The statistic may be accurate for Internet businesses, but I agree, who did the study and how did they measure success or failure — for that matter, how did they define “business?”

Also true that selling digital products online greatly reduces risk and the impact of making bad decisions based on bad assumptions. In a brick and mortar business (as you well know) a bad decision involved inventory and other expenses.

I think “focus” is the weak point for every Infopreneur, or at least all of the ones I’ve meet or followed. The ones who have mastered the art of focus are usually the ones who’s businesses are doing extremely well, but even they would say that focus requires a lot of learning and constant practice.

You are right about quantifying trust — since it is a mindset of your prospect or customer, there is no way to measure it for sure, but there are some very good markers to use. The first is, have they ever purchased from you. Anyone who has completed a successful financial transaction with you can certainly be assumed to have more trust in the relationship than someone who has never purchased anything. Even more important is the ‘Repeat Buyer’ status — this one status pretty clearly signals that you have earned the trust of that person — if they bought more than once, the relationship is solid.

I am also amazed at what people see as “Fact”. More often than not, it’s just some regurgitated lunacy that gets repeated over and over until folks start to believe it.

Take, for example: “98% of all online businesses fail.” Now, I’m not sure, but I believe that to be a derivation of the old mantra, “98% of ALL businesses fail due to under-capitalization.” At least I’ve never heard of any definitive governmental or independent study being conducted on Internet Marketing success.

As the readers of this blog know, the only possible way to fail in Internet Marketing is to Quit. Capitalization is a non-factor because there are literally hundreds of ways to market products with no cost at all.

Therefore, due to the fact that Internet Marketing can be done easily and with very limited expense, even faulty assumptions on the part of the marketer can be forgiven. The key here is testing.

Start with a free, or self-hosted blog and test the assumptions before committing to a major outlay of capital or time. If your assumptions prove credible and there are indeed buyers for your product(s) then proceed with further assumptions and test those as well.

MikeRogers

I love the list of key statements and will do something similar myself. It will certainly help the decision making process and staying focused. My weakest areas. It is very difficult to quantify somethings however. Good luck with that.

I think the biggest problem is you can’t quantify trust. This is a huge problem with so many scams around. Trust is built up over time and involves relationships. People can learn the right words to rip you off. So we must still be prepared to take responsibility for risk.

Ray