Don’t be afraid to take risks – It Pays!

One of the biggest hurdles I think people new to this whole making money online thing have to get over is the mindset of doing things you have never done before. To those who aren’t currently making money online, the mere concept of using the Internet to make a living seems either absurd or really easy. Those are the two main reactions I get when talking about it with other people – “You can actually make REAL money online?” or “So you just slap up some blog posts, Google ads and maybe make a few tweets, right?” WRONG!

Making money online doesn’t have to be inaccessible, impossible, or even that confusing but it does require work. It is much more than slapping up some blog posts with ads and waiting for the money to roll in. It’s also something that can be a reality for many people, as you see stories about people making it big online all the time. You just have to be willing to challenge that conventional wisdom and not succumb to the pressure of others.

As Luke and I found out, when you start out in the business you are going to fail, and fail a lot. You need to be willing to accept that there is a learning curve and you will not be a millionaire overnight. However, once you get the hang of how to set up a good PPC campaign, connect with your audience and make some connections in the industry things will improve and you will start to see results. The problem is most people can’t get over the initial assumptions many have that Internet marketing is easy and when they meet some adversity, they give up and walk away. Don’t be so quick to throw in the towel.

We struggled a lot in the early going to make campaigns that would break even in PPC, didn’t have a good sense of what niches we wanted to work in and were constantly changing which offers and networks we were working with. This left us with little practical knowledge of any particular vertical, no strong relationships with any affiliate networks or affiliate managers. After regrouping and really buckling down and focusing in on more specific areas, we found our campaigns slowly improving and began developing relationships with various affiliate managers. As Luke alluded to in his previous post, if you need something, ask for it – and if you’ve built a relationship with someone, they’ll be more willing to help you out and give you some great suggestions to build on.

Now that we have some contacts in the industry, other opportunities for collaboration are opening up and we are starting to see some really positive growth in our online endeavors. So don’t give up at the first sign of trouble, be willing to challenge the conventional wisdom and make sure to build relationships through AIM, Twitter, blog comments and other means to give yourself a support network to power through the tough times. You’ll be surprised how successful you can be if you give yourself a shot.