There are thousands, and probably hundreds of thousands of people ‘trying’ to make money online these days. Are you in this category?

If so, what chance of success do you think you have?

I mean, I can try to run marathon, but the act of ‘trying’ to do so doesn’t really give me that big a chance of succeeding does it? If I really wanted, or needed, to run a marathon then there would be a hell of a lot more I would have to do than just turn up on the day and ‘try’!

I’d have to pick a marathon to run, review the course, determine exactly how fit I was right now and then create a plan that will get me from running 1-2 miles, right up to being able to run the 26 miles that the marathon covers.

If I wanted to do really well then the planning would be even more intense, and it would probably come down to acting on the plan every day of the week, from the right diet through to the right training in order for me to be successful.

And only with all that effort could I be confident that I would succeed.

So why is it that so many people who see an opportunity online, only ‘try’ to make money using the internet? Why do they not put the same effort into this business that they would any other venture, you wouldn’t ‘try’ to open a McDonalds, you’d follow a plan, you’d do your research, and not only that you’d work your butt off.

Has it got something to do with the fact that it’s technically possible to get started online with very little money? Yes you can grab resale rights to a great product for $27, set up hosting for a couple of bucks a month and set your Adwords budget to $1 a day – but in doing so are you really planning to make money?

Or is it more like you are hoping?

Now ask yourself this…if it cost $2,700 to buy that resale license, $100s per month for hosting and Adwords was costing $50 or more per day wouldn’t you put in a bit more of an effort to plan how to market the product, plan how to capture leads and follow up with them, plan how to up-sell, down-sell or cross-sell every prospect and then plan what the next step is?

There’s a great saying that I’ve heard from a number of sources, “failing to plan, is like planning to fail” and it is so true. If you don’t know what you are going to do next to build your online business it’s very easy to go a day or two or more without taking action, and this will kill any amount of ‘trying’ every time.

Now, not every plan will pan out, and much of the time you may find yourself revising things over and over, but hey that’s life – all the top gurus will readily admit that their success did not happen overnight, and in fact some of them spent a lot of time failing.

But I would be stunned if today they didn’t take the time to have very detailed plans for each of their product launches and they way that they follow up with every lead, or how they show offers on their sign up pages etc.

If you’re on any of their lists you will see the meticulous way they build interest in a product launch, and how by the time the day finally arrives you can imagine that customers are just clamouring for the order button without even really reading that long sales letter, or watching the video.

It is all mapped out step by step, and this is the foundation of their success, so why should you run your online business any differently?

Make a plan, take action every day, review, revise, adapt and keep moving forward, don’t get hung up on failure, learn from it and overcome it.

Here’s another often used saying “it won’t happen overnight, but it will happen” – well the caveat is you had better have planned for it to happen, otherwise how will you know how to deal with it when it does?

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Tagged as: affiliate marketing, general, internet marketing