Starting an online business is not hard, but there are two sets of challenges that the new online marketer faces.

1)  Knowing what to do to move forward quickly as far as systems and technology go.

2)  Having the right mindset and a plan.

Perhaps the right mindset and plan should be listed first since your plan will determine what systems you will need to implement and what technology you will need.  Why is mindset so important?

Entrepreneur vs Employee

1)  Will this be just a hobby or do you plan to build a real business?

2)  If you are or were employed, someone else told you when to come to work, when to take lunch, and when to stop working.  Whether you’ll be transitioning from a full-time job while you build your online business, or you’re going full-force into your online business, you will now make those decisions.  You will be your own boss.

3)  Closely tied in to #2) are self-discipline and self-motivation.  These have to come from within, but positive groups of people in forums, Facebook and LinkedIn Groups, as well as a Mentor can contribute to your success in these to areas.

4)  You may be like me when I first started.  I knew it was possible to make money online and I knew I wanted to share my message with more people when I started my online business, but did not know exactly how I should go about it and what the most effective methods were.  I learned those as I continued to grow.

The same may be true of you.  You may have an idea of where you want to focus, but you do not yet know if that will be your main niche or market, or even if you should niche it down even more…be more specific in your target market and your marketing message.

Basic Plan

At the very least you should have a basic plan with a goal of what you want to achieve.  This is why I recommend that before you actually set up your first website, you spend some time doing research to see what others in your intended market are doing , and if there is an area that’s not covered, how can you fill that gap?

In my next post on this topic, I’ll discuss some of the systems and technology you need to get started.  What challenges did you experience in getting started with your online business? Please share in the comments.

I’ve always been fascinated by the Atlantic salmon’s inherent ability to swim upstream, and as I thought about the complexities involved in achieving online business success, I realized that there are lessons we can learn from the Atlantic Salmon.

What are some of these lessons we can take away and apply to ourselves in our online business?

1.  Fact: The Atlantic salmon spawns in fresh water but spends much of it’s life in the salty waters of the ocean.

Lesson: As business owners we have to be adaptable.  We may start small and wade into shallow waters, but as we grow we may make decisions that will take us out of our comfort zone and plunge us into areas that are as wide as the ocean.

2.  Fact: The salmon’s trip downstream towards the seas is long and arduous, but before going into the open sea it feeds greedily at the mouth of the river.

Lesson: Starting any business has its ups and downs and the road may not be smooth, but by feeding or educating yourself through books, online classes, webinars, having a responsive Mentor, and support system, you will be fortified to move on to bigger projects.  Projects that may actually ‘frighten’ you but with the knowledge and partnerships you’ve acquired in your business you can progress and experience online business success.

3.  Fact: The salmon’s time at sea prepares it for the journey back upriver to spawn.  The Atlantic salmon negotiates across the ocean to begin the grueling task of swimming upstream against the flow.  When it comes to obstacles, like weirs and waterfalls, the salmon jumps over them during the day by aiming for the light above the obstacle.

Lesson: You cannot stop growing, personally or in your business.  You have to allow each platform of growth to take you higher as you expand your business.  Along the way there will be obstacles, but like the salmon, you have to see beyond them and overcome them so that you can arrive at your ultimate destination.  You may not be able to fly over the obstacles like the Atlantic salmon, but you can use them as stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks to meet the goals you’ve set and experience online business success.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about the above lessons.  Can you think of other lessons we can learn?

Mental imagery or visualization is a simple yet valuable self-motivation technique.  How can visualization contribute to maintaining motivation?

When you  started your online business you made a plan and set realistic, strategic goals that you’d like to accomplish within stated time frames.  Sometimes your time frame may have to change because your goals were not realized, but your goals remain unchanged.  Rather than becoming a victim of discouragement and giving up, having a mental image of what you desire to accomplish will allow you to maintain your motivation.

Mental imagery or visualization in this context is simply using your mind’s eye to see your goal as if it has already been attained and being able to picture yourself mentally enjoying the results of your hard work. For example, your goal at a given time may be to take you family on an all-expense-paid vacation to a specific location at the end of a specified period.  Negative external factors arise on a regular basis that can be discouraging and affect our desire to work in our online business.  At the same time we have to deal with our own emotions.  On those days when you almost feel like giving up, being able to visualize your “Why” – your goal – will help you to view the stumbling blocks as stepping stones.

Many people are “visual” types.  If mental imagery is not enough for you, then I’d encourage you to collect pictures, brochures, or other relevant material that reflect your goals and have these in an area of your office to serve as your daily reminder of why you need to stay motivated.

