The Worst (and Best) Part of an Online Business
When you build your online business with Wealthy Affiliate, there's one bad part that you won't realize until you're in the thick of it. An online business is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you don't add fresh content to your blog regularly and follow up on leads, you're going to lose business, just like a store owner who has a “closed” sign in the window when customers come by.
I'm writing this blog entry on a cruise. I have my Wealthy Affiliate websites, as well as several others, plus my online writing and teaching jobs. I'm “on” for all of those, no matter what day it is or where I am. I've been grading papers while at sea and writing up blog entries in between the buffets, shows, and pool time.
It might not sound too appealing to know you've got a business that never closes until you think about the flip side. You always have to create a welcoming atmosphere for potential customers, and those customers can make a purchase at any time.
My Amazon Affiliate links are active no matter where I am or what I'm doing. People are seeing my Wealthy Affiliate banner links at any hour they visit my site. It could be someone with insomnia who's surfing online in the middle of the night or a person on Christmas Eve desperately searching for last minute gift ideas. My sales potential never ends.
Be ready to devote lots of time to your websites, especially in the beginning as you're getting them establishing. No one gives credibility to a blog that rarely gets an entry or a website with dated content. It's like walking into a half-abandoned corner store where most of the products expired two months ago. You have to keep things fresh, and that means hard work.
Be ready to reap the rewards, too. Anyone who builds a new business has to hustle in the beginning. When you're doing it online, the rewards can come at literally any time, as long as you put in the effort to draw potential customers.
Recent Comments
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Good point Barb. Enjoy your cruise ;-) Oh by the way, you forgot to tell us; to be able to go on a cruise is an added benefit from having an online business! ;-) And Merry Christmas also.
Have fun for us on your cruise and I think what hellerb below says about writing content ahead and letting it get auto published on a schedule is a good reminder so you can take a day or two away from the internet at some points in time!
Great advice! If people see you haven't posted anything in awhile then they're probably just going to leave...like someone would leave a store that the employees were just ignoring them when they needed help with something.
Wow, a cruise! Have fun : )
Hey Barb-Another great manuscript post. Every word you have written in this blog post should resonate with all of us just starting our journey. Thanks for the encouragement.
On a Cruise, well high five for that! Enjoy.
You are right! I have always want to open a pet shop that sell just product and create awareness for animal. My main objective is to encourage to adopt rather than buy. But having a retail shop with monthly rental and operational cost is totally out. I can't afford!
Now I have a website that achieve the primary objective, not yet make big bucks but I really happy with it.. I believe and will make it work as my full time in time to come!
I agree, it certainly does take a lot of constant attention to run an online business, that's why it is important to choose something you're passionate about!
One thing I have found very helpful in allowing me off time is writing several articles at once, and then delaying when they are posted. For example, I would rather spend my weekends doing things with my friends and family than writing articles. So every Friday, I write 3 articles, one for Friday, one for Saturday, and one for Sunday. Right above the "Publish" button on wordpress it gives you the option to change when it is published. So I change my articles to the dates I want them published, and boom, my work is done for the weekend. All I have to do is promote the articles on twitter once they come out, but that only takes a few minutes.
Well said, as usual, Barb. "Autopilot Income" is often misunderstood to mean we don't have to keep working at it. Imagine a plane on automatic pilot. For a while, it works, but sooner or later the plane has to land, and for that we want the pilot to be sitting in his seat doing his job. ~Jude