What It Takes To Succeed Online
Posted on January 23, 2010
Filed Under Earn money online
I got an email a few days ago from a lady wondering whether it’s worth investing time in online business and whether this really works. Here’s her email and my reply below…
Hi Tomaz,
My name is S….. and I am a former SBI owner who is considering signing up again. I had a travel website that I did not follow through on because I got stuck on and frustrated with the technical aspects of building a website but I am willing to try again and push through the pain so to speak because I want financial independence.
I was also not sure how I would effectively monetize a travel website. I contacted SBI but the advisor I spoke to didn’t have concrete suggestions but I checked the results.sitesell.com page per our conversation and contacted the owner of ________.com since that is a travel website about the town of ___ at _____ island and my website would be about the island of ______.
Long story short he doesn’t endorse SBI per say and he doesn’t endorse doing a travel website either. He knows who you are from your postings in the forums and says you are a straight shooter. You guys started at the same time but you are a success and he is not.
I’m trying to figure out what went wrong for him. He did everything right from what I can tell. He followed the Action Guide, has lots of pages, did a video, has 500 unique visitors a day and yet he is not profitable. I find it hard to believe that it is impossible for him to make money with a travel website, especially about ______. He is considering a different topic.
I don’t want to sign up for SBI, do ALL OF THAT WORK only to get nowhere. Can you please weigh in on this.
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Hi S…………..,
I checked the website from your friend. 500 visitors is nice but that earns very little even on max profitable sites. On average, you earn the amount of dollars per month for the amount of visitors you have per day.
So 500 visitors a day -> $500 a month
Of course, this can be 3x less and also 3x more – depending on the market and your monetization skills.
To replace a normal job you probably need over 5000 daily visitors. Of course, you can build 10 sites with 500 daily and that will do it.
Also, if the site gets 500 daily after a few years, then OBVIOUSLY the demand is too low. (or there are just not enough pages and / or not enough links)
Find a niche with greater demand.
It’s very logical to me. Instead of blaming SBI and STAYING a victim, you need to learn from your mistakes and IMPROVE the next time.
The site is profitable it it earns $1 per day. You earn more than you pay for SBI.
To earn enough for a living, you need to go for it and not just try.
Most people try. That’s why most people don’t make it.
They do stuff halfheartedly because they already believe that this won’t work so they are not willing to put the effort into something that won’t work.
So now they don’t put in the effort and prove themselves right – but the reason why stuff doesn’t work is EXACTLY because they didn’t put in the effort and not because internet marketing or SBI philosophy (or many other) doesn’t work.
There is NO way someone can fail IF they put in the work AND learn and improve their skills.
But if you stay hard headed and keep doing the same wrong thing, don’t learn from, don’t ask anyone WHY this doesn’t work (cause maybe your ego is too big and you don’t want to admit mistakes), then yes, you may get 500 visitors per day after 4 years.
The reason why the site you gave as an example doesn’t get more visitors (I did a quick analysis) is because the keywords they chose don’t have enough demand. The site has enough pages but also not many links.
But the main problem is the demand. Imagine how many people want to go to that island that the site is about and how many want to play tennis or buy a vacuum cleaner.
Or how many want to visit that island and how many want to visit New York or Paris. Simply, the niche doesn’t have enough demand.
The SBI Action Guide DOESN’T tell you that with one website you will become financially free if you follow their guidelines.
But it does tell you how to make a profitable site – and earning $500 per month is definitely very nice.
The person who built that site followed the AG but chose the numbers on the low side. The site IS profitable – it definitely doesn’t lose money. In fact, it earns money without any work involved now!
And with 500 daily visitors smart monetization SHOULD earn you around $500 per month – doing nothing!
If that person is disappointed by earning $500 per month doing nothing, then maybe they should go to Haiti (writing this a few days after the earthquake 2010) and see what life can look like.
All you need to do is to learn from your experience, find smarter ways to get content up quicker and make more sites. $500 per month is in my opinion the average of what a typical SBI earns after 2 years.
