by Mark Thompson

Listening to most of the so called “Guru’s” you could be forgiven for thinking that it is easy to make money online. Unfortunately for most people online wealth will prove to be very elusive. Whatever the reasons you choose to try to make an income online it’s important that you try to avoid the 5 basic mistakes that most people make.

1. Not Planning

I suspect that 99.9% of people who star out on an online career haven’t created a business plan. Ask yourself if you want a hobby or a business, if the answer is a business then it’s time to get serious. Include your personal strengths in your business plan and aim to focus on these initially. If you find you lack certain basic skills then use the first few months as an apprenticeship and learn the skills you need.

2. Don’t the believe the hype

An Internet marketers job is to make you think that you must have whatever product or tool they are promoting this week. I’ll let you into a secret here…You don’t need it! The best thing you can do when you are starting out is to learn to do things manually. This will give you a greater understanding of how things work and will pay off in the long term.

3. Lack of spending control

If I wanted to depress you I would tell you all about the people i know who have spent thousands of dollars on tools and books that are cluttering up their hard drives. Many of these people have still to make more than $100 online. You will only make a profit online if you make more than you spend. If you spend $1000 on useless tools you will need to make $1001 before you see any profit. Think before you buy any more tools!

4. Failing to Focus

Earning money online takes time, if it was easy everyone would be doing it and then who would deliver your mail and work in your local stores? Most people tend to forget this and if they don’t earn money in a few weeks they convince themselves that the methods don’t work and try something else. The methods do work but they take time and you need to learn all the skills required before you can master them.

5. You know it all already

Technology and the Internet are changing at an ever increasing pace. 18 months ago Blog and Ping was the best way to get your site indexed and ranking in the search engines then almost overnight social bookmarking and RSS feeds took over. You need to keep an eye on upcoming trends and ways of marketing. I’ve had well known marketers email me recently telling me that Hubpages or Twitter was the next big think in marketing…sorry guys I’ve been using them and writing about them for the last 9 months.

If you are reading this and can confidently say that you aren’t making any of these mistakes well done. You are on your way to a good online income. If you do find yourself making some of the mistakes above well now you know what you need to do to make money online.

About the Author:
If you would like to read more articles like this then please visit The Income Academy Blog Mark Thompson is the author of WordPress Goldmine and writes for several publications.

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