3 Reasons Why You May Be Struggling Online

There are many reasons why you could be having problems with growing your Avon business online, but as I’m talking with other Representatives, I’ve seen these three problems come up again and again.

The good news is, once you know what they are, they’re easy to remedy.

1.  Not knowing the right things.

You don’t have to know everything to get started online. In fact, things change so quickly, and nobody knows everything, so no worries there.

But you do need to know the things you need to know to be successful.

Here’s an example. Mary is building her Avon business online and decides she wants to build a sales funnel. (If you don’t know what this means yet, no worries.) But Mary has been working on this for months now because she’s stuck on one thing – she doesn’t know how to write the sales letter for her funnel.

Mary could fix this easily enough if she really wanted to.

• She could Google, “How to write a sales letter,” and learn how it’s done.
• She could find a sales letter template and work from there.
• Or she could find someone who knows how to write one and pay them to help her, or even write it for her.

Instead, Mary laments that she doesn’t know what to do, and ends up doing nothing.

I know this sounds silly, but it’s amazing how often I see exactly this happening, especially when Reps want to start building their business online.

There’s so many things you need to learn just to get started: How to build a website, how to get traffic to your website, how to hook up an email autoresponder to your website, how to market online, etc. You just need to learn how to do all the little things that go into building an online business.

If you don’t know some of this, your first step is to get a basic course in online selling – or spend some time on this blog. We have all kinds of articles about how to grow your Avon business online. Make a list of everything you need to do.

Your second step is to decide which of these things you’re going to do, and which ones you will outsource to professionals.

And your third step is to just do it.

I had one Representative who took three months to add a video to her website. Why? Because she just didn’t know how.

I told her to go to YouTube and search for, “how to add a video to your website,” and in less than 30 minutes she had it done.

Crazy, right? But it’s true. If you don’t know something, either find out how to do it, or find someone to do it for you.

2.  Not focusing on marketing.

Building your website, adding a plugin, tinkering with this and that… none of that is marketing. It is important, but it’s not where you make your money.

This is the same as labeling your brochures and cleaning out your office. Those things may be important, but if you’re not out talking with people or finding ways to get in front of them, none of that will build your business.

If you’re always focused on the technical, Internet aspect of your business, you’ll never make any money. Driving traffic, writing sales letters, building funnels… all of that is the Internet. It’s not marketing.

Marketing is selling stuff to real people. Internet marketing is all the background stuff that helps you to do that.

You want to spend your energy on finding out what your customers want, how they want to buy it, and the psychology that will get them to make the purchase. That is marketing.

The key is to focus on your business, and not the Internet side of things. You can spend weeks building the perfect website and making it beautiful.

That’s cool and it’s fun, but it’s not marketing. You haven’t sold a thing.

The best training you can get for how to market online is to learn how to market face-to-face.

It’s all marketing – finding out what people want and need, and then finding the absolute BEST way to sell it to them.

Take Avon’s Social Media Training. They do a great job of teaching you how to market online.

Your number one priority is marketing. The Internet is only priority number 2 at best.

3.  Fear of Investing.

Many Reps are drawn to building their business online with the promise of, “Build a million-dollar business without spending a dime.”

It doesn’t ever work that way! You have to SPEND something to make money, especially online.

Seriously, who really thinks you can build a 4, 5, or 6-figure business for free?

If you want a REAL business that makes money, you’ll need to invest some money to make it happen.

And by spending that money correctly, you’ll save years of anguish and failed attempts and wasted time.

You’ll need to invest in resources, software, hosting, maybe some advertising, outsourcing, and maybe even some coaching, if needed.

You can start small. You don’t need to invest your life savings into building online. Take your profits and reinvest them to grow your business bigger and faster.

This is the same as building offline, or face-to-face. Take your profits from your first sales to buy more brochures, or maybe for some advertising.

As you grow, you can use some of your earnings to hire someone to take some of the tasks off your hands so you can spend more time talking with new potential customers and recruits.  Or you can pay for some tools that will automate your business.

Being afraid to invest money in your business not only stunts your business’ growth, it also hurts YOU.

When you don’t even think enough of your Avon business to put a little money behind it, you are basically telling your subconscious mind that it’s not worth it, that it’s going to fail anyway, and why waste your money on something that won’t work?

And then your subconscious will self-sabotage to make your thoughts a reality.

Even if you do get lucky and manage to build your business for free, or almost free, there are three major hidden costs you haven’t thought of:

Time – If you’re doing everything yourself, then you are investing a tremendous amount of time into learning how to do things and then getting good at doing them. …Time during which you could already have been in profit.

Effectiveness – Yes, there might be a free version of that plugin you need, but is it as effective as the $39 version? If you’re losing subscribers or sales because you’re using an inferior version, then you’re actually spending a great deal more than the $39 you ‘saved.’ However, I’m not suggesting you go out and purchase everything. Many times the free version is just fine for your needs. But take the time to evaluate which is the right version for you.

Slow Growth – For example, if you can buy all the traffic you need to earn, say $5,000 a week, or you can work 40 hours a week to drive enough traffic to earn, say $1,000 a week – not spending money for traffic gets pretty darn expensive. This goes for Alma Leads as well. Many times paying for those Alma leads can help you grow much quicker.

There are some things you can do online for free. There are others that will cost you money. Invest the money wisely and grow your business or pay the price.

——> Did this article help you? If so, it would mean a lot to me if you would share it with others!!! And, share your comments below!  I would LOVE to know more about you and your thoughts on this subject! <——

Let’s have some conversation!

EXPECT Success!

By Lynn Huber

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