Building a successful online business takes time and experience. Anyone who tells you any different is probably being economical with the truth.
Let me share an experience with you.
In 2002 I joined a very well known billion dollar nutrition network marketing company and, along with my business partner, our business flew out of the starting blocks. We were new to online marketing, but we did have two years of network marketing experience behind us.
OK, so we hadn't been hot network marketers in our two previous companies, but we had learned enough about the 'how to' of doing network marketing and knew all about lead generation, going through the numbers, cold calling, rejection, personal development and working on yourself more than your business etc.
The new skills that we needed to learn related to the online marketing side of things, but fortunately for us we had a sponsor who knew how to market online, so we quickly had this covered and spent the next few years honing our skills.
As I said, our business flew and for the first time in years the company we represented suddenly had some new 'stars' on the block. Everyone wanted to know what we were doing. The answer was of course, nothing special, it's just that we weren't the newbies everyone assumed we were.
I've since moved on from this business and business model. I am no longer involved in MLM, but much of what I learned is still very relevant to what I do today.
The thing is, the majority of newbies have so many skills they need to learn before they can even get going. And this is where a lot of sponsors don't do themselves any favours. They've often 'sold' the dream that you can be earning thousands within weeks just because they did it themselves. They'll have a great income testimonial, which may be 100% true, but were they complete newbies? Probably not. Did they bring their downline with them? Maybe.
The truth is if you are totally new to networking or internet marketing or anything really, you are not going to be successful until you have learned 'how to'. You have to learn the skills first! Fail to learn the nuts and bolts of building your business and it just won't happen.
I remember learning that success is 15% 'how to', while the other 85% is down to what's happening between your ears. In other words, your attitude and personal development is largely responsible for your success.
While to a huge extent this is true – have the 'wrong' or 'bad' attitude and your business won't go far, I have known of people who are hot with the personal development, but just couldn't get their businesses going because they didn't know the basics of 'how to'.
It's very fashionable for sponsors to say to the people they have sponsored into a business, if your business isn't working you've only to look in the mirror for the cause of its failure. True, in some cases, but for the majority all they want is to be shown what to do and they'll do it, but unfortunately the sponsor doesn't even know what to do and all they are doing is regurgitating the stock standard response they've heard from their own sponsor (well at least something is duplicating even if it isn't success!) Practical help and advice can be lacking. If it's a successful online business you want then you have to become a student of online marketing first.
Your personal development will see you through the frustration of learning how to market!
It is entirely possible for you to do this all by yourself. There are many courses available that will teach you various aspects of internet marketing. You may find yourself investing a lot of money to learn. Furthermore, are the authors of these courses available to give you one-on-one tuition if there's a part of it you don't understand? Maybe, for a huge fee, but in the majority of cases you'll be left to work it out for yourself.
You could also find a 'guru' who will teach you. Again, this can be a costly investment for one-on-one mentoring.
Alternatively, you could find an opportunity where you get the mentoring as part of the package. So if you do want to build a successful online business having a coach who can teach you because they have a successful online business themselves makes sense.
