Despite what all the so called Guru's may say it's not easy to make money online. There are many reasons why people want to earn an online income often it's to supplement a low paid job or get out of a job they hate. It's sad to say that many of these people won't get to realize their dreams on online wealth as they will make several mistakes. Many of these mistakes can be easily avoided.

1 Failing to Plan Is Planning to Fail

Just like with any real world business you should produce a business plan before you start your online business. Create the plan around your strengths so that you can keep your initial costs low. If you lack many of the skills you'll need then use the first 6 months to learn them. This short apprenticeship will pay dividends in the long term

2. Don't the believe the hype

It's a successful Internet marketer's job to make you believe what you read in their sales letters. Having read the sales letters or email you'll be certain that you need whatever product they are promoting this week to be successful. STOP! You don't. There is no replacement for hard work. Learning how to do things yourself without relying on some tool will be the best long term investment you can make.

3. You fail to control your spending

I've met lots of people who have spent thousands of dollars on tools and e-books and have yet to make any money. It's simple economics if you spend $1 you need to make $1 to break even. Before you invest in anything visit forums and see whats working for the members. Ask questions and test their methods yourself, if they make you a profit then consider investing the profit into tools that will help increase your income.

4. Not Focusing

People seem intent on jumping from one method of earning money online to another without giving each method time to work. This week they'll try Adsense, next week affiliate marketing after that buying and selling domains. When I speak to people who do this they all say the same thing, Adsense doesn't work anymore, article marketing doesn't work anymore etc. It does, it's just that it doesn't work overnight and you need to spend time learning how to do things properly.

5. You don't think you need to learn anymore

Recently I've had a number of emails from well know marketers who take great delight in telling me that Hubpages and Twitter are the next big things to happen to Internet marketing. I' hate to tell them but I've been using these for over 9 months. The Internet marketing world is developing at such a pace that there are new methods and sites being developed each week . You need to keep abreast of the situation and not think that you know all you need to know.

If you feel that you are making a few of these mistakes then take time out to look at what you are doing wrong and what you can do to change things. A few hours spend on analyzing your plans or you current business now can result in a much larger income later on.