Are you a visual person or do you use mental imagery to help you with self-motivation?

This may seem like a strange question.  Why would you need to schedule an appointment with yourself? Do you find yourself saying, as I often do, “I wish I had more time.”  Do you find that you start tasks and never seem to complete them?  How many reports have you started in the past three months or more and not completed them?

If any of the above questions even remotely sound like they apply to you, it’s time to make an appointment with yourself.  Many of us who have an online business have other businesses or may work outside of the home, whether it’s a 9-5 job or another schedule that takes you away from home.  You also have family and other  responsibilities, which may or may not include young children.

It’s very easy to fall into a routine of crisis management, where we just attack what seems to be the most critical at that moment.  I know that has happened to me a lot recently…and that’s not good business practice.  It’s not a good practice for any part of our lives.

Scheduling an appointment with yourself means that you will need to take time to put in writing all the short term things you need to do in your life, not just your business, then take time to sit down and make a realistic schedule. It would be impractical to make a schedule for only one part of your life and not incorporate all aspects.  Do not think of this time as time wasted because it’s critical so that you can reduce stress in your life.

For your business you need to take time to really analyze where you’ve been, where you are, and where you want to be so that you can know whether you’re actually accomplishing your goals or if you’re just like the little hamster on the spinning wheel.  Just thinking about that poor hamster working those little feet so hard and  going nowhere – not achieving anything, makes me tired.

Have you scheduled an appointment with yourself lately?  If you do, what do you do and how often?  Please share in the comments.

This is a question many persons who are new to the internet have asked. One person I worked with told me that she did not think she could be bothered to write posts as she did not particularly like writing. Needless to say, I pointed out some of her options.

For anyone who feels that a blog is not necessary for success in their online business, may I ask some questions?

• Do you want people to get to know, like and trust you and build relationships?

• Would you like to be able to share your knowledge with others and position yourself as the expert in your niche?

• Are you happy to provide new and informative content on your website on a regular basis so that your visitors keep coming back for more?

• Would you like to encourage and engage in interaction between your visitors and yourself?

If you answered “Yes” to any of the above, then you have identified at least one reason why you need a blog in your online business. Building the know, like and trust factor is one of the most essential steps you can take for success in your online business, and your blog provides the means for this to happen.  Building relationships is critical for success and this is another benefit of having a blog.

In my next post I will go deeper into the position that your blog should hold in your online business.

How have you helped your clients to get over this hurdle? Please share with the rest of us.

Mindset has to do with the way you think, and the way you think has a direct bearing on the type of results you will realize from starting your online business.

When you made the decision to start a business online, you did so based on research that what you had to offer could be marketed online.  You will be marketing something you already know something about, or recently took the time to learn about; and it may be something that you are passionate about.

If you’d decided to for a corporation and purchase a franchise offline, you would have to give yourself a specific designation on the Articles of Corporation.  Your title would probably be CEO or President.  You have instead started an online business!  You do not need to set up a corporation to start an online business, but it it very important to keep in mind that because you’ve started a business, your mindset must be the same.  You are the CEO/President/Owner of your own company, and as such, you are responsible for the planning, goal-setting, and other activities associated with running a business.

Your mindset or the way you think will affect the way you approach your business.  Many people will do a lot more when they work for someone else who pays them based on hours worked rather than what they are really worth.  You must develop the mindset that as your own boss, you will have to be prepared to work twice as hard for yourself so that you can see a measure of success in a short time.

You may like diverse tasks, and you will have no shortage of that as the President/CEO/Public Relations Coordinator/Accountant/Secretary of your company.  However, what I’ve found, and what you will find as you get to know successful online marketers, it’s the doing of the same tasks over and over that’s going to allow you to see desired results.  Here is a critical area where you may need to change your mindset!  You must continue to do the same things over and over until you see the desired results as long as these steps are the ones that will lead to success in your business.  Only after you have mastered these steps and seen the results should you move on to a new set of steps.

For someone new to marketing on the internet it can be like taking a four-year old into a huge specialty candy store.  There is so much to see and so many appealing and delicious type of  candies for that child to choose from that she becomes overwhelmed! Imagine that the parent said, “Remember, you are only allowed to choose one.” A typical reaction in a whiny voice could be, “I don’t know which one to choose!”

