Why Most Internet Entrepreneurs Struggle to Make Money: The Eye-Opening Journey of John and Ben

Jonathan Melody
Last updated on December 22, 2023

Being an entrepreneur, there’s always something keeping me up…

Yesterday, I had to force myself to close my laptop at about 8 pm and at 12 am I was already getting all sorts of ideas to go back to my home office and execute.

You see,

When I was about to graduate in 2012, my mom wanted me to come back home and get a job at “Delta State University, Oleh Campus,” but I refused.

I never wanted that struggle; I never wanted her thinking about herself and about me at the same time.

That same year, I started an online business, but it failed earlier than I expected from one silly mistake I made and I couldn’t wave off the thoughts

“Am I really going to take on a job back home?”

In 2013, I got a glimpse of hope. I had started another business and with it, I was able to take care of my bills through NYSC in 2014.

I never asked for a dime from home.

By 2015, I had made my first million, sitting in my bank account, and I was torn between moving to Lagos, Nigeria, or going back home.

“How am I going to live in a place with such high standard of living”…I thought to myself

Well, it was either Lagos or back home.

You guessed right, I wasn’t going back home.

So, with just my bag, laptop and a few clothes, I moved to Lagos. My then-girlfriend (now my wife) with the help of a friend, got me an apartment.

I emptied my bank account to get settled in Lagos.

To someone reading this, this might seem like an unwise decision.

“How can you empty your account just to move to another city”

You see,

Sometimes you have to move from your place of comfort to tap into your full potential.

Remember Abraham?

God asked him to move, and when he obeyed, things started falling in place for me.

We are the building blocks of the decisions we make and don’t make.

And I have made multiple millions online and also lost multiple millions from that one decision.

Today, I own a software business, part and fully owned ecommerce brands, have helped thousands of people make their first million on the internet.

I have also helped 8 and 9 figure businesses get unstuck when they needed growth in their business.

Why am I telling you this?

I just want to let you know that I’m not some richkid from a rich home or some wannabe online guru trying to impress you or share what he has never experienced nor done .

The things I will share in this letter today are the exact ways I have used to make millions and I strongly believe anyone can too.

But there's one problem,

I can’t guarantee your success.

The only person who can is YOU.

You are the common denominator and the person who can
be held responsible for your successes or failures.

I have been doing this long enough so I know.

Listen, if you follow this mindset and these instructions, then you absolutely will succeed,

⭕ No matter what you’ve tried before now, that didn’t succeed,

⭕ No matter how many times you’ve failed before or how discouraged you are currently.

This rule is almost absolute,

Let me share an analogy which my mentor shared with me to further put some clarity to this:

Take two people who want to make money online.

Let’s call them…

John and Ben.

One day, John is browsing the internet. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a little ad, like this:

——————————————
Highly Profitable internet business
that pays $1,000 monthly exposed.
Click Here!
——————————————

So, John clicks (hope you didn’t click that?😀) and reads through the long page or watches the video selling this “highly profitable internet business”, and ends up buying whatever product is being sold.

He’s very excited, convinced he is soon going to get rich.

So he starts spending an hour a day in front of his computer, working on his new online business.

He sets up his first blog. He starts writing some articles to try and get some traffic… he learns what an email autoresponder is.

Then he starts playing around with some affiliate marketing.

At this stage, John’s wife and friends think he’s bought into some ‘get rich quick’ scheme and don’t really think he’ll ever make money with it, but they allow him.

Amid a few jokes from family and friends, John is determined that this is going to work. “I will show them!” he thinks.

So, he keeps plugging away.

But soon, John starts to get a little overwhelmed🥶.

There’s just so much to learn and do…

⭕ He’s got to figure out how to set up a WordPress blog.

⭕ How to do FTP.

⭕ How to set up an email auto responder.

and then he’s got to figure traffic–

⭕ PPC, CPA, PPV, email newsletter marketing, content creation, video production, joint ventures, article marketing, SEO, reciprocal links, etc.

John spends hours glued to his computer trying to figure everything out, while his family and friends are concerned he’s been scammed and his new business will never work.

A few months in, John still hasn’t made any money, and now he’s starting to think his family are right.

There’s just so much to do that John is beginning to feel out of place, and wonders. “Maybe I should do something else that is ‘easier”.

So he decides he’s going to make YouTube videos about games, build an email list and sell something to those people via email and do nothing else for a year, until he masters it.

Then he wakes up at 8 a.m., yawns, and decides to sleep some more.

There’s no hurry after all; he can start after lunch, he thinks.

He gets up at midday and crawls over to the computer, looks up some affiliate offers for gaming.

Good job done.

Next, he signed up for some email marketing software with a free plan that allows affiliate offers.

Then, he makes some half-hearted video about gaming and uploads it.

He’s now SUPER excited🕺🏻, expecting to be well on his way to making $1,000/day automated money.

The dream is almost his😁!

Next, he sticks up an opt-in page. A few days later, he’s got like 5 optins for his email list.

He broadcasts an offer to them anyway, but no one buys.

“Dang, screw this,” he says, and back he goes to Google to find another juicy method.

The worst thing is that if John had known what was involved in the first place, he would never have signed up.

6 months later, John is yet to make a dime online and at this point, he is angry, frustrated, and feels like a failure.

He feels ashamed; he’s lost time and money, and he is just about ready to call it a day.

Then he hears about a way to make money online
“without selling anything”, and eager to give it one last shot, he jumps in.

And he fails again because he earns so very little despite all the promises.

John repeats this on and off, for multiple methods, for years; nothing significant happens in all that time.

One day, he quits and soon becomes your classic “making money online is a scam” person.

