You Can't Make Money Online

You Can’t Make Money Online
By Kovich On April 17, 2010 Under Personal Development

Statistics show that you will never earn a notable amount of money online. In fact, recent studies indicate that less than 3% of people actually succeed. Now, we can draw conclusions and try to figure out why that number is so low, but I think I have a pretty good idea already: Laziness.

People want instant gratification with zero effort and absolutely no blood, tears or sweat involved. (If there’s any bloodshed while trying to earn money online, you’re probably not doing it right.) Obviously, such methods will never be successful. You will not become a multi-millionaire by sitting down and staring at your PayPal account. The money won’t simply materialize in your possession.

How do you actually make money online? This question is so simple that I can’t believe people even need to ask it! The answer? Dedication, Effort, and Motivation. Dedication, Motiviation and Effort In fact, I’ve even utilized my vast experience with Microsoft Paint to design a graphic that conveys the point I’m trying to make. I call it the Triangle of Success. Let’s start with some definitions:

Dedication is sheer commitment. When you are dedicated to something, you have made a pledge to stick with it until the end.

Motivation supports your ability to invest effort into a project and to remain dedicated. It is what keeps you going and focused. It pushes you towards your desired goal.

Effort is actually doing the work and investing the proper time and resources into moving toward what you want.

You’ve probably seen the recent hype about ‘The Secret’ and how the key to finding success is something well protected and unheard of by the masses. Their marketing campaigns make it out to sound quite mystical – much like something passed down through generations of sages. So, I’m going to refer to this post not as ‘The Secret’ but as ‘The Truth’. The three fundamentals I described above are the exact keys to success… there is no secret, no mysticism and no divine outside force involved.

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.” – Patañjali

Success often begins with a lot of hard work – late nights, tons of crumpled up sheets of paper with discarded ideas, and a high budget in place for coffee. Over time, you’ll learn to develop ways that you can work smarter instead of harder. In other words, you figure out easier ways to do things. For example, you can copy text on a computer by highlighting it, clicking edit, and then clicking copy, or you can simply use CTRL + C. See what I mean?

I’d like to warn you, however, about taking shortcuts. I wrote about an experience (click here to read it) I had with a guy who wanted to take a shortcut by driving significantly over the speed limit. He figured he would be saving time and would arrive at his destination faster… the only problem is that he was pulled over by a Pennsylvania State Trooper. Certain shortcuts may seem tempting in business and it is often the most tempting that lead us down the wrong path.

Motivation is probably the most critical component of the Triangle of Success. If you have great ideas and methods, but never have the motivation to execute them, what’s the point? Zig Ziglar once said that motivation is much like taking a shower – it doesn’t last and that is why it’s recommended daily.

When I’m working toward a goal, I like to have a visual reminder to keep me on track. Let’s say that you want to earn a significant amount of money… don’t just print out a picture of a pile of cash. Instead, look at what you can do with the product. Maybe you want a new sports car or a fancy sailing ship. Maybe you just want to pay off your debt. Figure out what works for you!

As a promotional item for this blog, I designed a motivational wallpaper that features a beautiful mountain scene with an inspirational quote by Shakespeare. Feel free to download it and see if it helps give you that daily boost.

“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
- Thomas Jefferson

So, let’s do a summary here and analyze what I’ve covered in this post: There is no secret to success. Everyone has the potential to become successful online and offline. You must invest effort, dedication and motivation in order to achieve your goals. There are valid shortcuts and there are unethical shortcuts that could get you into a lot of trouble – be sure to take everything with a grain of sand (or is the phrase grain of salt? I’m not sure.) and do thorough research on something before you try it.

Whenever you develop a final goal, divide it up into smaller goals to help motivate you and keep you going. If you want a million dollars, you might first want to start with: Make $200 a week. Then, you can progress to: Make $400 a week. You get the idea. Breaking things down into smaller pieces is very important and you’ll see how it pays off once you’re doing it.

I’d also like to recommend that you don’t make profit your primary focus in the beginning. When I started this blog, I didn’t care about profiting. I wanted to produce something high-quality that I could be proud to attach my name to. I kept working, developing new content, finding new promotional methods, etc. Eventually, when people realized how hard I was working, they were much more interested in advertising on my blog rather than any other. It goes to show that when you put your heart into something, people will notice.

The biggest mistake that people make is when they see a profit start to materialize, they assume they have done enough and they stop working. Never, ever do this! You must keep a consistent effort to improve the quality of your business and to keep it moving in the right direction. If you sit down and expect it to run on auto-pilot, you’ll find that it has crashed into a mountain somewhere.

Well, what are you waiting for? Get out there and put this information to good use! Feel free to comment below and share your thoughts.

P.S. If you want more ideas and some regular motivation, subscribe to my mailing list.