One of the things I struggled with and am still working on is to avoid clicking on emails with a really good subject line. Sometimes it’s nothing new, perhaps an e-book with a catchy title.  I know I’ve heard the topic before, probably have something similar in a binder on my shelf or on my hard-drive, or may even be in a class on the topic, but natural curiosity impels me to take a look to see someone else’s take on a topic.  I may open the document and just scan it.  Five or 10 minutes later I’ve learned nothing new, but that’s five or 10 minutes lost.  That’s time I could have spent doing something in and for my business.  One solution I’ve implemented is to unsubscribe from a number of lists.

The challenge – FOCUS.  A lack of focus is one of the things that can affect beginner internet marketers adversely.  It is a challenge, because many persons do not have a clear picture of where they want to go and how to get there, so in their research to do so they get caught up in all the various types of ‘candies’ and baubles that are on the internet.  In my next post we will delve a little further into how having a focus can propel you forward quickly.

Remember, “time spent on one thing is time away from another”.  Make sure that what you are spending your time on is going to move you forward in your online business.

Everyone will agree that it is important to have  a Mentor in order to succeed in your online business.  This is so because regardless of your education level, your field of learning, or whatever businesses you may be in or have had offline for many years, internet marketing is a whole new world with its own rules and parameters.

You may wonder why I speak of having a “responsive” mentor?  In general, a mentor is one who seeks to give guidance to his or her students.  There are many hundreds of persons online who seek to to just this…and they may have really valuable information to share.  They may also have proven that they know what they are talking about by the fact that they are making a 6-figure income online.  However, what about when you take one of their classes?  Are you able to contact them directly by e-mail?  Do they respond? Unless you are in an Inner Circle or a specific type of Mastermind it would be impractical to expect that you can have direct phone contact on a regular basis.

Do they promote you their student?  Turning that question around: Coaches, teachers, and leaders – do you promote your students or team members online?  Remember, everyone wears an invisible sign that says, “Make me feel important.”  Being others-focused encourages and builds loyalty.  It’s a win-win situation for success in your online business to have a responsive mentor and to be a responsive mentor.

Your mindset is your mental attitude or disposition which affects the way you handle  situations that arise in your business.  Whether you market online on a full-time or part-time basis, you must have the correct mental attitude in order to experience success.  And the key to the correct
attitude is to treat what you’re doing as a  business rather than a hobby.  A hobby is something that you indulge in from time to time when the whim takes you, and you cannot afford to approach your internet marketing business in that way.

It’s important for us as entrepreneurs to recognize that if we provide products or services, there are thousands more entrepreneurs providing the same types of products or services, so our mental attitude or disposition is what will determine how we handle a customer inquiry, a customer concern, any type of customer service issue.  Think about this for a moment:  by having an online business your market will be global.  Therefore, it means you could be dealing with persons in different time zones.  Would you be prepared to take a customer call at 2:00 a.m. your time zone?  Have you mentally prepared yourself for such an eventuality?  It would be interesting to hear how other online marketers have handled this situation when they had to take a customer service call at an ‘odd’ time.

Keeping a positive mindset or mental attitude will allow you to deal with ‘inconveniences’ when you are just getting started, knowing that how you handle these so-called inconveniences is the foundation that could lead to exponential growth in your business.  It seems to take a long time to build a good reputation online, one that allows people to know, like and trust you.  On the other hand that reputation could be lost in a flash if we fail to display a position mental attitude that supports growth in our online business.

Today marks the end of week 1 of the 30-day blog challenge by Dr. Jeanette Cates although it’s actually just 5 days since the challenge began.  It has been challenging for me to write everyday, not because I don’t know what to write about, but because of the number of projects on and offline I’m involved in as well as other  activities unrelated to business.  This is nothing unique to me as I’m sure if we did a survey of most of the participants we’d find that very few people have a lot of  ’spare’ time.

The recommendation was made to write two or three posts each day and schedule them for different days and I believe that is an excellent suggestion.  Unfortunately I’ve only been able to write one each day.  My goal for next week is to select a day on which I will write at least three posts.  In this way if unforeseen circumstances arise I wont fall behind.

Here is a recap of the articles I wrote this week.  My objective for the 1st two weeks is to help persons who want to, or have recently started an online business to recognize that before they start to worry about the technology aspect of their online business, they need to get their mind and inner person ready in order to succeed.

Day 1:  Starting Your Internet Business – Knowing Your Why

Day 2:  Starting Your Online Business – What Is Your Purpose?

Day 3: What Motivates You?  Is Your Motivation From Within?

Day 4:  7 Questions to Self-Check Your Motivation In Your Business

Thanks to all who read and commented on my posts this week.