Back when The Niche Store Journey was just a baby blog in it’s first few days of existence, I made a post called 5 Rules For Using Your Niche Store Building Time Wisely. Today I would like to build upon that topic and list some reasons why we, as Niche Store Builders trying to make money online, let our tasks fall by the wayside and get to the end of the day realizing “I didn’t accomplish ANYTHING today!”
Without further ado, let’s take a look at 8 simple reasons why we are delaying our potential success:
1: Too Many Goals:
Some of us have the best of intentions. We find a great niche market, do all our keyword research, and get a great domain with wonderful plans for monetizing it. Just one little problem though. We currently have reached this step for 20 other domains as well. It is crucial that we finish what we start.
If we get 25% of the way through 20 individual projects that we then leave unfinished to move on to the next, how much money are we making? How much organic traffic are we growing?
Answer: NONE
Imagine instead if you were to get 100% of 1 project done. Now is there a possibility for money to be made? For traffic to be gained?
Answer: DEFINITELY
2: Not Enough Goals:
Some of us fall on the other side of the coin on the goal issue. Perhaps we have one or two good money making sites. We really wish that we could grow our Niche Store portfolio, but we just cannot seem to decide which direction to head in next.
Another crucial element to our success is having a plan and following it. Know ahead of time how many Niche Stores you want to have completed in 3 months from now, 6 months, a year (See where I am going with this?)
If we plot out a goal for ourselves, it becomes much easier to try to meet that goal, or even exceed it! Just make sure that you do not sacrifice the quality or SEO status of your stores in order to “meet” your goal more quickly. You aren’t really meeting your goal at all in that case!
3: Wasting Time:
Again I would like you to read the post: 5 Rules For Using Your Niche Store Building Time Wisely . This deals with this point very directly.
Spending time working on your Niche Stores should be just like time you would spend at a “real world” job. If your boss came to your desk and found you Twittering or watching T.V., he would be pretty upset right? He probably would give you a strong warning or even fire you on the spot, right?
Why should Niche Store Building time be any different. Are you not your own boss in this case? Why should you allow yourself to waste precious “Company time” (YOUR time!) Stop spending the time you are allotting to your business on trivial things that can wait. Focus and get to the tasks at hand!
4: Impatience:
For me personally, one of the toughest parts of Niche Store Building is doing the proper SEO, linkbuilding, and promotion techniques that are necessary to get you traffic flowing to your store. Some of you it may be something else that you consider your Achilles Heel. I personally just get impatient. I finish the design and (some) content on a store, and I want to move on to the next store instead of spending a few days (minimum) of linkbuilding, getting organic traffic, writing articles for eZineArticles.com, etc.
This is one of the single worst things we can do to ourselves as people trying to make money online. There are SO many competitors out there trying to do the exact same things we are doing, to do things half-heartedly is going to kill your chances of being successful! We must devote ourselves to each and every store, and make sure we give it the best chances of being a money maker. Even if that means facing your Achilles Heel head on.
5: Lack of Focus:
So let’s say that we decide to suck it up and heed the advice of #4, we put our impatience aside and work on the aspects of Niche Store Building that we HATE even though we don’t want to. This is a area where we commonly allow ourselves to fall into a trap of not focusing on our goal. Sure, we have an easy time concentrating and working when we enjoy the work we are doing. For me that means when I am setting up my WordPress blogs, and getting the design just right. I can do that all day long no problem. As soon as I need to start linkbuilding though, my mind starts wandering a mile a minute!
If we learn our lesson about impatience, we have to learn a lesson about focus at the same time. Devoting ourselves to doing the menial tasks we need to do to be successful is a great victory, but a short-lived victory if we cannot learn to focus once we actually start doing those tasks.
6: Laziness:
I wanted to make sure to clear up the difference between Lack of Focus and Laziness, because in our line of work it can be a grey-area. As we just dicussed in point 5, it can be very easy for us to let our mind wander when we are doing work we don’t necessarily like doing. But the moment we just up and decide to not do it because it would “take too long” or because “I am sure things will be fine without it”. That is the moment that we have allowed laziness to enter our business, and it must be dealt with immediately.
