Rich Sage Analyzes 11 Reasons Why Online Success is Very Tough, and What You Can do to Overcome That and Succeed.

As the Rich Sage, from time to time, it is my nature to delve into things with a good dose of wisdom, and resolve a few online problems. To those who are venturing online to make their fame and fortune, I dedicate this episode. It will be a honest, sober and downright in-your-face assessment of the truth.

Don’t get pissed. Learn to avoid these mistakes and do it right…

Rich Sage looks at 11 Reasons Why Online Success is Very Tough:

1. The competition is not the neighbor or business across the street –It’s everyone in a particular niche around the block *and* around the world. If I am writing about Internet success, about Internet marketing –my competition? Perhaps, 1 million other blogs that are also dedicated to the same objective.In this type of minefield, how do I plan to succeed? My secret is the Sage! Yup, the funny looking guy giving you the wise look. He is a memorable character. It just so happens that he is also the way I live. So, it’s not that hard for me to tell it like it is and living the same. I talk the talk and walk the walk of the Sage. I love it.
2. This leads me to the next item –many of you are getting into Internet marketing looking for $$$’s. That’s the only thing on your mind. I say that is very short term thinking. You need to enter the online craze with your passion in mind. My passion? Well, it’s all over this site and my stock market niche. It’s all about it. So, I can sit here all day and add to this site and do my work. It does not tire me, nor do I get bored doing it.
3. My reason number three, is that business is something not everyone can do all that well. Not everyone enjoys presenting them selves in any type of stage. So, how could I say that while hiding behind the Sage? I don’t. Everyone that I meet ends up knowing me as the sage. It’s on everything that I do. It’s on my business cards -even my cell phone has the Sage crimson color! So, if you don’t like public sales exposure or presentations to the public, I don’t advice some aspects of marketing online. Sooner or later, to make money from the real world (as you will need to do to maximize online success) you will need to sell yourself in the real world. You’ll need to make contact, you’ll need to network and you’ll need to make friends everywhere. Embrace it. Absolutely dominate it!
4. Stick to the highest principles … Perhaps, one of the greatest threats to your online success is taking short cuts. There is a temptation to cut corners, do rather annoying things when for example a business cash flow is not met at the end of the month. As a webmaster one is tempted to do some pretty nasty things to increase visitors and make sales. Don’t.Always take the high road and do your best to hold it. Otherwise, keep your business costs as low as they can be and keep working to publish good content until you make your cash-flow targets.I’ll give one example –SPAM. I am getting all kinds of spam –comment spam, email spam –even article spam. What do I do next? Well, I have several kinds of filters that just block and automatically delete the stuff. So, someone is wasting their time away sending all the stuff, making their business look like a scam and all I do is spend a few minutes deleting it. I am cool about it. Just press delete. This is *not* the way to run a successful business by annoying a bunch of other people WHO YOU HOPE to be your next customer. So, what ever you do, take the high road, and at the end of the day you can feel good about doing the right thing.
5. Be Consistent! Next to my desk is the statement that “it is to be, it is up to me”. I am the one in control. I am the one who has my destiny at the tips of my fingers and the neurons of my brain. I have no excuses when I don’t make it to the keyboard and don’t write. Well, from time to time I can miss a day. Why? Because I am consistent and put a lot of content up. Good useful stuff. So, if there’s a sunny day, I get my bike out and go out for a 2 or 3 hour bike ride. I can afford that as I write and research a lot. I am consistent.
6. Ride your momentum. Often I see people just not getting into the “grove”. This is essential to online or for that matter any type of success. If you notice I’ve put up a few times the stats for this site — Oct., Nov. and December 2007 so far. The question now is HOW will I keep that momentum going? The answer is *everything*. I could have passed up this 11 series column today. I could be out watching a movie. I could be out eating. I’ve put off all that, just to download my thoughts and free up tomorrow for a “passion away from my pc”. Never let momentum die. Do everything to ’spark’ it and then do everything to build on it.
7. Let me mention a technical item, and what you need to also do… Let’s say that you’re going to run a dating site. You go and purchase a dating site software for a few hundred dollars and put it up on a hosting server. Then you’re ready to run the site. Nothing happens. Well, keep this in mind: Your $199.00 dating software was sold to 1,000 others who had the same hope –who had their own dreams of success with a dating site. What will differentiate you? What will “stand you apart” from the other 1,000? How will you “be the one” as the 1001st owner of the software to make it? The idea is that you need find your own unique position. You need to be like The Great Zucchini, who I have written about. Just search that name and you’ll see. You need to be YOUR OWN “Rich Sage” –search that too and you’ll see. You have to be original! Or don’t even bother leaving the starting gate.
8. Have you done everything to build your success? As the Internet matures, the things that we’ll need to do to succeed online will keep increasing. Remember the good old days when all you had to do was slap a banner on some site and list yourself on Yahoo and you had all the visitors that you needed to make a good business. Now what do you have to do? Yup, I’d bet the list does not even fit a regular sheet of paper. What’s my solution to this? Just to pick the best promotional methods and stick to them. I don’t work on cheating the Google Engineers — I try to find out what they want and provide it. They like great content. I’ll provide that. They like me to register my site with their Webmaster Tools. Sure, I’ll do that. Since my time is limited, I’ll keep doing around 10 things to promote the Rich Sage and my network every week. Are you doing that?
9. Get out and participate… I have to admit that I was late to this one. I had focused so many years on developing things that I forgot to get out and promote things. I can develop this and that, but IF I don’t get out and tell the world about it, nothing really happens. Nothing. Take for example, the Forum that I usually frequent –The Warrior Forum. >> I started posting there less than a year ago, and now I am listed on the first page of members after 3,200 posts. There are nearly 2,000 pages of members –around 60,000 as I write this. I am on page 1. The idea is that when you participate somewhere, do it with 100% commitment. I have learned just about all of my marketing know-how at the forum. That gave me the ability to test and learn from the best. Now I use that knowledge to build the Rich Sage brand.So, find your own forum, in your niche. Find you own restaurant –perhaps, you’re a writer. Find your own cafe, your own theater to express yourself and build your business!
10. Always be kind and helpful. This is something that I’ve learned first hand. Anytime I am on someone’s site and I catch a mistake, I let them know about it. However, I’ve very seldom gotten a note from anyone who spotted a mistake on my site and wants to let me know. Sure, I make a lot of mistakes. So, when someone does, I love to reward them anyway that I can. When you do good, when you do well, things also come around to you. It does. Not that I sit here and expect it. But, keep in mind and exercise your kindness and good things happen. Always!
11. Carpe Diem. (Don’t procrastinate!)

Lastly, I don’t know if you knew this, but I cannot spell. Sometimes, even 5 letter words are a problem for me. Then I found out why… I have a high IQ, but I seem to look at the world via pictures. Spelling is not my forte. However, words, as you may have noticed, are. I have no problem expressing myself. You too will find many stumbling blocks. Work on them, day after day, every moment that you get until a stumbling block is a power point. It is for me. What was a weakness for me, is now a strength. Well, I still cannot spell, but now I seem to know the words that I cannot spell and I closely look as I write. So, what ever your weakness –work on it, and before you know it, it will be a strength!

Success to all,

Rich Sage