Look Before You Leap

A good business plan is not only essential, it is crucial for anybody who is starting a business (online or offline). Below are two stories of two people who decided to start an online business. One of these people is unorganized, impulsive, and lacks the self discipline to learn more about what he is doing. The other, a well-organized, self-disciplined person who always thinks before he acts and always has the will to learn. Read on as these two stories unfold.

The unorganized person, who we will refer to as "Jack", heard about success stories of people who started online businesses. He wanted in on the action. So, without thinking, he quit his job and upgraded to high-speed internet so he could start his online business.

The organized person, who we will refer to as "John", heard about the same thing as Jack did and thought it would be a great opportunity to earn more money than his job was paying him. But instead of instantly quitting his job, he looked into it more. Through his research he found that over 90% of "businesses" on the internet are scams. So he spent a whole day researching and finally found the right, honest people he had been looking for. He did not start as quickly as Jack did, but he learned more about what he was getting himself into.

Meanwhile, Jack spent his last paycheck on the first online opportunity that he saw. He did not look further into what he was getting into. He just did a search on "making money online", clicked on the first listing he saw, and invested most of his check for the start-up fee, a high price indeed. I think it ran him about $3000 and his paycheck was only $4000. That did not leave much for bills.

On the other side, John's start up fee only ran him about $197 and he and Jack made around the same amount of money. So the financial risk John took was very minimum. He still had enough to pay off his bills for that month.

A few months passed and John has already made enough residual income to match what he was getting from his existing job. It was now okay for him to go ahead and quit. However, his friend Jack, who quit his job long ago, is in debt way up to his head. Not to mention that his internet connection got cut off weeks ago so he now had to work from a public library. Jack was not making any money and was just about ready to give up. In the past few months that he had been working, he only made about $350 in profits. That is it. And he was now calling on his old friend, John, to help him out.

The point of this story can be found in the title. I know it is an old saying, but it relates to internet marketing like nothing else.