Expectations of Online Revenue. Why Most People Fail.
People work for years, they earn an hourly wage, they maybe get a raise or small promotion after 5-10 years.
That is an incredible amount of time to wait for a raise. I mean, you work an average of 35-40 hours per week, for 52 weeks per year. That is 2,000+ hours.
Extrapolate that over 10 years, and you have spent 20,000 hours to get a meaningless increase in wages, often times following the rate of inflation (so you are not actually LOSING money as your career goes on.
The Online World, a Skewed Reality
People start building a business and have a different set of expectations. There is the tendency to expect things much quicker online than offline. We can connect with each other instantly, we can send messages to others with the click of a button, access any information we could ever imagine with a simple search. The expectation is instant.
However, that “mindset” bleeds into the Internet business world. Partly because of this instant expectation and a load of misleading information and offers out there claiming “instant riches”.
Not the reality. An amazingly successful business won’t happen in a few months. Sometimes even a year. Sometimes two.
Some Perspective of Time vs. Rewards Payoff
I know I can make you feel much more comfortable about your journey moving forward within the online world, but you have to have a realistic and appropriate outlook.
Let’s say you blog 2 times per week on your website, say average time to create a research your content, write your content and publish is 1.5 hours. That is on the high side.
That is 3 hours per week you have invested into the most critical aspect of your business. Of course there are going to be other things that you work on associated with your business (educating yourself, keyword research, social marketing, etc), but generally speaking that is the core tasks that you are doing.
If you invest 3 hours per week into your business, you can get a lot of it. The problem is the expectations of this far exceed that of those that invest 40 hours into a day job per week.
3 hours vs. 40 hours!
The reality is that 3 hours per week can lead to a sustainable and full time income with time, but after 3 months, that is really only 36 total hours you have invested in your build out of your business. Why would your expectations be a full time income at that point, or even income as your foundation is being built?
I know partly why.
There are companies claiming instant success, showing pictures of fancy cars and big commissions and then stating how quickly these can be achieved. All things that are drawing you to the idea of instant success.
Putting 36 hours into your business is just getting the foundation in place. That is why after 3-4 months folks are not generating a huge income, they have invested less than a full working week into their business.
Imagine putting 20 hours per week into your business?
Imagine if you ramped up the actual production side of your business. I have no doubts that you create a minimum of 7 posts on your website (one per day) as well as manage all engagement, social activities and build out the comment side of things on your each and every one of these posts.
After just one year, investing this amount of time you would be looking at a website with 350+ posts on it, a website that is getting a considerable amount of traffic, and one that likely will be in not just a state of being a full time income, but will be in a position to be scaled far beyond this.
Now imagine putting 40 hours per week in.
You could amplify the production of your content, or you could focus on building out more thorough and detailed articles.
Perhaps you do 7 posts per week, but they are very detailed and “thorough” pillar style posts.
Perhaps you can get comments and engagement rolling on all of them while managing.
Perhaps you can invest time into integration of charts and proper imagery into all of your pages and posts.
Within a year’s time, you could have an authority website in place, one that has a good deal of brand recognition and one where relationships are naturally being made in the industry. You have CLOUT in an industry after just one year. Not to mention a significant foundation to continue to grow your business from and one that is likely bringing in close to a full time income stream.
Then You Start Earning, You Start Scaling…
And as you start generating income, you can start getting help. You can get help with your content authoring, what if you could put in 10 minutes of time spec’ing out an article and have someone spend their time (1.5 hours) writing an article for you by paying them.
Imagine how quickly you could scale if you could literally get 7 articles written per week in 70 minutes of your time! Imagine if you could start sourcing out all of your comments and engagement through purchasing credits here at Wealthy Affiliate and simply paying for them (100 comments for $100)
Imagine if you could use income that is coming in to drive design on your website, perhaps a more advanced Wordpress theme, some infographics, developing a logo or custom graphics.
Imagine, imagine, imagine….
That is all you will be doing if you give yourself a month and 15-20 hours to build a business. It will never happen. That is something that I can be sure of and that I can be blunt to you about.
Be realistic about the process of building an online business, and the realism of a business will take place before your eyes.
