4 Reasons Why Is It So Hard To Make Money Online
Intro.
You probably already know this, but making money online is not as easy as many make out. So why is it so hard to make money online? If you’re constantly searching for a method to make money online, there’s a good chance you’ll come across products that claim they can help you achieve just that.
Truth be known, the majority of these digital products are either low quality training, flimsy plugins or just full of hype. Some of the products can help in a minor way, but the creators are more interested in making money for themselves.
There are various ways to make money online, and I’m sure you’re constantly reading about others that have made the online world their office. Online entrepreneurs seem to be everywhere, and you often wonder how long it’s taken them to become successful.
I’m going to give you a few considerations that you may want to store in your mind. Making money online IS possible, and there’s good reasons why people fail. Here’s 4 reasons why it’s so hard to make money online.
1. Competition
Do you know how many websites there are currently online? To give you some idea, in early 2019 there was nearly 2 billion websites online. Now don’t get too disheartened about this, because a huge proportion of those are not currently active, and therefore don’t rank very highly.
This does give you some idea of the competition you can be up against though. But in all honesty, if THEY can make it online, YOU can. We’re all given the same opportunity and tools, so why are some successful and not others.
The competition can just be too great if you don’t have the right mindset. All the following factors I mention here will culminate in your success.
It’s easy to begin an online venture, only to have thoughts of how many other websites you’re up against. This is why so many people give, up and ultimately fail at making money online.

Stare down your competition
The competition can be beaten though, you just need to learn how to do it. For instance, if you begin an eCommerce store, learn the correct methods that successful store owners use. If they use paid advertising, learn how these advertising methods can be enhanced.
The best website traffic source is free traffic, that you’ll get through search engines. This is the preferred traffic method for bloggers such as myself, and this is generated through SEO. It’s all about choosing the correct keywords, and preferably long tail keywords.
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Amazon Selling
2. Consistency
Any enterprise that stagnates and doesn’t progress will not be a success. It’s the same with any online venture. Success won’t happen by itself, you need to keep being consistent in your efforts.
Much of what I’m talking about is giving search engines what they’re looking for. So often I see budding entrepreneurs attempting to blog their way to success, with a sporadic nature. Maybe 4 posts one month, then 16 the next. Enthusiasm then wanes and only 6 articles are written next month.
Then 5 months down the track you have 30 articles but there’s no publishing consistency. Some weeks you feel better about writing than others. It happens.
The other action you require, is consistently related articles. Your posts need to be what your website is about, not veering off to other tangents. If your site is about flowers, don’t write about vegetables (unless they come from a flower). This maybe something you can get into down the track, but you need a consistent base for Google to understand what your site relates to.
Building this foundation can take a lot of persistence, which brings me to my next point.
3. Motivation/Persistence
Keeping motivated for a long period of time is often the reason it’s so hard to make money online. If it was so quick and easy to make money online, more and more people would be successful, and there wouldn’t be many people in traditional jobs.
Patience, persistence and perseverance is what will allow you to succeed in the future. If you’re just thinking of the NOW, you can forget about making consistent money online.
Let’s take search engine traffic as the ideal example. Website traffic is the lifeblood of any online success story, as traffic equals sales.
To rank highly in search engines, you need to play by their rules. Not only do you need to learn keyword research which is part of your SEO (search engine optimisation) strategy, Google also determines the authority of a website.
Domain authority (DA) plays a big part in how highly your articles rank, and website ‘age’ is a major contributor to DA. A site that has only been indexed for a few weeks will have no DA at all. After a few months however, this will begin to rise.
This is why it’s so hard to keep motivated for a website build, because there’s a good chance you won’t see any results in regards to website traffic for at least 6 months. Obviously, this also means no sales.
I went through all this myself before finally becoming successful. I went through over 12 websites ranging from 2 months work input, to 6 months work. I wasn’t consistent or persistent enough to keep going, and left those sites abandoned. If I had the motivation and persistence to going, I would have been a success long before now.
So, how do I know all this? Firstly through my experience, but also through education. Now pay attention, because I’ll advise the best educational platforms that I’ve gone through myself.