Maybe you’re not as bad as John, but most people aren’t that far off.

Now, below is Ben.

Ben has the mindset of the guys you see who have made millions of dollars online.

Ben chooses ONE niche – YOUTUBE (making finance videos) and makes a plan.

⭕ He researches everyone else doing finance videos.

⭕ He takes notes to see what’s working and what people like.

⭕ Then he creates a few really good videos.

Putting a lot of effort into them.

“Let’s see what happens,” he says.

He’s not even bothering with monetization just yet.

The first thing is to get good at making the videos.

A couple of weeks later, Ben is just releasing videos and testing the waters.

“Ok, not much results as I hoped to see.

What do I need to improve here?” he thinks.

He starts looking at more competitors, making tweaks to their own videos, and getting better at editing.

Three to four weeks in, Ben is starting to get some decent views, some people are commenting, and things are moving in the right direction.

“Let’s keep improving on that,” Ben says.

“Let’s work on getting more subscribers, more feedback, more interaction.

Let’s test some ideas I have.”

Ben can spend one whole month just getting good at creating the videos and getting some views to them.

Next he looks into building a list. No selling yet.

“Let me just work on building a list and trying different schedules for mailing useful stuff.

Maybe I’ll go out on the street and hand out flyers for my YouTube channel and get people to check it out.

Why not. I have nothing to lose.”

He’s now three months in and he’s got a decent little channel, a few hundred people on his email list that are regularly opening his emails and things are growing.

“Now let’s look into monetizing,” Ben says.

And on and on.

What’s the result?

Two to three years later, Ben is the guy with 100,000 YouTube subscribers, his own finance info product or software, a big email list and he’s making $50,000 per month with a vast experience in;

⭕ YouTube,
⭕ Video creation,
⭕ List building,
⭕ Email marketing,
⭕ Funnel building,
⭕ Monetization,
⭕ Product creation,
⭕ Product launches, upsells, downsells and more.

Our old friend, John, the first guy, is still on Google searching for an “easier” way to make money online, (if he hasn’t quit yet)

or he’s on Twitter, warrior forum and Nairaland moaning about how nothing works and how the world is full of fake-gurus.

If you cannot take Ben’s approach to your internet marketing business, you’re not going to succeed.

The secret is…massive, relentless energy put into ONE SINGLE FOCUS for a long period of time.

That’s it.

Almost NO ONE does this. Not even close.

People try something for two weeks, then give up and move onto the next shiny thing.

Others try something for three months, then give up.

Two weeks or three months, is still not enough.

Most people think you can make money online by running some process like it’s a regular job – set up this, do this, do that, and boom you’re making money.

It doesn’t work like that.

However, you can make $100k/year, or =N=1 million/month in pretty much ANYTHING – making videos, doing a podcast, creating information products, ecommerce, affiliate marketing in any niche, consulting, anything.

The way to succeed is to pick ONE thing, and focus hard on it for a full year of your life.

Put all your energy into it and don’t make your goal to make money, make your goal to be the best at this thing.

The money will follow.

Listen,

What I am about to say next is a hard pill but it is the plain truth.

If you’re not making as much money as you want, you simply are not as good as you think you are.

And your focus should be to become better at what you do.

That is what I did.

That is what every person who is a REAL SUCCESS at this has done. It's near impossible to fail if you do this.

So, if you’re looking for ways to make millions in 2 days or you’re in the MMM group, then I am afraid, this whole digital money thing isn’t for you.

You must FOCUS on one thing long enough to see it work.

I can’t stress this enough because that is the first step to turning yourself into a living cash machine.

Let me tell you a quick story about how I made my first million Naira sitting in my bank account.

In 2012 during my 300L in Delta State University, I had a roommate who was also interested in the whole online business thing.

He would go out and come back with a discovery of a new online business. But I wouldn’t pay so much attention.

I have had some not so good experiences in the past, just like John.

For context, I started this whole online game since 2007.

But lets get back to the story. shall we?

One cold evening, I heard him calling my name from the door. Joe! this will blow your mind away. And I was like, What is it again?

Designing book covers on Fiverr.

Prior to that day, I had heard of Fiverr and even tried providing SEO and traffic generation services, but had to quit because I was receiving so many negative reviews‍.

(I was like John who just wanted the quick way out with no real skills)

The following year (2013), I came across a course on how to design book covers and offer the service on Fiverr by a Guy called Abiola Oluwasanmi

The course was selling for N10,000 and at that time, that was exactly my pocket money.

I remember being so confident that this would work, so I bought it and started consuming the videos in the course

I even went ahead to create an account on Fiverr with the name “uniquedesignxx”. Just try googling that name to see what comes up…you should find my very first designs… lol

My first 3 months on Fiverr, I had made only $80

Now for most people, it was time to quit because, come on, $80 in 3 whole months? Well, that wasn’t me anymore.

I was determined to see it through this time. So, I kept at it, honing my skills, promoting my gig—anything to make it succeed.

I was consistent.

And in my 6th month, I had even added logo design and that month, I made over $1000.

From that month, I continued generating funds through Fiverr by designing book covers and logos.

And guess what?

This was exactly how my first million naira was made offering services on Fiverr.

So, why did I share this story?

To keep you informed ahead of time that you’ll encounter difficulties regardless of the business model you choose to go with.

But what will separate you from the unsuccessful ones is consistency, persistency, and a mentor (A mentor is someone who has done and gone through what you’re trying to do).

I hope you found this useful.

Cheers
Jonathan

Who is Jonathan Melody

I’m a growth marketing strategist for 8 and 9 figure ecom brands.

If you want an analytical mind in your business, you can work with me and my team at Lazycom

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