Recent Comments
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I like the way this is broke down....3 hours per day may seem like a lot ..such as those with full-time jobs and children. If you only went to work for 3 hours, what would be the result? A full week's pay for not even one-half day's work? Make whatever time you have count.
Yeah, the brilliant thing is that 3 hours per day can lead to big things over time. That is partly what I was getting at, that same 3 hours if productive, can be much better applied to building a business.
What happens in business is that you will cumulatively grow based on your time investment. Whereas with most jobs, your income is flatlined whether you work 1 hour or 10,000's of hours, there is no opportunity for linear growth.
People don't start with 10 hours per day to invest in an online business and I totally accept that. Do what works, and the work will pay off with time.
Hi Kyle,
This is a good post...
I would like to add to your ideas on growing an online business...
CONSIDER WORKING ON DUAL SOURCES OF TRAFFIC
My suggestion is that members use some of the hours that they dedicate to their online business, whether 3 hours a day or 8 hours a day to pursuing a dual track for growing that business...
BACKGROUND OF "THE PROBLEM"
The fact is that without traffic you have no business, no matter how good what you are promoting may be, no matter how you present it or where...
That is the frustration with many new online marketers as they see 3 months, 6 months or more go by...They are spending time creating volumes of content and not seeing traffic nor sales...
As you say, it takes time and consistent effort...
MY PROPOSED SOLUTION
Pursue a dual track of paid traffic (using PPC, Solo Ads, etc.) AND organic traffic (content based) when planning and executing your online marketing business...
REASONING
(1) Organic traffic is effective and builds over to time, as you eloquently point out...It requires research, creating engaging, educational, and possibly entertaining content; editing the content , and publishing it on the various platforms, to include a website, social media sites, forums, etc.
As stated, by its very nature, this tactic will take time and is cumulative...If you do not pursue this avenue, you are leaving money on the table...There is a LOT of traffic available (and it is "paid for" through front end labor, and thereafter free)...
(2) Paid traffic, on the other hand, requires only that you create and market offers using the elements below...
(a) A COMPELLING AD. You have to create an effective ad...One that compels the targeted viewer to take action and click through to a landing page or to the sales page.You are not selling the product, your focus with this element is mainly on getting the viewer to click through to get more information.
(b) BRIDGE OR LANDING PAGE (OPTIONAL). A "bridge" or "landing page" that lays out the reasons why the item promoted is worthy of purchase and compels the viewer to take further action by clicking through to the sales page to buy the product or service...
Note that although this element is optional, and you could also send the viewer directly to the sales page of the promoted product/service, there are advantages to creating and using such a page...The main reasons I can see to do this are to capture leads, build your credibility, brand, and reputation...
(c) AFFILIATE PLATFORM/PAYMENT MECHANISM/TRACKING. These three elements I have grouped together and they all need to be in place to secure offers, receive payments for sales, and also to track how your marketing program is working and make adjustments as may be indicated....
Once you have planned, created the ads and pages; selected affiliate offers that are worthy of promoting (lots of selection criteria here, well beyond the scope of this comment); and added tracking, the advertising platform must be selected, and then start advertising/getting sales/commissions...
BOTTOM LINE
I think you have some training here on PPC and Solo Ads,and I would advise members to spend a portion of the hours learning about this traffic method...
What is here is enough to get you started and on the right path using paid traffic methods for building your business. As with any business, you must invest money, time, and effort to have success.
There is no instant millionaire solution, in reality, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Consider planning for some immediate success using paid traffic along with the longer term content marketing strategy for your organic traffic...
Using this dual approach will address some of the frustration with seeing little to no results for your time and effort. It will also prove to yourself that this online marketing can work (and it can, it has, and it will continue to work)...
Most of the super-affiliates are not using solely organic traffic...They are combining or concentrating ONLY on paid or email marketing...Why?
Once you have a successful PPC campaign that is converting, you can scale up and realize YUGE (OK sorry for the Drumpf word) profits...
Just my 2 cents!
Cheers!
