Let's talk about it.

There are many reasons people fail in an online business, however, there are just as many reasons why some people succeed. The reasons for failure or success are all tied to some basic factors regarding any type of business offline or online.

What are these basic factors?

All businesses are tied to selling either a product or a service. This being case we can then understand importance of products and services to any business.

What makes a product or service viable is a real or perceived need for them in marketplace.

Next, is product or service of quality desired to meet need?

Then, is it affordable to majority of consumers?

Can it be delivered in an easy and timely fashion?

What is competition?

Can product or service be guaranteed to satisfaction of consumer?

Simple questions right?

Wrong? The answers to above questions can consume much money and time to find answers you need. Even then you can never be sure until product or service is offered to consumers and they open their wallets and then buy product or service.

Either they sell or they don't. That's final results.

So what does this all mean?

Basically it means that you can have most attractive, useful and affordable products and services available but they must still be sold.

What can we do?

I reckon we better look at how we can our sell our products and services.

What do we look at?

Well, first of all we must learn that basics of marketing apply to all types of offline and online businesses. Because we are talking primarily of an online business here that is where we will concentrate our efforts.

I'm sure we are all familiar with marketing principles of time utility, location, inventory, transportation and ease of payment, promotion, advertisement and warranty.

What does this mean to online marketer?

First of all an online marketer does not normally need to worry about buying, leasing or renting a business location or store. Nor do we need to worry about inventories or physical shipping of products. The exception of course being on online Mart or Shopping Service. Even then marketer does not normally become involved in physical shipping of goods.

So where does that take us?

It takes us to product or service itself and promotional and advertising aspects of marketing that should concern us most.

We must also consider consumer payment system and warranties we must provide, however, these last two factors are easily solved and of no great concern to this conversation.

So, where does that leave us?

It leaves us with very basic problems of quality and need for our products or services and how can we best sell them to consumers.

Well, first of all we face problem of choosing a theme portraying our business to consumers in such a way as to gain their confidence that we are a legitimate enterprise and will produce what we promise.

The question was a simple one: If all obstacles were removed, would you like to own your own business?

In other words, if what ever was stopping you from starting a business didn't exist, would you at least attempt it? Basically, would you prefer to be an entrepreneur, or an employee?

Eighty five percent said "Yes, they'd prefer to work for themselves". Which means 15% misunderstood question on survey. After all, if what ever concerned you enough to not attempt a business venture didn't exist, then you'd have no fear of doing so.

I mean, who wouldn't want to be in control of their own life? To have freedom to make their own decisions, work their own hours, and write their own pay check?

Even using conservative 85% figure, that would mean about 200 million Americans want to start their own business, but have never even attempted it! There must be some pretty compelling reasons, we thought, so we set out to find out what they were. To no one's surprise, it was never about preferring to work for someone else's business, but rather incapacitating fear of starting their own.

And it was same four fears, every single time. It takes too much money. They didn't have tens-of-thousands, or hundreds-of-thousands of dollars to invest in a business (and they didn't know anyone else who did).

It takes too much time. They didn't want to work 80 hours a week for first year or two to get their business going. There's too much risk. Over 56% of all businesses fail in first two years, and they'd have to quit their job, so there was no safety net.

They didn't know how. They'd never taken any business courses. They had no business experience. They don't know anything about taxes, accounting, marketing, and they myriad other skills a good entrepreneur must possess.

Not all responded with all four objections, although most responded with more than one. Surprisingly, "I don't know how" was most common response. A lot of folks said they wished they had taken plunge earlier in their lives, but they just weren't Mavericks they once were. They had a mortgage to pay and a family to feed. They felt is was - too late.

Now comes fun part.

Would you ever consider going into business for yourself if; total start up costs were under $500, total time investment could be as little as 5-15 hours a week, you could continue to work in your present job until income from your business was sufficient to earn you at least an equal income, so there is little risk, and best of all, there were numerous consultants available to you who are experts at running this business, who would train and advise you personally, for an unlimited number of hours, for entire life of your business, absolutely free!

Not only that, but there is another company that will take care of all your research and development, labeling, inventory, shipping, payroll, payroll and sales taxes, most legal questions, and so on. And, this company will do this for you every month, for life of your business, for around, oh, $25.00 a year?

Right now, your probably remembering old adage "If it sounds too good to be true..." Fine. But, hypothetically, would you consider it if all this were true? "Well, sure..." you're probably thinking, "...but there's got to be a catch." Not only is there no catch, I didn't even hype pitch by one iota. These are exactly conditions in which thousands of successful network marketing ventures have begun.

Sure, some overly zealous networkers may tell you how rich you're going to get, how easy it is, and how fast it will happen. Please note, I didn't say that!

Network marketing is a serious business, no less than any other you might consider earning your living at for rest of your life. The reality is, network marketing is hard work, it takes time, and you'll probably lose some money in beginning.

The difference is, most of hardest work is done by someone else, your work is done when you choose to do it, it typically takes a few months to turn a profit (some accomplish this in first month) rather than a few years, and what amount you might lose at first has one, two, maybe even three fewer digits compared to start up losses of most conventional businesses. Yet, you can still reap tax benefits of operating your own business, and you have just as much, if not more income potential as most conventional businesses!