was a far better result than if I’d done them myself.

5. Stay loyal to one mentor

It’s understandable that when you start out online you’ll want to do a lot of learning, but don’t fall into the same trap I did – flitting from one teacher to the next. You’ll find yourself paying to ‘learn’ the same thing over and over again.

That’s inefficient, expensive and dangerous. How so? Well, you can get part-way through a course – decide you already know the first part, and abandon the rest before you get to the meaty part that was the reason you bought it.

Take all your training from ONE source and stick at it. If you choose a mentor with proven credentials you needn’t be tempted to look elsewhere to see if the grass is greener, or the next tutor has a better course.

When you attend John’s free webinar you can evaluate his previous successes, see how others have succeeded when following his training, and you’ll KNOW that there’s no need to look elsewhere.

Register for the free webinar here >> https://JoyHealey.com/WebinarClickbank If you can’t make the time of the first one that’s offered, register anyway, you’ll have access to the replay.

6. Don’t just learn – teach

I understand that when you first start, you want to learn “everything”, but you’ve got to break out of that consumer mentality. A lot of people get stuck here forever for a variety of reasons. If you’re in the learning stages, you can’t “fail”.

But don’t expect that you’ll learn enough about online marketing that you can suddenly become an expert and teach it! Therein lies delusion and disappointment. Why would someone buy YOUR course, when they can buy John Thornhill’s?

No – instead, think about what YOU know that John doesn’t know. He’s smart, but he doesn’t know everything! What is YOUR passion and interest? What knowledge can you turn into information that others will pay for? I’ve seen people make excellent money creating information products on topics as diverse as UFOs, rearing chickens, witchcraft and even bearded dragons!

One of John’s very successful students teamed up with a golf professional and used John’s training to create a very profitable membership site that brought in recurring stream of income. Nice.

Becoming a ‘teacher’ instead of a ‘student’ can be scary, but if you keep consuming content and never producing it you’re going to be here a year from now, no further towards your dreams or goals.

7. Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

Growth lies outside of your comfort zone. Stop caring what other people think.

The person who pleases everybody is the person who says nothing, does nothing and ultimately ends up with nothing.

Don’t let those who have no results dictate to you what you should be doing and how you should be doing it. When you start to grow, you may get some haters or naysayers and that’s totally normal. It’s common for your friends to feel aggrieved that you want to ‘better’ yourself and maybe leave them behind.

Perhaps the doubters are the people nearest and dearest to you – and they may really believe they have your best interests at heart.

If they are truly concerned for you, and their opinion really matters to you, invite them to watch John’s webinar >> https://JoyHealey.com/WebinarClickbank. Show them this is a tried and tested program they can be proud for you to join. Take them on the journey with you!
Another pair of eyes can often improve productivity.

8. Enjoy The Journey!

When I first started in this business, I took everything way too seriously and worked myself half to death. I have shared with you above the mistakes I made, that kept me failing and frustrated.

Don’t make the mistakes I made. Instead focus on small steps and successes along the way. Remember the journey that has got you to where you are. The highs, the lows, growing, learning, making friends and partnerships, etc.

Learn to love and enjoy the journey instead of obsessing over the end goal.

Instead of struggling alone associate yourself with a successful team where you’ll have support and expertise when you need it.

I made so many mistakes when starting my online business. But I have shared them so that you can be “Forewarned and forearmed”.

You have at your finger-tips what I wish I had had, way back then: a proven way to move forward.

To start your journey watch this webinar: https://JoyHealey.com/WebinarClickbank

Author Bio: My name is Joy Healey. I live in Norfolk UK and my own blog is at https://JoyHealey.com. After struggling for many years to find online success, I am finally on the right path.

This is a guest post from Joy Healey if you would like to be considered for a guest post please contact me.