Online businesses are not successful by accident or without effort. Of the thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs who start an online business each year, only a small percentage will ever be successful. A recent survey estimates that a staggering 90% of new Internet businesses fail within the first year.

You can avoid being part of that disturbing statistic. I have put together the top 10 secret tips for online business success. This may not be what you expect to hear, but if more entrepreneurs paid attention to them, there would be a lot more success stories.

1. Have a plan

Everything starts with a plan. In principle, online business is no different from a real business in the real world. People who fail in online business are often those who think that making money online “sounds like a good idea” instead of seeing it as a real business. They jump in with no idea what they want to do or how to run their business.

Planning should involve:

– what kind of business are you going to start online

– what it will cost

– how will you market it

– what tools and skills you need to get started

– how you will fund your online business endeavors

– how much time do you have to devote to it

– how and where you will connect and make business connections

Without taking stock of factors like these before you begin, you’ll be lucky to achieve any kind of success.

2.Add action

Taking action is what separates most online business successes from failures.

That “Make a Million Online” seminar you attended, presented by the best minds in online business? It’s worth nothing if you don’t act on what you learn.

That ebook full of secret online business strategies? They are worth nothing until you actually use them.

That brilliant product idea spinning around in your head? Stop dreaming about it and believe it.

While there are other factors as well, you have to realize that you cannot win the game if you are not in the game. Never let the fear of failure stop you. If you never try, you have already failed.

3. Learn to test and trace

Yeah, it can be a pain to try and keep track of the results…until you finally do and realize how much money you’ve been leaving on the table.

Imagine writing a sales letter for your $30 product and it converts 2% of all visitors into sales. One hundred sales per month is $3,000 in your pocket.

Now, imagine if just by changing the title of that sales letter, you converted 3% of your visitors into sales. I would have been losing $1,500 a month.

Testing and tracking is crucial to fine-tuning your marketing campaigns for maximum benefit, especially when you pay for traffic.

4. Forget about perfection

Repeat after me: It doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to work.

Many people spend months tweaking their websites on their computers without ever putting them online. They spend months trying to perfect a product instead of publishing and marketing it.

Don’t get bogged down trying to get everything in order before launch.

An ugly website that is actually active on the internet can make money and can be tweaked to make it work better. A beautiful one sitting unreleased on your hard drive will not only not make any money, it won’t even give you real-world data to improve it.

Believe it, then take it out. With all the flaws of it.

5. Keep your focus

Focus on doing one thing at a time and doing it well. Getting your business off the ground is the hardest part. Focusing on too many tasks, too many revenue streams, and pursuing too many different opportunities will dilute your efforts and confuse and overwhelm you.

Many new online entrepreneurs suffer from this because there are so many income opportunities available. They start one thing, then abandon it for the next bright opportunity that comes along. Very soon they are stuck between 7 or 8 unfinished projects, with no income and a lot of disappointment.

Realize that you can’t chase them all. Decide the business you are going to start with and focus your efforts on it.

6. Create multiple traffic streams

There are a wide variety of ways to generate traffic online. The more you can use, the higher your potential income and the more secure your online livelihood.

For example, if you’ve decided to do affiliate marketing and your only source of traffic is Google, you’re on shaky ground. If Google decides to penalize your sites for whatever reason, or an algorithm change lowers your ranking, most of your revenue can be gone overnight.

Make sure that over time you set up different streams of income that pull your traffic from different sources. The “all eggs in one basket” approach is dangerous in the volatile field of online marketing.

7. Create and maintain a mailing list

This remains one of the most important secrets to online business success. A well-maintained mailing list can earn you money every time you broadcast a message. It’s a robust and trend-proof way to secure an online income.

Build your list and treasure it. Provide value to your subscribers and build a strong relationship with them.

8. Provide value

Truly valuable websites, products and services take on a life of their own. They get more social sharing, more word of mouth exposure, and are more likely to be promoted by affiliates.

It is possible to make money online by selling low-quality products or creating low-quality websites. The problem is that you will have to do all the work and start from scratch every time search engines discard your fraudulent content, or when your product’s bad reputation starts to kill off your sales.

9. Get rid of destructive myths

Have you ever heard any of these phrases:

– Make money while you sleep

– Be your own boss and work whenever you want

– Earn $X00,000 dollars working only 2 hours a day

These are the typical myths and hype that marketers use to sell the dream of online business. Is it any wonder then that so many new businesses fail?

Get into an entrepreneurial mindset: one that expects hard work, failure, long hours, and a steep learning curve before expecting rewards. That simple change alone will already put you way ahead of most new online business owners.

10. Learn to outsource

This is a tough question for control freaks. If you want something to go right, do it yourself. Right?

That philosophy may be true in some cases, but in online business it will stop you. Time really is money, and you need to use the valuable time you have to focus on your strengths.

You will definitely have some bad experiences with outsourcing. However, once you’ve sorted out the good from the bad, you’ll have gathered a handful of trusted people who will help you build your business just as you would have built it yourself, and perhaps even better.

Good luck with your online business. Ignore the hype, do your planning, work hard and never give in to the fear of failure.