Dave : )
Part of the process is the Learning. The journey that we are taking to become good website earners in time. I for one am loving the journey, enjoying learning lots of new things, then trying to develop them into something of value to whomever my readers will be.
I have learned so many things through WA - I can actually make a website!! Me, whose previous grapples with technology were coming to grips with a mobile phone! I find it all so exciting and fulfilling and I'm nowhere near my destination.
Don't be focussed solely on the end result or you'll miss so much of the enjoyment of getting there including the people you meet on the way.
I think, too, that if anyone is desperate to earn instant income then affiliate marketing shouldn't be considered an option in attempting to achieve it.
I'm running out of compliments for what Kyle and Carson have created here with WA. I believe they have created the gold standard on the internet for community support and the cross training that occurs as a result. I am continually encouraged by WA's community support and training as well as Kyle's clear-minded approach to creating a successful online business. Prior to my WA find, I participated in a couple of the other internet programs that emphasized some of the problems that Kyle pointed as reasons for failing online. It's refreshing for me to hear an owner emphasize the hard work reality of creating and growing a business online or offline. Again, the support here at WA makes the hard work easier to accept and get through successfully. Thank you, Kyle, for your clear thinking on business success. It refreshes and encourages me. And thank you for creating such a great business model that promotes such community support!
I am imagining alright; mine is huge. I had unrealistic expectations for a while when I started my business. Now I understand that it takes a while any business to mature.
You are totally right; investing less than less than 20 hours a week at the start and expecting fulltime income in jiffy is very unrealistic.
Thanks for the reminder
Kyle,
I love how you keep things in perspective for us. I hope every member of this community takes the time to read this post. In my opinion it's one of your most important posts yet.
I just want to quickly share that when I first started I simply couldn't understand how small investments of my time would have such large dividends later on. The only thing I knew was that I wanted the Affiliate lifestyle. I put the blinders on and moved ahead on faith. I did the work, ignored the shiney objects and it paid off. I never would have understood the return on my time investment if I didn't just have faith in the community and the process. In this business it's so important to just take action.
"Do things today that other people won't....
Live tomorrow like other people can't." -Jim Rohn
Keep up the great work guys!
~Jim
For those coming out of an employee background which entails a steady paycheck, building as a freelancer is a leap.
I would venture that most affiliate marketeers here fall into that category. You have an unstructured atmosphere where YOU must provide the incentive and structure.
It requires :
-faith
-committed work
to seed the benefits that WILL come.
Thank you for promoting this basic operating rule and for all the great training and assistance here that facilitates this as a reality Kyle.
Realistic post here Kyle. The truth is if people spend some of those hours of creating valuable content and engaging in income producing activities like monetizing their offers, replying to comments to build relationships, properly tagging their posts, and more, etc. then the more time they spend on their business the more profitable it will become. However, I find the greatest virtue of all is having patience as sometimes even the things I mentioned may not bring in immediate results but at least you'll be on your way!
I have a problem with being impatient and wanting the results much faster than they actually come. I always have to remind myself to be realistic and think long term. Thanks for the post, always helpful to be real!
Reminds me of this great article that I found: If I Work at This 8 Hours Per Day.
Yeah, that is another similar post I created awhile back. Same tune, different ideology.
One thing I haven't mentioned is the idea that people will invest 4 years and 10,000's of hours into getting an education with no expectation for income, actually the expectation for loss of income and incredible expenses ($100K+ in lots of cases).
When it comes to their own business, 50 hours should be enough and heaven forbid investing $100 or $200 into their own business.
wow, that is incredibly true and I have never seen anybody put it this way, very eye opening. Thank you so much!
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I do agree 1 million % with Kyle :)
I went TEN years at university to get a specific degree TEN years of my life and it didn't pay that much the first years I got it... To produce a doctoral research we must spend hours and hours and hours on it, YearS on it.
And to be honest my online business has MUCH much more potential to make me REAL good money and freedom than my career, that I love by the way :)
It is gone be my first year anniversary soon at WA and I didn't even scratch what I can learn from this system. The more I learn the more my personal business strategy is defined. Never EVER try to get something with no serious effort, period !
Cheers to all of you who INVEST their time in their online business. Success will follow, Jeff