Social media is littered with ads about the dream of making money online. We’re all told to chase that rainbow unicorn until we can shoot it down, and eat it for dinner. Somehow then we’ll have made it. Yippee….not.

Making money online is hard and most people will never succeed at it. That’s just a fact. You, my friends, can though but you have to start listening and understanding how the games played. Everyone tells you that making money online is easy. It’s not. It’s bloody hard work.

Don’t whinge to people about why you can’t make money online. Instead, I encourage you to read the below advice.

A) Take action

Rather than being romantic about how you make money online, just start. Start today. Start in the next few minutes if you can.

Making money online is rare because people spend too long thinking about the method, rather than spending the time to execute.

“Whatever your grand plan is, it’s going to get blown to pieces with a 12-gauge shotgun once you launch and attempt to validate it”

Action is the winning ingredient of online success, not strategy, content, product, marketing, people or any other tool you think you need. Cold hard action will take you to the iciest Mt Fuji you have ever seen where only the winners with a ton of cash hang out on weekends.

Action is what got me to where I am today. I used to believe I couldn’t be a blogger because I didn’t have a website. Then, I found a way and used other people’s platforms. There is always a way to make money online.

B) Drop what you’re bad at

I’d been fantasizing about selling an online course for years and never did it. The reason I discovered was that I hate making websites. I have no interest and it drains my time and energy. So what I did instead was find people who could do that for me and then did a revenue share with them.

What this allowed me to do was launch something, test it, see some dollars come in and focus on what I love: creating content to inspire the world.

“If you’re hopeless at something, then outsource it”

Find a way. Give up your excuses about why you can’t outsource.

Don’t be greedy and quit trying to do everything yourself. That’s what is stopping you from making a wheelbarrow full of cash like Rich Uncle Pennybags (mascot of Monopoly game).

C) You don’t understand how many hours it takes

The flashy, sponsored, Facebook videos and the guy on YouTube who shot a video next to his pool make you think it’s all about overnight success. Making money online takes more hours than you could imagine. For a while, you’ll make less than ten dollars and then all of a sudden there will be a tipping point.

Money will then start to flow. Then, you’ll have a few major events after the tipping point that will be where all of your money comes from in the future. Can you keep having a go at your online business even when nobody is paying attention or spending money with you?

That will determine whether you will make money online.

D) You think there’s only one way

The ways you can make money online are much more varied than you think. In my space (blogging) you can do the following:

– Create an eCommerce site with products
– Ebook
– Sponsored Podcast
– Affiliate marketing links
– Online courses
– Speaking gigs
– Banner Ad’s

The list is longer than the number of animals that entered Noah’s Ark. Your problem is that you think there is only one way or that the way’s I’ve mentioned are out of date or they don’t work anymore. All aspects of making money online can work; it just depends on what your niche is, as to which ones will work.

There’s no silver bullet with a side of taco’s that is going to 100% tell you what method or methods will work best for you. See point one: take action. Do it now!

E) Your niche is not your passion

The plain and simple vanilla smoothie fact is that your niche must be your passion as well. Trying to make money online through a channel that you’re not obsessed with will fail and fail badly (trust me I’ve tried).

The only way you will have the willpower to continue on when times get tough with your online business is by centering your business around something which you would be doing anyway. If you love golf and start a business around it, no matter what you’re going to keep on playing golf.

Pick something that is a default habit for you so that your online business can enhance that habit. I’m obsessed with personal development and entrepreneurship, so for me, to write about it and have a business centered around it, is straightforward. I don’t have to stay motivated because the motivation is self-fulfilling. It’s kind of like compound interest; you put the money in an account and the rest takes care of itself.

F) Overcomplicating is the disease

The rarest of rare traits in successful online businesses is simplicity. It’s the main reason making money online is so rare. The more complicated your grand plan is to build the smartest website, the less likely you will execute and make any real money.

All these “How To Make Millions Courses” that are available online are what’s causing you the problem. The goal of these courses is to make out like they have all the answers and give you long-winded BS strategies, which won’t work anyway.

Overcomplicating what you’re trying to achieve online is the root cause of the problem. Less is more. Do one thing online, and do it well. Make what you do different, without it necessarily needing to be better. Again, just execute and take action. Rinse then repeat.

If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net