Again, I am quite sure that that’s because the average person puts in the average effort and doesn’t really commit. Most people don’t think big enough and self-sabotage themselves so that the reality conforms to their beliefs.
It’s not SBI, it’s not Action Guide, it’s not internet marketing – it’s their average thinking, average work habits, average organizational habits and their half-hearted approach that creates average results.
Perhaps one example; I met Mike and his wife from Ireland at the SBI Barcelona conference. They asked me for advice about their site.
I was explaining to them for about an hour all the things they needed to do and they were SHOCKED at the amount of work I suggested. All that? 
Earning money online is magical ONCE you establish your site(s). You don’t do anything and the money keeps coming in.
BUT…
Before that happens, the work involved in getting the site up is no different than any offline job and there’s no magic. There need to be hours of hours of work and there needs to be an intelligent choice of niche and keywords.
It’s VERY unlikely that you’ll earn thousands of dollars with your first site – as it is very unlikely that you’ll earn fortunes with your first restaurant that you set up or any other offline business.
80% of business fail in the first 5 years. And that’s the offline world statistics.
Is now a normal business to blame or the people?
So if many people fail with online business or SBI for that matter is it SBI or people? You know my answer.
I look to provide additional (hopefully smart and logical and simple) information on my blog to help people become smarter doing their online businesses.
The system works incredibly well, but you need to become very good at it. And the way to become really good at anything is to keep doing it and keep improving.
If you’re building your site in the same way this year that you did last year, you have not improved.
How can I make this better and more efficient is the key question that has to be in your mind day after day.
That’s how you become better at anything what you do and eventually become above average in anything you do.
If you want above average earnings, you need to become above average in doing this online business.
I really don’t think you need above average IQ, but you need above average commitment and put in above average effort.
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14 Responses to “What It Takes To Succeed Online”
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I just have to say – I love your straight to the point, nothing held back and no excuses for laziness approach to online business.
It is refreshingly different to a lot of “make money online” type blogs or websites. Really respect and appreciate the information you lay out for free.
Great post tomaz.
I have learn quite a lot from your posts (having read it since you started). My income online has also grown because of your tips.
I hope this lady will take your advice. I believe things will be going great as long as we take it one step at a time
Thanks Tomaz,
I came across this quote today. I think it was perfect timing
“If you think you can do it, or you think you can’t do it, you are right” – Henry Ford
I’m also a SBI member. I didn’t sign up with Tomaz, but I wish I had. The advice that he has passed on through this blog really compliments the SBI Action guide.
I too started off with a travel site, http://www.northern-ireland-travel.com and I still have it and when I realised it wasn’t going to make me a fortune started another site about photography.
The travel site is still growing and is profitable so I’m happy to leave it to tick over.
I have now started another two SBI sites at Christmas and am building my business part-time, but know now that I am going in the right direction.
Looking forward to meeting you at Edinburgh if you’re going.
Hi Tomaz,
I’m an SBIer as well, and I totally agree with what you’re saying. I started my first site about 8 months ago, and it’s slowly growing in traffic and in monetization. But I worked just about every night after work, and all weekend long – every weekend – on getting pages up, getting links, etc.
I started my second site about three weeks ago and the learning curve is so much smaller because I put the time and effort into learning how to do it the right way the first time around.
The best thing is that I’m walking a different path than I was 8 months ago. I see so many more possibilities, and so much more potential with my life. The thing is, you have to put the time and effort in NOW in order to have a wonderful future.
Hi Tomaz – real interesting post (as usual!). This is Mike here from Ireland whom you mentioned in the post above:
“I met Mike and his wife from Ireland at the SBI Barcelona conference. They asked me for advice about their site.
I was explaining to them for about an hour all the things they needed to do and they were SHOCKED at the amount of work I suggested. All that?”
Firstly – when you graciously gave us your time in Barcelona we were at an interesting point in our website business.
Put simply – we had taken on too much.
