7 Ways to Make It Harder to Have a Successful Home Business

There are a lot of ways you can succeed in home business, and many ways to fail. But there are still more ways you can make your path to success more difficult.

No one is going to take a perfect path to success, with no mistakes at all. Mistakes are where we learn how to run a successful business. That doesn’t mean you need to take the hard way. These are some of the ways you can slow down your success.

1. Fail to consider if anyone wants what you’re selling.

Sure, you love what you’re offering, but who else does? There are not always enough other people interested in your product.

This is particularly a problem for craft businesses. Lots of people do crafts. You may be skilled, but that doesn’t guarantee that someone else will want what you make.

It also helps to remember that your home business has competition, especially when you’re online. If you make a product, others do as well, more often than not, and it may be sold on major sites such as Amazon as well.

2. Ignore offline markets.

The internet is a wonderfully easy place to start a home business in many ways. Hosting and domain names are cheap, and even a professional design can be quite affordable.

That doesn’t mean the internet is the perfect place to run your business. It might be, but in many cases you can also grow your business offline. You can find local stores that want to sell your products, perhaps. You can find local businesses that need your services.

3. Assume a website is all you need for online success.

A website is a wonderful tool for many home businesses. Having one doesn’t mean you’re going to be successful.

It takes a lot of time and effort to build a successful website. Not only do you need to have one that is interesting to your target market, you have to market it so that your target market can find you. Customers do not appear out of thin air.

4. Expect significant business from family and friends.

This is the old way they would tell you to build a network marketing business. As noted in the 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing, relying on family and friends to build your business is a big mistake. It often does little more than annoy your family and friends when you keep trying to get them to buy from you or join your opportunity.

They’ll buy from you if they’re interested. Pestering them isn’t going to build your business.

5. Lack of focus.

Most of us have lots of interests. That doesn’t need to be reflected in a range of home businesses, even if you think they complement one another.

I don’t mean that it’s a bad idea to have multiple businesses… once you know what you’re doing. But if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s not the best of ideas at all.

Pick a business idea and work on growing it. Until you have a reasonable level of success, stick with that one. Otherwise you’re just confusing yourself.

6. Spend too little time working on your business.

Working at home is hard. There are a lot of distractions that you will face every day. Some need to be dealt with, such as raising your family. Other things, such as goofing off online or watching television, need to be left for non-work hours.

Set aside time to focus just on growing your business. Don’t play online. Turn off any distracting applications and browser windows, and promise yourself that you won’t open them until you’re done. Turn off the TV or work in a room without one.

7. Not getting enough rest.

Sometimes you’re going to have to work extra long hours to keep your business going. You probably shouldn’t do this too often.

If you don’t get enough rest, you’re going to burn yourself out and make foolish mistakes with your business, not to mention the impact on the rest of your life. Stay up late or get up even earlier than usual when you have to, but be sensible about it.