4. Education
As I’ve explained, you can beat the competition if you get the right help. It’s possible to find much of the correct information through YouTube OR Google, but there’s also incorrect information that can impede your success. So how do you know which advice will help you, and which will hold you back.
That’s why finding the right information is critical to beat your competition. Here’s 3 courses that I recommend, for the online money making opportunity your after.
Affiliate Marketing / Blogger
Having reviewed plenty of affiliate marketing training programs on this website, none of them stack up to the platform that I’m still involved with. After experimenting with affiliate marketing for several years, I finally joined Wealthy Affiliate.
This is the platform that taught me keyword research, SEO, website design and build, affiliate strategies and anything else involved in becoming a successful affiliate marketer. I’m still a current active member there, and will be into the foreseeable future.
You can read my review of Wealthy Affiliate here, which explains everything you’ll get as a member. The great thing is, the owners stand by this platform so much, that they are willing to offer you a free membership. You’ll get all the premium features for your first week, and can keep the free membership should you decide it’s not your thing.
**Join Wealthy Affiliate for FREE here**
Ecommerce Dropshipping
Although I recognised that an ecommerce store is not really my thing, I took this next course a couple of years ago, and was amazed at the expansiveness of it. It’s called eCom Success Academy, and was created by Adrian Morrison. As I understand, it’s updated with new relevant content each year.
With well over 160 videos in the course, most approximately 5-8 minutes in length, it’s ideal to learn every aspect of a dropshipping ecommerce store. It covers all topics including how to set up a Shopify store, strategies for selling, dropshipping methods, Shopify plugins to help with store automation, dealing with customer returns, invoices, customer service, Facebook advertising, FanPage management and payments.
It’s the ultimate course it you want to learn how to run an ecommerce store. Other courses tend to leave out the finer, but crucial details regarding customer service and management. This course covers it all.
**Join eCom Success Academy here**
As an alternative to eCom Success Academy (which is a little costly), another great course to learn eCommerce is called eCom Lifestyle University. This is run by an Aussie guy called Ricky Hayes, and provides a brilliant education at a fraction of the cost of eCom Success Academy.
**Join eCom Success Academy here**
Selling on Amazon
The third model that I truly like, is how to sell products on Amazon. All these models of income generation are made so much easier by learning from industry experts, and Ben Cummings is definitely that.
Ben’s course Search.Find.Buy. is the best I’ve covered. It takes you by the hand and walks you through all the relevant action steps to needed to sell your own products on Amazon. This includes finding the right PLR (Private Label Rights) products that will be profitable, giving them your own brand and using the Amazon fulfilment Center to package and deliver.
The course also runs through how Amazon determines which products appear at the top of their search results. You see, Amazon have their own algorithm for this, and you’ll learn tricks to get your products as high as possible. I haven’t covered another course that discusses this in depth like Ben does.
Tired of seeing Scams or endless fraud sites?
Wrapping Up
It stands to reason that not everyone can succeed online, so ‘the powers that be’ not going to make it easy for you. Having said that, we’re all given the same opportunities, so you have as much chance as anyone else.
In my opinion, you need to dedicate at least 6-12 months of decent effort give yourself every chance of success. Even if it doesn’t come as quickly as you think, it will come if you keep working at it.
Google will rank your articles accordingly, and all the effort you’re putting in will pay off in spades. Think of the first 6 months as a foundation, and you can build up from there.
If you think this is too difficult, then maybe an online career is not for you. Nothing is going to come easy, so begin changing your mindset. Working an online career is not for everyone, and I wouldn’t blame you for having negative thoughts after months of work for little results. But the big bucks will come, and you won’t want all that hard work wasted.
There’s a famous image that shows how close you could be to that elusive breakthrough.
It could be 7 months, 9 months or 13 months, but that success will come eventually. This is all determined by various factors, such as the niche you decide to choose. When you finally crack it, there’s no turning back. Money coming in the door will be motivation enough to continue to move forward, trust me.
Like many people, I struggled in my early attempts to make money online. It's really frustrating when you try product after product, searching for that elusive opportunity that is really genuine.
