Can you really learn entrepreneurship online? Back in 1995 I began my online journey when eBay opened its doors. I sold a few things from around the house but years later started using the platform to buy and sell. Originally I found the strategy from an ebook I bought from the site.

I considered the ebook purchase for some time. Despite being able to make a profit using the strategy in the ebook, I thought the ebook was a better strategy. The idea wouldn’t go out of my mind that this simple transaction was automated. I wanted to get on the other side of the digital download business, and make money on autopilot. I started to learn entrepreneurship online, although I never really considered that was what I was doing.

Learn Entrepreneurship Online

I began to create my own ebooks. At the time I was working as a stunt performer in the UK and thought it a good idea to write a short “how to” book about it. I also did one about becoming a TV extra too and attempted to sell them. Unfortunately I was lost and hadn’t a clue about selling anything online back then. I thought I could just put up a website and people would come.

But little did I know back then, I may as well have put up a restaurant in the middle of the dessert. Nobody saw my website and I never made any sales. So I bought a few online courses which claimed to teach me how to make money on the internet. See my digital profit course review for some of the courses I took.

Learn Entrepreneurship Online

The courses I took led me down several paths and I tried many strategies of making money online. The two main ones I attempted were using Google Adsense and affiliate marketing. With Adsense you get paid when people click on your adverts and encourage people to visit your website/YouTube channel by creating lots of content.

I did made some small trickles with this strategy but nothing really substantial. To make a lot of money with this strategy you need a lot of content. Plus, Google can pull the plug any time they want and did for many who had worked really hard towards building a living like this.

My first real success was selling a digital product from a review I had written of it. I used the site Hubpages and didn’t even have my own website. You can read about this strategy in my article “get paid for advertising online without a website“.

Struggling Affiliate

I became a “struggling” affiliate and despite making a huge number of mistakes with affiliate marketing I kept going. This, perhaps is the key to success – simply never quit! Jumping from strategy to strategy and course to course for a number of years, eventually I found mentors – an online business “all in one” training resource and community of entrepreneurs.

Before finding the community I didn’t even realise that I needed an affiliate marketing mentor. The previous courses I took only offers recordings and no actual personal help. This is the key to learning how to earn online. It’s simply too difficult to do it alone. You can find yourself chasing your tail for years, without ever getting anywhere.

Finding Help

I joined with the same mentality I brought to previous courses. I had scepticism and doubt and this held me back for sure. It wasn’t that I was lazy, just not very directed. So I spent months and eventually years focused on either learning continually (and never applying), or working on the wrong actions which didn’t move things forwards.

Money was a problem when I started out and so I focused on the free strategies. This is far harder than using paid marketing. With paid marketing you can build an online business very quickly. But without it, you need traffic and free traffic is usually hard-won traffic.

But what I really learned (from personal help) was how to get out of my own way and to think differently. I learned how to transition from an employee mindset to an entrepreneurial one.

The invisible enemy to making money from the internet is yourself. An online business can’t grow beyond the thinking you bring to it.

How Your Thinking Needs To Shift

As an employee you are trained to work a set shift and work in a certain way. You’re not taught to think and you’re basically a “technician” working a role in a wider company. Bring this same mindset to an entrepreneurial role and you’re likely to get nowhere, like I did for several years.

Afraid of spending money, I worked really hard at the things which didn’t matter. I spent far too long in the wrong activities and didn’t get the help I needed. Once my thinking changed, so did my success online. Getting the help I needed was the best money I could have spent. But before I took that step, nothing changed.

Access this mentors community and start your online entrepreneurial journey today.