If you are serious about your Internet Marketing career, and want to actually be able to make money online to help support yourself and your family, you cannot allow laziness to enter into the equation with your business. There are too many other marketer’s out there who work their tails off 15+ hours a day who will scoop up all your profit and traffic because they weren’t lazy.
DO NOT let yourself fall into this trap!
7: Lack of Knowledge:
Sometimes us Niche Store Builders want to try out something new. For me lately that has meant the transition from BANS to phpBay. What this meant for me for the first few days was this:
I went from a position of having lots of knowledge to a position of having very little knowledge.
When it came to BANS, I had lots of experience built up using the software, I knew how to make stores quickly and efficiently. But with phpBay, it was a new ballgame. It was very easy to learn, but it was still a new venture. This meant for those few days that I was learning, my productivity and profitability went down.
With Internet Marketing there are so many new “miracle products and techniques” released by the “gurus” every day, that we often think to ourselves that we need to be constantly absorbing new knowledge. If we do not read 5 eBooks a day, we are behind! OH NO!
Needless to say friends, this is the wrong mindset. Of course there is tons of information out there, some good and some just trying to scam you out of a buck. The fact of the matter is, you are just one person and cannot possibly utilize all of these techniques by yourself. You would be overextended by an extreme amount.
Choose one or a couple areas of Niche Store building which you feel you are best at, and become an expert on those fields. Do not feel the need to read every new eBook released by marketing gurus. Allow yourself to become the expert that other people come to!
Your perceived lack of knowledge today could turn into a goldmine down the road!
8: Burnout:
The last point I want to make today is about Burnout. It has happened to me. I am sure it has probably happened to you too.
As people out there on the Internet trying to make money online, we have to put in lots of hard work. This can easily lead to getting burned out of the long days and tedious work that we do. The first thing you have to realize if this happens to you is that it is O.K. to feel this way. Some other bloggers might tell you differently, but I think it is quite reasonable to get to this point.
What really matters is what do you do when you get to the point of burnout? Do you fold up and quit? Do you push through until it gets better?
I am not saying there is any right or wrong answer here. Niche Store building and Internet Marketing are not for everyone. It is tough, demanding work that requires a very special type of person to do well.
But if you feel that you are that type of person, but are just hitting a bit of a wall, do yourself a favor and take some time off! Go to an amusement park with some friends and family, go see some movies, go to a nice dinner. GO and do something! You may be amazed to realize how therapeutic a nice day out and away from the computer can be!
Wrap-Up:
Thanks everyone for sticking with me and reading this post. I am renewing my personal commitment to The Niche Store Journey, and am hoping to bring many more helpful posts in the future. I hope that this post has spoken to you in one way or another, and that it helps you in certain aspects of your career by helping you realize your strengths and weaknesses.
Lastly, I would really love to hear any comments or questions any of you have about this post.
What would you add to the list?
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Make yourself a daily list and stick to it. When you make it a priority to succeed, you will. When you start believing what you read will work, it will. Make yourself accountable to SOMETHING, everyday. It could be posting to your blog, writing an article a day, etc.
Stick with one site until it is done, completely done. ANYONE can build a great site, driving traffic and ranking it is what separates the men from the boys. Too many unfinished projects will make you get NOTHING done. Video games can be played AFTER the money is in the bank.
Great money making sites do not happen over night, they take work… REAL WORK! Do not settle for trickle in long tail organic traffic, it is a byproduct.
Keep your head up, success is right around the corner.
Hey Dave, Thanks for checking in here!
As you know, your blog is a daily resource for me, so I am happy to hear from you over on my end!
Thanks for the encouragement and advice. I completely agree, and am starting to hold myself accountable for a set list of tasks every day. I am in this for the long haul, and want to be sure I am acting accordingly.
Great article – I followed you over from the keyword academy with Court’s similar article! I think one of the issues for those of us who wasted too many years working for someone else that we learned as good corporate citizens to take as long as possible doing as little as possible so we were blamed for as little as possible – you kinda have to unlearn all of that when working for yourself! Lis
Court has an absolute wealth of information that is extremely helpful. Glad you found my site! Hope you continue to learn from the information here!
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