Stop Failing to Recognize What You Really Need to Succeed Online

Do you know one of the main reasons most online ventures fail?

This is not a story bragging about my own online success and how you can be just like me, if you do what I say and follow my advice and opinions.

To the contrary. This is one of those stories where I tell you that I screwed up royally, in my earlier years of writing and working online. In fact, sometimes, I still screw up, and when I examine the reason for the f*ck up, it’s usually the same darn one!

A lack of patience…

Now that you’ve read that simple answer to the question posed in the subtitle, you might feel a little underwhelmed.

You may even be getting ready to click away to another story, out of sheer disappointment.

I get it. You thought you were going to hear something that you don’t already know. But the fact that you’re in such a hurry to move on, without even considering the following information, just goes to prove my point.

So many of us (and I include myself) are often so impatient, that we end up screwing ourselves right out of a good thing.

Since you already bothered to open the link and start to read this story, why not do yourself a favor, and see if there’s ANY usable information at all. You just might surprise yourself, and unlock the gate that’s been keeping you from your online success.

Why is patience so important to online success?

The need for maintaining patience when starting an online business, is not limited to any one profession or activity.

This need still applies, whether you’re a writer on Medium, trying to build a story empire, or an affiliate marketer, trying to promote and sell other people’s products. Freelancers, entrepreneurs, and small businesses of every kind are all subject to failure, when patience is not on the agenda.

There’s no way you can ever expect to succeed in your online endeavors, if you constantly give up too quickly.

When you get right down to it, patience is important to just about every aspect in life, but it is definitely needed when it comes to online success.

The thing to keep in mind is that things online tend to happen in one of two ways. Either something is said or done, and it catches on like wildfire, all across the web, OR, something is said or done, and it takes a while for it to circulate and make it’s way to being noticed.

I don’t claim to know all the intricacies of how it all works, I just know that’s usually what happens — barring any special SEO tricks, strategies, and techniques that could have a significant impact.

Since, more often than not, the latter seems to happen to most of us; our online ventures and projects will generally take time to get off the ground.

That means, you need to stop relying on your online activities to immediately go viral and skyrocket you to instant success. In other words, be patient.

But of course, this is easier said than done, especially when you create an unreasonable, self-imposed deadline for yourself. If that deadline rolls around, and you haven’t yet “succeeded” (whatever your definition of success is), you will more than likely, be ready to throw in the towel.

See. That’s where patience comes in.

This happened to me because of my impatience

If you think I’m just shooting my mouth off, and don’t really know what I’m talking about, allow me to share somethings that happened to me.

I’ve been working and writing online for several decades, having started out trying to be an affiliate marketer.

I tried Clickbank, selling on Ebay, and eventually, I focused on promoting Amazon links for books and other products. I made basically nothing, and what I did earn, I couldn’t cash out, because of a minimum dollar amount thresh hold.

Life went on, and I moved on from that to eventually creating ebooks and selling my own products for a change. That’s when I ran into my biggest challenge as an author — getting book reviews.

No matter how hard I tried to promote and market myself and my books, I didn’t seem to make a dent, and not having reviews played a large role. After seeing other authors with the same challenge (I spent a lot of time on Twitter), I came up with a great idea. FreeBookReview.net

It truly was a great idea because not only was it helping gain me visibility, but I was also attempting to fill a need and benefit other writers. This is the best type of service or product you can offer; one that addresses a specific need.

The problem was my impatience. The responses to the website trickled in over months, in spite of all my hard work. Eventually, I grew too impatient to continue working hard to read books, write reviews, and post them, all for free, while continuing my other activities. So I stopped.

But here’s the twist; more and more responses for the service begin to come in, long after I left the site: Unattended, inactive, and finally deleted.

While I could give you more and more examples, it suffices to say, my online history has been pretty much the same.

NovelLauncher.com was a business I started and stopped, as a way to help new authors launch their newly released titles. NowOnlineBiz was my brainchild, meant to help brick and mortar businesses transition to doing business online during the pandemic. I folded that one as well.

Good ideas, right? I thought so too, until I ran out of patience.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, maybe now you can stop beating yourself up over it. We’re only human, and impatience is a human characteristic.

One Medium writer named Doug Kennedy had a similar online history as mine. He describes his impatience in the story: This One Thing Squanders My Success, But I Won’t Quit. Believe me, if you’ve ever experienced what I describe here, you’re going to think Doug just invaded your brain.

“I’m currently at the moment where I continue to press on or I just quit.”

The above statement was made, as it relates to his writing journey here on Medium. All I can say is: Hang in there Doug. Patience is a virtue.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, even when you know the right thing to do, and you recognize your shortcomings, it’s easy to fall back into making the same mistakes.

That is why this story does not pretend to expose any earth shattering news about the best way to succeed online. It was merely written as a reminder of why patience is so important, and help us see that we’re not alone in our struggle to hang in there.

All of us are working hard to hang onto our dreams and goals, so that we can one day see them all fulfilled. For some of us, that may never happen at all. But for those that do manage to succeed at what they’re doing online, you can bet that their patience had a lot to do with it.

Here’s what to do if you’ve been thinking about giving up on things:

Stay focused and remember what success looks like for you
Be determined not to quit until you see your vision of success fulfilled
Analyze your activities and make sure none of them are counterproductive to your goals and what you’re trying to achieve
Pay attention to what IS working, and not just what is not working
Use feelings of impatience to help motivate you to do more of what works
Remember that it’s easier to keep up, than to catch up, so don’t allow yourself to get behind.
Reward yourself for minor milestones and accomplishments, so you continue to recognize that you’re making progress.

DEAR READER: The advice and opinions I shared in this story are not taken from a text book, nor do I profess to be an expert. I only aim to share how I handled the situation when this happened to me, OR how I feel about it if it were to ever happen. The views I express are part of the many life lessons I discovered on my journey to self improvement.

Browse through over 375 stories I published since I began writing on Medium. | Let’s be friends on TWITTER: @GoodeWriter

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