Kind of contradicting the impression you got abov – we were putting in a huge amount of effort up to that point – BUT were lacking a full focus for that effort. What Barcelona and your advice did for us (especially me) was provide a CLARITY as to where the focus was required – and what we just had to leave go of as it would never work.
As a result, we are now looking to go cashflow positive at the end of March with the sites.
One of the things that struck me most in your post above was to do with “trying” vs what I would call commitment and resolve.
The way my brain works is that once I plug into resolve – the game changes completely. Jim Rohn (sadly just passed away) used to describe resolve as “I will climb that mountain – either you will see me sitting at the top grinning back at you – or dead on the side of that mountain”. A bit dramatic – but that’s the sentiment of resolve that also works for me.
When we met you in Barcelona – we were very careful with our resolve as we still felt somewhat unfocused even after 1 year as SBIers. But that changed in Barcelona and we are happily focused and now fully committed.
So – thanks for the time and attention. It did not go to waste. And we are looking forward to providing you with a success story for your site in the near future.
All the best – Mike.
Good stuff, Tomaz. Your blog entries are always unusually clear and well worth the read.
Mike,
Thanks for sharing! Gave me an idea for another post…
Bravo! Excellent article! Focusing on the right things is such a key to building a successful website.
It is too easy to procrastinate by browsing the forums longer than necessary, by constantly checking email, or by studying the updated Adsense report for the 20th time that day. (Been there and done that)
Not that these things are bad to do. But if we want to see income coming in, we need to see our websites as a business and work on projects that will reap rewards in some way, either directly or indirectly.
Tomaz, thank you for reminding me of the importance of persistence and commitment to my site.
I guess that I better go work on my site now.
Thanks!
Another brilliant article Tomaz. It’s true that building an online business is HARD! Probably harder sometimes than an offline business…. at least in the offline world everything is more straightforward.
I’m nearly 2 years into my SBI site. It’s definitely starting to make a profit, but there’s a long way to go before I can quit my day job.
Thank you for the kick up the pants that I’ve been needing. I’ve got to get back to link-building and also reviewing my keywords.
Thanks again Tomaz.
Cheers
Conor
“S” is going to have to pay for success somehow. She has to either make the commitment or not.
Either embrace the changes in yourself that the process demands or don’t do it.
Ask her where else she thinks that she can find another business system that essentially places big red arrows pointing out your where potential customers are and tells you exactly what they’re thinking?
Heck in my off line real estate biz we’d KILL for that kind of knowledge. But it’s not available and the stress from that job is killing us both slowly.
So it’s literally do or die for me.
I have limited time to write. And money is horribly tight. But my husband pointed out that the costs for mailing out a single postcard to our real estate “farm” are more than paying someone to create 100 pages for my SBI website. And the real estate postcards will not bring in residual income.
So I’m committed to 3 pages a week and 100 pages by June 1, 2010. I’m also committing at least 4 hours a day of my time. TV is gone. Creating reusable writer guidelines, drafting link exchange letter templates and creating and finding other tools to multiply the effectiveness of my time is in.
“S” HAS to make a commitment. Just “wanting” financial independence isn’t enough.
Thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts! Very interesting and inspiring.
I’ve nearly fallen off the SBI path twice now. The first time I started a site and didn’t have the passion about it to really want to write for it. I took a month or two off and have started over again.
The difference this time is that the learning curve is much less harsh – I already got a lot of mistakes out of the way on the first site, struggled through some of the basics of html and got pages published.
This time I’m not running into motivation or inspiration issues – just a case of distractions from the path.
I’ve got a real job that I enjoy that pays the bills, but at the same time I’m determined to be free of it in the future. I almost wish I was dependent on SBI for my living – scary as that would be – as it would give me that determination to keep on and on and on up that mountain.
Thanks for another thought provoking post!
Very Well Put!!!
You’re one in a million and you deserve your SBI success. Please keep telling people the truth even though 99% of them don’t want to hear it. We need more honest people out there like you. If more people were honest we would have a lot less people quit SBI.