How to Deal with Failure in Your Online Business

Time for a wake-up call – you’re going to fail. It doesn’t matter how smart you are or how much research and preparation you’ve done…

There will come a point in time when you fail. That’s just the way things are set up. You do not have to like it, but you have to accept it.

The difference between most experienced marketers who succeed online and the many who quit comes down to one simple factor – resilience.

The successful ones keep on going despite failure after failure. Here’s the interesting part – even after seeing success in one area, it is still NO guarantee that you won’t fail in other areas.

Failure is a part of success

If you looked at the track record of successful movie studios, you’ll notice that even when they have a string of blockbusters, every now and then they release a movie that’s a dud.

An absolute failure that doesn’t even recoup the costs of production. So why does this happen?

It happens because there’s a disconnect between what the creators think will work and what the market actually wants.

It’s very difficult to predict what will be a hit. You have to create/promote products which you think will work – and let the market tell you what it thinks.

Analyzing what went wrong

When you encounter failure in your online business, it’s normal to feel defeated. You may have expected your products to sell by hundreds, but you only sold 5… and they were all sales from people you know.

Your work which you thought was good may receive unsatisfactory feedback. Or your online boutique may collapse because the supplier you were using was not legitimate and honest.

There are countless ways things can go wrong. What matters here is your attitude when failure comes knocking on your door.

Will you decide that an online business is not for you and quit? Or will you analyze what caused the failure and try to remedy the problem and try again?

Of course – the answer is obvious. You’ll do your best to figure out what caused you to fail, and you’ll rest and recover for a bit – and try again after you fix what caused you to fail.

This is known as iteration, where you repeat the process over and over and generate several outcomes until you succeed. Success is inevitable if you do it this way.

It may take time and effort, and that’s fine. If you quit, you’d have truly failed because there’s no recourse. But if you keep going, success will become a reality.

Repeating the process

Failure is never final. It’s merely feedback, as hard as it may be to swallow… it’s always useful feedback on what doesn’t work.

You may write 3 books that are flops, but your 4^th one may be a bestseller. You may create 5 niche sites that fail, but the 6^th one may end up becoming a very popular authority site which makes you thousands a month.

The only way you’ll discover what works is to keep creating and iterating and putting your work out there and let the market tell you what it thinks.

With time, you’ll develop a deep rooted understanding of what works and what doesn’t. You’ll then be able to make wiser decisions to improve your rate of success.

To conclude, the key to success in business or in any worthy endeavor in life will be to embrace your wins and study your losses. You’ll always learn more from failure than success.