Making Money Online: Persistence and the Tipping Point
When it comes to making money online, everybody wants to see their efforts gaining traction. Everybody wants to see some growth as they continue to plug away…
But if they don’t, most people give up. Persistence can be inconvenient. Some feel it isn’t worth it, while others try to figure out what they did wrong. What makes it worse is the fact that many people trying to make money on the internet are people who desperately need money, and they are lured in by bogus promises of “quick and easy money”.
What most people don’t want to accept, is that internet marketing is just like any other business. This means that, unless you are able to instantly place your business in front of many potential customers or clients, it is going to take WORK and TIME.
Consider this:
In the offline world, if you want to have an “instant-income” business, you open a fast food joint on a busy street. You have instant exposure and instant cash flow. As long as your food and prices are ok, you will soon have plenty of customers.
The trade-off is that it costs money to set it up.
In the online environment, the equivalent of a premise on a busy street is to do paid advertising. Unfortunately, considering how many people you need to reach, and what the cost of that will come to, it is out of reach of most people.
Think logically:
The guy who opened the cafe on Main Street in a busy town, spent thousands and thousands of dollars to get it up and running. He spent money on shop fitting, fitting out the kitchen, stock, utensils, signage, rent, electricity, gas, etc.
You, on the other hand, started with nothing. No big budget for marketing and branding, no budget for fancy website design and graphic design, and no connections among the big dogs to give you a helping hand.
You have no audience and no credibility.
The reality is this:
You CAN gather an audience to sell to. You CAN establish credibility. You CAN brand yourself. But because you don’t have a big budget, you will need to approach it from another angle:
Keep on working until you reach the “tipping point”.
The ‘tipping point” is the point where your actions all come together and start to gain traction. It’s the point where everything suddenly becomes easier, and the results of your efforts start showing.
But reaching the tipping point is not the result of one big event. Fair enough, in some cases, it might be. Such as when you do a guest post on a busy blog, and it goes viral. If the post attracts the right people, and many of them hop over to your own blog (where some opt-in and some share your other content), you are good to go.
For most people, however, it doesn’t happen that way. Instead, it is likely to take a substantial amount of work and effort, not to mention your time, of consistently doing small things over and over again:
Write a blog post. Share it on all your social accounts and social groups. Ask your friends and connections to share it. Engage with people on social media. Engage with people who comment on your blog post. Leave comments on other blogs. Engage with people who react to your comments. Reach out to other bloggers and industry peers. Follow people who are likely to follow you back. Wash, rinse, repeat.
A myriad of small, (sometimes) seemingly insignificant things – done over and over again. As Yaro Starak said: Droplets add up to a trickle. Trickles add up to a stream. Streams add up to a river. Rivers add up to an ocean.
As you do this, you are likely to see – over time – a series of “mini-tipping-points”. You will note that, at some stage, it becomes easier to build new connections on social media. At some point, you will note that more people are commenting on your blog posts. At some point, you will note that Google is starting to send you regular traffic.
Each of these will be an achievement in its own right.
And each of these will be the result of countless small actions that have come together. And when these “mini-tipping-points” all start to come together, you will find that everything suddenly just works better. Traffic comes in from all angles. People opt-in. People buy. People share your stuff. not just here and there, but regularly.
But here’s the kicker:
Nobody can tell you how long it will take. Nobody can tell you how many followers you need. Nobody can tell you how many blog posts you need, or how many shares.
It all differs not only from one niche to the next but from one person to the next.
Some people write well, but they suck at social media. Some enjoy social media, but what they write is less than spectacular. Some people do both well, but they pick topics that don’t resonate with the people they try to reach. Some people struggle to be consistent due to time constraints.
It’s different for everyone.
The bottom line is this:
The only way you will ever know whether that which you are doing is going to reach the tipping point, is to keep on until you do. Yes, you absolutely have to keep learning along the way, to improve what you are doing as you go.
But at the end of the day, there is NO substitute for persistence.