Eventually though, I learned how to achieve success in the online world with my own website. This website was created to show others how to do it. I direct people away from the poor opportunities and advise the good ones.
But the simplest and least complicated is [Learn more...]

Disclosure: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links will not cost you any more. More info at my disclaimer page
The opinions in this article are solely mine, are are not intended to offend or discriminate. All information in this review has been researched on the public domain of the internet.
Hello Nudge, a really wonderful post you have here. Hundreds of newbies in the affiliate marketing society need to see this post. I totally agree with all the reasons you have given here, and I must admit how effective Wealthy Affiliate is in the aspect of building you to a point where you can handle your blog post with ease. For me another reason why some people fail to get money online is the unhealthy competition they get themselves into. Some of these people you are competing witj are guru in the game and you wanting to balance with them will be hard and you’ll think you’re failing already. Once such mentality sets in, you’ll find it hard to deal online. Best regards.
Thanks for chiming in Chloe
I agree that competition is a large aspect of why people fail, although I do mention this in my article. Although you are up against many guru’s in a particular niche, there’s no reason why you cannot challenge them.
It may take you longer to compete with them, but those willing to put in the effort for longer will prosper in the end. Those that do survive will also become authorities in their chosen niche, and will harvest themselves an awesome website asset.
Thanks for
Hi Nudge.
Thank you for the breakdown on the challenges in making online. There are very useful advice given especially on the books on SEO because driving traffic seems to be difficult for most of us.
As mentioned by you, success will eventually comeif we persevere. I will keep this in mind.
Once again, thank you a great article.
Warmest Regards
Marc Ho
Thanks for the kind comments Marc
As you say, success will eventually come. If it was that easy to make it online, many more people would be doing it. If you want it bad enough, it will come. Keep working, keep persisting.
I must commend the truthfulness in this post as I have a first hand experience in all of this. Making money in the online world is one very easy thing for anyone to do, but limiting factors needs to be considered and taken care of.
These limiting factors are undoubtedly the ones you have stated here. Consistency first is one key factor to making it online, and there is a point where one needs to be known before there can be a real break through in making money for you online. So you just have to to keep pushing until you get there.
Seeking assistance is another one that has helped me alot as no man is an island of knowledge so you just ask to seek for help when needed. My opinion, thanks for sharing.
So true Dane
You make a good point in seeking assistance when required. This is how I’ve got to a good point in my online business, because I sought the correct advice from the experts at Wealthy Affiliate. With good advice, come good results.
Appreciate your thoughts
Hmm! This is the best I have read on this week. It is true that making money online is not for everyone and most people who dont make money lack at least one of the features you have pinpointed out on this article. Consistency is integral ti making money online or in any other field and lacking it would definitely spell doom. Even when one feels like doing it or not, you just have to keep going because it is the only path to success. And staying motivated? That is as good as getting water everytime before dehydration. You are simply spot on and I learnt quite well. Not that I am a success already online, but I Gabe been making the little steps count and I know with time, I will reach the apex.
Spot on Rodarrick
You will be a success should you keep persisting. Consistency as you mention is key, and you need to keep the search engines happy. I’me pleased you’ve learned something in this article, and hope it keeps you motivated to continue. MakeGiving up is not an option.
Oh my goodness! Let me first say that I’m mesmerized by your website! Job well done putting together such a comprehensive site! I very much enjoyed this article as well! The tips you speak of are spot-on! Many people out there say how easy it is to make money online. However, you and I both know this isn’t the actual truth. It’s not a get-rich-quick scheme, but as you said, it will pay off in the end, if one is persistent. (I like your image about the guy being so close to the diamonds…but quit too soon.) I’ve been a part of Wealthy Affiliate and owe them all the knowledge I’ve gained in beginning my own online endeavors. I would recommend that platform to anyone. Thanks for taking the time to put your thoughts here! I hope it encourages many others to follow and reach their own successes! Blessings!
Thanks for the kind words.
I can see you appreciate the time and effort it takes to build your own online asset. Too many people are searching for that easy quick money option, but is simply doesn’t exist. Those that put in more effort will be the ones to succeed.
Appreciate your thoughts.