Online Business Top 10 Common Mistakes And How To Avoid Them

Online business is a definitely a great blessing to many people nowadays – As it allows one to get started with very much little money but has high scalability potentials.

Before this, anyone who wanted to start a business only can do it traditionally with brick-and-mortar store.

That involved a high startup cost with huge recurring costs such as rental, employees salary and other operating expenses.

It’s clearly not everyone were having the financial privilege to start a business back then and many have to bury their dreams into deep down of their hearts.

But here’s the kicker:

With existence of internet world, the challenges are no longer paramount because businesses can be run online without any physical shop.

This has opened up the wide opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs – young and old, male and female be able to fulfill their dreams.

Although it’s easy to get an online business up and running, there are some common mistakes need to avoid.

This is important for long-term success and sustainability.

But sadly enough, most people have overlook them and keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

So, I’m inspired to write this post to prevent you from falling into the trap of those common mistakes.

And have best practice in running your online business.

Ready to put your venture in the best possible light?

Awesome, so let’s get started with those common mistakes.

1) No Market Research Done

Many entrepreneurs are overly too excited to jump into their business and start selling right away without proper market research.

I hope you’re not one of them.

Because by doing so is clearly not going to do your business any good.

Market research is essential part to see if the niche market you’re planning to go into is having enough demand or not.

Low demand = Low number of buyers.

If there is not enough of demand in the niche you’ve chosen, there wouldn’t be enough buyers to generate enough profits.

This is turn would affect your business sustainability because it needs positive cash flow to operate.

Another thing market research would reveal to you is the competitiveness.

A highly competitive niche is simple means you stand little to no chance to outbeat the competition.

Thus, you should make the wise decision…

To launch your business in the niches that are having huge market demand and with low to medium competitiveness.

You can do your market inspection easily with these research tools available on the internet.

A tip for you here.

One of the tools you should not neglect is Google Keyword Planner.

It’s going to show you the market demand with its competitiveness.

2) Low Website Security

Website is an integral part of an online business.

It’s definitely going to cause you the time and hard-work to create one that you can be proud of.

Imagine down the road, out of sudden, all of your efforts go up in smoke just because your website is hacked.

Can this really happen to you?

The answer is a BIG YES if you don’t take care of your website security seriously.

This has happened to many website owners before around the world.

Of course you’re not hoping the “nightmare” to come to you, right?

So, don’t take the chance and regrets later.

You should always on the defensive mode.

If you’re using WordPress, you should always run a full backup of your website regularly.

You’re able to do so from the backup option available in the CPanel of your web hosting.

You should also save a copy the completed backup to your computer so you could easily restore your website back to the original state if bad things ever happen.

There are also paid tools you can utilize to help you run backup on auto-pilot without you manually doing it.

3) Copyright Violation

Many people are making this mistake unintentionally.

They just simply pluck the pictures they’ve found from the internet and use them on their business websites or social medias without understanding the rights.

The truth fact is not all pictures can be used for commercial purpose.

The serious penalty copyright violator might face are getting sued by the rightful owners.

The ones you can use should be listed under CC0 Creative Common – Free For Commercial Use.

Even so, it also 2 versions:

i) Attribution required – Need to give credit to the owner
ii) No attribution required – Don’t need to give any credit

Make sure you only use the pictures you’re have the proper rights to avoid the potential problems in the future.

Next time when you do Google search, go to Images tab -> User Rights Dropdown Menu -> Choose “Labeled for reuse with modification”.

4) Slow Website Speed

Internet users are having big expectation when comes to website browsing speed nowadays.

This is due to high-speed internet broadband are being used by many parts of the world.

So, naturally the users would expect all the websites they’re browsing would appear instantly.

Slow website is synonymous to a bad user experience.

This is a big turn off to many website visitors.

They would not hesitate to leave immediately and never come back again to the site.

Many websites’ owners are not paying enough attention to it.

And not putting the effort to improve the loading speed of their websites.

You should give a good user experience to your website visitors by improving the loading speed.

If you’re using WordPress, you can easily supercharging your website speed with free CDN and plugin.

5) Spamming Links On Other People’s Social Media Account

This is seriously a very bad practice.

Most people are going to other people’s social media accounts or groups and keep spamming with their online business links like there’s no tomorrow.

They probably doing so thinking other people would click on it and just buy like that.

But here’s the reality:

People are smart – they mostly ignore those spammy links.

So don’t ever try to do this.

Because doing so wouldn’t bring any good to your online business but is going to hurt you and your business’ reputation instead.

People only buy from those they have trust.

You should build up your fans and post your links in your own social media accounts only.

6) No Privacy Policy And Terms Of Use On Website

These 2 items are consider standard but yet very important to have on any websites around the world.

However, there are still many people are not putting them on their websites.

Privacy Policy are legal statements that mentions how you as the website owner collects, uses and manages the web visitors or customers’ data.

Terms of Use is a written agreement which states the rules by which your website visitors agree to abide them in order to use your website.

Both of these 2 items are legally binding document which are required by the law to protect your web visitors.

If you don’t have them on your website, you might face legal issue in certain countries.

So always better to be safe rather than sorry.

You can generate a copy of them using privacy policy generator and terms of use generator.

After you’ve generated them, you can then proceed to put into your website.

7) Selling Trademark Items In Online Business

There are a lot of sellers are selling trademark items in their online business without realizing the risk they’re facing.

The most common ones are those small items like keychains, mugs that contains the figures, pictures or brand of superhero movies (like Spiderman, Iron Man, etc).

These items are definitely are going to generate good profits margin in a short period of time but not everyone are permitted to sell them (protected by trademark law).

Only those authorized by the parent company is able to sell them.

They have their legal team constantly monitor and protect the trademark.

If you’re caught with selling these items without authorization, you might end up with financial penalty.

So never try to sell these trademark items in your online business.

8) No Marketing Done

Marketing is core engine of any business – it’s no exception for online business as well.

But many people have neglected this important part and wondering why there is no sales coming to their business.

They have their website up and expect traffic would keep flooding to it automatically.

They have their online business up and expect sales would keep pouring in.

But none of these happen.

Why?

Because no marketing done.

So if you want to see your business flourishes, you need to start mastering and running marketing.

There are many types of online marketing you can learn and utilize.

The simplest one is to start with Facebook Marketing.

9) Spamming Links On Other People’s Blog

Again, many people are doing this desperate thing on other people’s blog.

This action has annoyed the blog owner and the readers alike.

So don’t try posting links blatantly.

Your aim should be establish trust.

You can achieve this providing your valuable feedback in the comment box of other people’s blog.

Most often when you comment, your name would be linked to your website.

So when other readers see your valuable feedback, they might click on your name and check you out further even without you shouting out your links.

You can also contact the blog owner if you can help to write guest blog post.

If yes, you’re not only establish a meaningful relationship with the blog owner, but the readers would also less hesitant to click on your name which contains your link.

10) Having Messy Website

Many people like to lump too many topics into a single website.

This would cause a lot of confusion to the web visitors.

Visitors nowadays are having short attention span.

If they’re not sure what your website is all about when visiting, they would not hesitate to press the “X” button on your web browser.

So you should focus to build your website around a particular topic or niche.

This would give your web visitors a clearer picture about your website the moment they visit it.

Final Words On The Common Mistakes In Online Business

Don’t take them lightly. You should avoid them as much as possible and be on the right side so you can have a sustainable long-term online business.

Your business future is in your own hands.

If you enjoyed this post, please let me know in the comments below.