5 Neglected Areas That Can Affect Your Online Business Success

A lot many people are opting to work from home and setting up online businesses these days. In fact, the businesses that could be run from home or businesses that require work from home services are growing exponentially. Although many people nurture a dream of working from home and a few take the plunge, most do not have a solid plan to go forward with. Everyone likes a few extra bucks coming their way, but without solid planning, it is simply a recipe for disaster. Do you think you can approach your present day job without proper planning and be good at it? The same goes for your work from home business too.

If you are thinking of firing a shot in the dark, or perhaps have already done so, its time to wake up from your slumber and clear all your misconceptions. Setting up a work from home business demands serious work and commitment just like establishing any other brick and mortar business. It requires hard work, persistence and most of all a clear, solid plan of action from start to finish.

Here, I want to highlight 5 of the most neglected areas that severely restricts the success of most people who are internet business entrepreneurs. They may seem to be very insignificant at first, but if you neglect them like many others do, they have the potential of ruining your dreams forever.

1. Setting up your home office space

As a work at home entrepreneur, one of the first things you need to do is create a space in your home to function as your office. The best solution would be to separate a room for your office.  It should allow you privacy and let you work without disturbance. This room needs to accommodate your computer, internet connection, phone and any other furniture that you require.

Not everyone may be able to spare a room to function as an office. In that case, you need to find a corner which will allow you to concentrate on your work without much disturbance. One of the disadvantages of working from home is that your family would not understand that you are “working”. They may think that you are just fiddling around with the computer and you can’t blame them because they really don’t have any idea of what’s going on. So they may ask you to help with errands or other household work. Due to this overlap of personal space and work space, your business will be hindered. Therefore, it is best to demarcate your time and space clearly for yourself and for your family.

2. Educate Yourself

If you want to make a living online, you have to educate yourself. It doesn’t matter whether it was your first job or present day job, you couldn’t go in there without appropriate training, right? Unless you are skilled in what you do, you do not deserve your pay.

So you need to be willing to learn as much as you can about setting up and developing an online business. There is a huge amount of free information available on the internet but you will have to glean the nuggets of wisdom for yourself. Stay clear of scamsters who are out there to rip off gullible people promising overnight riches.

Aim to learn something new everyday. It is not rocket science and anyone with determination can do it. You can also search for other successful online business persons and try to follow their example. Hanging out on the forums also helps to learn a great deal.

3. Goal Setting

A huge problem with online entrepreneurs is that they either don’t set a goal or they set unrealistic goals. In the first instance, the business will lose direction pretty quickly and in the second instance, when goals are not met, they get discouraged and often quit. The secret is to be realistic, considering the time and money you are investing in your business and the potential of profit in your chosen niche.

I would imagine that most people who set unrealistic goals are influenced by the numerous scamsters online who promise overnight riches and somehow sell the dream of being a millionaire without any serious effort. It is easy to be carried away by such claims, particularly when they are presented with pictures of luxury cars, beautiful women and exotic vacation locales.

However, as an entrepreneur, you need to keep yourself grounded and remember that business is serious, even boring sometimes. It is only your passion that will see you through all the times of disappointment.

So set yourself small, achievable goals at first, and when they’re done, you can set higher and higher goals. You can even revise a goal if you have achieved it before the scheduled time. If you don’t achieve your goal, remember that online business is a continuous learning process and you are learning how to do it successfully. So its not a complete waste of time, either.

It is not necessary that you set goals in monetary terms, particularly when you’re just starting out. You could just set goals in terms of tasks to be accomplished or things to be learned. As you progress and start making money online, you can also set monetary goals along with it.

Set a large goal for the year and then divide it into smaller chunks to be achieved every month or every week. Its a good strategy to make your goals realistic and achievable. When you look at it weekly or fortnightly it doesn’t look like a huge mountain to climb. Instead it becomes easy and manageable.

4. Build Relationships

It is easy to think of online business as working from home in isolation. But there are some things about business that cannot be changed. One of them is connecting with people and forging relationships. These relationships may transform into profitable partnerships in the future. Even if they don’t there is a lot to share, learn and help each other with.

Some of the easy ways of connecting to people is through forums. For online business, there are a lot of popular and credible forums like Warrior Forum, Digital Point and many others. Hang out on these forums, ask questions, help someone who doesn’t know what you know, and most importantly watch out for the experts who have been there for a long time and offer great advice. Those are the people you want to connect with.

Another way of building relationships is linking to popular blogs or mentioning them in your blog posts. When you link to popular blogs or mention the experts in your blog, they may receive a trackback or if they have set up an alert, they may know who is talking about them. Another technique is regularly leaving a comment that adds value to the discussions on popular blogs of experts. Follow these techniques and over time you will be more and more familiar with the experts which is good to build further relationships.

If you get a chance to attend offline seminars on blogging on internet marketing, make the most of the opportunity because such events allow you to meet the experts in person. There is nothing like a one-to-one meeting for forging new relationships.

5. Quit Quitting

Most people quit at the first opportunity. It is as if they were waiting for a chance to quit. They say out of 100 people who take the plunge, only 2 or 3 people remain committed to their business. The rest of them quit midway. So, in fact, there are only 2-3 real entrepreneurs out of 100. Its easy to say this but unless you quit quitting and let your passion shine through, you cannot taste success.

There are bound to be numerous discouragements and failures, but you need to take them in your stride and accept the learning from it. Take the case of any successful person in online business or any other business for that matter. All of them have faced hurdles, most would have been on the verge of quitting. But someone came along and told them not to quit and keep believing in themselves. Then they got going again and made it big.

Maybe you’re on the verge of quitting and this is the voice that tells you to keep believing in yourself and keep going on. Only those who rise up from where they’ve fallen will be able to finish the journey.

Sammy Alexander is an internet entrepreneur and educator. He was on the verge of quitting many times but his passion kept him going. You can download the most comprehensive work at home business start up guide from his website: http://getbesthomebusiness.com