How Do You Define Online Success?
April 19, 2007 by
Adam
Filed under
Internet, Making Money
“If you don’t have time to do it right then you must have time to do it over.” -Author Unknown
This is Mark from 45n5.com, and I’d like to thank Adnan for the opportunity to make a guest post at Blogtrepreneur, again 
Let’s take this opportunity to try a thread starter post and ask the question “How Do You Define Online Success?”
Not all of you can make the money that the gurus claim to make, so what is your definition of online success in the meantime?
When I started my adventures at making money online, I defined success as earning $50 dollars per day from the internet. I still haven’t achieved the goal yet, so does that make me a failure until I achieve it?
Personally I think I’m defining success wrong, and by doing so it’s probably slowed my journey, especially in my first 6 months.
It isn’t very motivating in your online journey waking up everyday and realizing you aren’t a “success” yet, and not even moving at decent pace towards becoming a success.
So…
How would you recommend somebody starting today in their online money making journey to define success?
How Do You Define Online Success? Is your definition moving you forward or holding you back?
I still define my success or failure online by earning $50 dollars per day, so for me, and for the sake of all the newbie readers here, we look forward to you thoughts and opinions in the comments.
Do you have to make money to be a success, Ive had online shops, been an ebay power seller, but count my greatest success of having a steady stream of visitors to my website throughout the day and from across the world.
So I’ve made a dollar from google adsense in 3 weeks af I bothered…no…I’ve also made a site that people come back to.
Biggest achievment was having people sign up to make a comment.
Just my take, Ive seen some large websites that are happy not using advertising and just receiving users.
Chris
http://www.wampago.com
I think that the allure of short term dollars and the whole “$50 per day” is very short-sighted and should not be measured as a success.
You are creating short term gains but it can be so easily taken away whether it’s by SERP re-rankings or another Google Slap.
Making money online is great but are the affiliate sites really going to be making money in 20 or even 10 years? While it’s not necessarily how I measure success, this is about the only real way I think you can be successful in the long run if you’re trying to focus online - http://www.lazyowner.com/why-i-prefer-to-make-money-offline-and-not-online/
Chris R - “Biggest achievment was having people sign up to make a comment.”
Sounds good not being interested in money, rather visitors and interactions. However, how do you define what is successful in this context? How do you quantify it?
Is it signing up x amount of visitors per week, or x amount of comments per day? How do you define you are successful at your goal?
Jim - I reckon by your link you recommend creating a defensible position online as defining success? If so, how do you define a defensible position? When will I know I’ve created one? In objective terms, something anybody can measure with.
I think if you have people coming back to make comments is good, nothing worse than someone making a comment and never coming back again.
I only have about 6 members which isnt that good I know, but the point is I have v=created something that people want to use and sign upto to actually make use of it even more.
45n5 - I think you can create a “defensible” position online but it is EXTREMELY difficult to do.
There are a lot of content creators online who are totally beholden to Google, whether it be natural results or PPC.
For example, someone might be making good money running a site creating a ton of content about pets but Google decides in 3 years that they found a way to devalue non-experts, then that person has problems. But what’s the real problem is that it’s so easy to get into a market like that that 100 other people might try the same thing and if they just find a more efficient way to write content, they pushed him out of the market.
However, if you create some sort of software, service, or product, it is much more difficult for someone to move into your niche. The barrier to entry has eliminated the majority of possible competitors.
I just have a tough time seeing all the same “make money online” methods working in 10 years. It can be taken away without a moment’s notice by an overwhelming number of other people or whoever controls the supply at the time (Google at this point).
That’s just why I judge online success a little bit differently. It’s not bad to have when you do have it, but if you’re looking long-term, I’m not sure how most versions of online success (like $50 per day) can really be considered successful in the long-term.
Of course, this is all just my humble opinion.
I’m sure the discussion is pretty much past but I created a post on how I define online success (too long to detail here).
http://www.lazyowner.com/how-i-define-online-success/
Hey Jim.
Thanks for the link, and cheers for a great post. It really got me thinking about the type of goals I had in mind - most of them were short term and nothing really for the long term and how I planned to become a number 1 site on the net.
Thanks for putting the cogs in my brain into gear
measuring success is one of the harderst things to do because by everyone’s account it is different. This post and comments support that. You have one measuring by users, others by money, another by comments, and to throw another in there longivity.
I measure online success by reaching my goals which are a certain number of vistors to my site, money can not live comfortably with out that, and number of opportunities that I can take advantage of right away.
Yes somethings will not work 20-10 years from now but if you define success by your own standards and not depend on the markets standards then you will have nothing to worry about. Right?
No problem Adnan. I think Mark started an interesting topic on here and we had a good conversation about it.
Earning a significant amount of money mean online success to most people, because to them thats all it matters when it comes to blogging. But I think having a good brand name and contributing valuable content is what defines online success the most.
Hi Desi - yeah definitely, I think reputation and keeping a solid reputation is also very important online - that’s going to be the subject of a guest post I’m writing at another blog. Thanks for your comment and welcome to Blogtrepreneur!
As long as I’m able to see tangible results from my efforts I am a success online and off. While the destination is paramount the journey is just as critical.
Having the ability to generate residual/passive income for years to come is a huge success in my humble opinion.
Yeah you’re right. Passive income especially is what all of us guys are after, so that we don’t have to work 9-5 day in day out.
But I think that tangible results don’t come easily, so patience is another virtue that one must have at the beginning of an internet journey especially.