Your Successful Internet Based Business, Part I

Just before my last weekly New Car Challenge update, I asked you to develop an “idea bank” for possible internet based businesses. I that post, I pointed out that not every hobby and interest will make a good internet business. You want a business that generate income with the least stress possible, so you can start paying down your debt and build savings so you never have to survive on credit cards and payday loans again.

There’s a simple 3-step process for evaluating your ideas to determine which ones you can successfully turn into extra income streams. Since I can be a bit cheezy at times, I’ve dubbed the test The 3 Ps of A Successful Internet Business Idea. Wow – I suddenly feel all Tony Robbins-esque.

Today, let’s look at the first element of a successful internet based business – Passion.

One of the biggest mistakes new internet marketers make is choosing an internet business based solely on the potential of profit. That’s important, of course, but if you also have to be passionate about your subject matter.

Why?

Building an internet based business isn’t just as simple as slapping up a web page and raking in profits. You’re going to be putting in lots of hours on your project, even though it may only amount to an hour or two each day. If you want your business to keep bringing in money month after month, you will be writing dozens – if not hundreds – of articles and pages. That can be pretty exhausting in the best of times… but if you don’t care about your subject matter, it’s downright dreadful.

I know this from personal experience. One of my first ventures was a website on – i kid you not – hemorrhoid remedies. At the time, a slew of companies had released natural “cures” for hemorrhoids (usually info-products, or ebooks that told readers how to cure hemorrhoids with herbs), and I wanted to get a piece of the action.

There were two main problems with this venture. First, I underestimated the competition. I wasn’t the only one who saw the profit potential in hemorrhoid cure ebooks… so I couldn’t just set up shop with a half-assed website and leave it. I had to provide more (and better) information on the topic, so my site could show up on the first page of Google search results.

In and of itself, the competition wouldn’t have been such an issue… but the “more and better” requirement wore on me, because I really couldn’t have cared less about hemorrhoids. Granted, I learned more than I ever really wanted to know about the topic, but each successive article was harder to write. It didn’t take long before playing on Facebook, cleaning the refrigerator and flossing the cat took precedence over writing yet another article about hemorrhoids.

In the end, my site became just another corpse in the vast Internet graveyard.

Passion is critical for internet business success. It will help motivate you when you don’t feel like spending an hour or two working on the business after you come home from work. It will also help keep you from burning out and abandoning your project before it starts making money.

Go back through the list you created a couple of days ago, and cross the less interesting ones off your list. You may have a passing interest in, say, golf, but unless the topic really excites you, it’s probably not a good topic for an internet business.

In the next post, we’ll look at the second P of a successful internet based business – Practicality.