Why There Is No Such Thing As Making Easy Money Online
An online business is still a business.
For whatever reason, many people seem to think that making money online is much easier than making money offline. They think that building an online business is something that can be done ‘quickly and easily’.
Bullshit.
There is no substantial difference between building an offline business, and building an online business.
The technical skills one has to master might be slightly different, but the business side of things is no different. And that is what makes or breaks a business.
- A viable business plan
- Product/market fit
- An awesome value proposition
- Great execution
If necessary or more simply more efficient, technical aspects of the business can always be outsourced. But that only works when you have a great plan and you are executing on that plan properly.
Without that, any business is doomed to fail.
1. A viable business plan
Any kind of business plan starts from these basic questions:
- Who are my target customers?
- What problems am I solving?
- What solution am I offering?
Without a clear answer to these questions, it simply isn’t possible to build a viable business. You can’t just look at some product on Alibaba and say: “Hey, that looks awesome! Let me try to re-sell that on Shopify!”.
This kind of thing will never work.
You might make a few bucks here and there, but you are certainly not going to build a sustainable business. The same principle holds true for all kinds of seemingly ‘easy’ ways to make money.
No matter whether that is:
- Building a blog, becoming an influencer and making money via ‘affiliate marketing’
- Selling online courses on some random topics just because you think they are ‘interesting’
- Establishing a membership site around a topic that nobody cares about
2. Product/market fit
Without establishing product/market fit first, you are never going to be able to sell anything. You can push as hard as you want, but you probably won’t even be able to sell one single product.
Product/market fit basically means that you are going to offer a solution to a real problem that is faced by real people. And that these people are willing to pay for your solution.
If you don’t have that, you have nothing.
In almost all cases, it takes months if not years of research, prototype building, testing, adjusting and validation to reach the point where you reach real product/market fit.
That alone makes the idea of making easy money online impossible.
Unless you are willing to spend the necessary amount of time and resources to research the market, test your assumptions, build various different products and test them, you will never reach product/market fit.
3. An awesome value proposition
The value proposition of your business is, on a very basic level, the value that your product and/or service provides for your customers. Mostly, this is one large benefit. But it can also refer to a collection of a lot of small things.
Take the startup FindFocus, for example.
It is an online-based tool that helps people stop wasting their time online & develop working habits on the basis of the principle of deep work. Basically, it helps you to block out all possible distractions and focus 100% on your work.
What’s the value proposition?
- It allows you to remain in a deep state of focus while you are working
- It cuts out the possible distractions of the online world
- It allows you establish work routines & habits that lead to results
- etc.
People are willing to pay for a service like this because they can see how the service is going to help them solve a specific problem (i.e. being distracted during work & losing focus) that is worth solving.
Unless your product/service really provides real value to your customers in a way that they ‘get it’ and ‘want it’, your efforts will never lead anywhere.
4. Great execution
No plan is worth anything unless it is executed properly. Now, this requires that you have the patience and the necessary skills to actually turn this plan into reality.
Unfortunately, most people lack both the skills and the patience. They get started on some project, see that it doesn’t get the expected results anytime soon, and then move on to something else.
In other words, they get stuck in an endless cycle of nothingness.
Why?
Because they approach their business from the perspective of wanting to make money quickly/easily.
They are only looking it from the selfish perspective of what’s in it for them, rather than asking themselves how they can be of service to their potential customers.
Well, that never works.
Conclusion:
Business is all about providing real value for people. If one approaches it with the mind-set of only their own benefits, then they’ll never deliver a product/service that is really helpful to people.
And consequently, it will never pay off financially.
In other words, one needs to take a long-term perspective at building a business, focus on providing real value to customers, come up with a viable business plan, and then execute the sh*t out of that plan.
There is no such thing as making easy money online.
There is only the harsh road of building a real business that is of true value to its customers and a hell a lot of work for the owner, but which has the potential to eventually turn into something profitable.
Call to action:
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