When I first started trying to build something online, I thought the hardest part would be getting traffic or making sales.
It wasn’t.
The hardest part was figuring out what I was even supposed to do in the first place.
I’d open YouTube and see someone saying I needed to start a blog. Then another person would say blogging was dead and I should build a funnel. Someone else would say funnels are pointless without a personal brand. Then I’d hear that personal branding is overrated and email marketing is what really matters.
Meanwhile, I didn’t know how to connect a domain name to hosting.
That’s where most beginners actually are. But almost none of the advice you find online starts there.
The “Simple” Advice That Isn’t Actually Simple
A lot of online business advice sounds very straightforward on the surface:
Pick a niche
Choose a product
Create content
Build an email list
But when you're new, each one of those steps opens up ten more decisions you didn’t know you’d have to make.
For example, when I decided to “build a website,” I ran into questions like:
Should I use WordPress or something else?
What’s a theme?
Do I need plugins?
Why does everyone recommend different ones?
What’s a landing page vs a blog post?
Where do affiliate links go?
Why does my site look broken on mobile?
None of that shows up in the basic advice. So beginners do what I did — we keep researching instead of building anything.
A Real Beginner Scenario (That No One Talks About)
Let’s say you join an affiliate program for a software tool you actually like.
Sounds like progress, right?
Now you need somewhere to send people.
So you:
Buy a domain name
Set up hosting
Install WordPress
Try to pick a theme
Watch three different tutorials on how to create a homepage
Install a page builder
Spend two evenings trying to make the text line up properly
Realize you don’t know where to put your affiliate link
Read that you should collect emails first
Now you need an email platform
Which means you need a lead magnet
Which means you need a landing page
Which means you’re back to the page builder again
At this point, most beginners assume they’re doing something wrong because everything feels harder than it’s supposed to be.
But the truth is: this is what it looks like when you try to follow advice that skips over the middle.
Common Beginner Mistakes (And Why They Happen)
Trying to Build Everything at Once
I wasted months trying to set up:
A funnel
A lead magnet
A welcome email sequence
Social media profiles
A logo
A brand color palette
All before I had a single visitor.
Beginners do this because most advice is presented as a complete system. You feel like if you leave anything out, you're sabotaging your future results.
In reality, building everything upfront often just delays the moment you actually learn what works.
Obsessing Over Tools Instead of Decisions
I’ve switched email platforms twice.
Changed WordPress themes three times.
Tried two different funnel builders I didn’t understand well enough to use properly.
Each time, I told myself the new tool would make things easier.
What actually helped was deciding:
Who I wanted to help
What specific problem I could talk about
Which product I had personally used and could explain honestly
That didn’t feel as exciting as testing a new tool, but it moved things forward.
Thinking Traffic Comes After Setup
A lot of beginner advice implies this sequence:
Build your site first, then focus on getting visitors
So we spend weeks making something look “ready.”
Then we finally try writing a post, sharing something in a forum, or answering a question on social media — and realize we don’t actually know how to explain what we’re offering.
Because explaining things clearly is a separate skill from building pages.
That was a frustrating realization for me. I had spent more time adjusting margins than learning how to write a simple product walkthrough.
The Trade-Offs Nobody Mentions
There’s no path that’s both fast and low-effort when you’re starting out.
You can:
Learn how everything works (slow, but flexible later), or
Use more structured setups (faster to start, but less customizable)
Neither is wrong. But beginners are often told they should aim for total control from day one.
I tried that.
It meant:
Googling error messages I didn’t understand
Breaking layouts by changing one setting
Losing work because I hadn’t backed anything up
Spending entire weekends fixing technical problems instead of writing anything useful
Eventually I had to accept that removing some technical decisions early on would’ve let me focus on learning how affiliate marketing actually works — like writing comparison posts or answering common beginner questions about a product.
The Mindset Shift That Helped Most
Progress didn’t come from learning more strategies.
It came from lowering the number of decisions I had to make at once.
Instead of asking:
What’s the best way to build an online business?
I started asking:
What’s the simplest way to explain one useful thing about a product I’ve used?
That led to:
Writing shorter posts
Making basic tutorials
Sharing personal experience instead of summaries
Linking to affiliate offers in context instead of pushing them
Some of those posts barely got seen.
A few got comments.
One or two eventually led to small commissions.
Nothing dramatic. But it was real feedback — which is something you don’t get from watching tutorials.
Habits That Actually Made a Difference
These weren’t impressive, but they helped:
Publishing before everything felt “finished”
Keeping one website instead of starting over
Ignoring redesign ideas for at least 30 days
Writing from experience instead of research
Sticking with one traffic source long enough to learn it
I also stopped assuming that confusion meant failure.
Most of the time, confusion just meant I was encountering something that experienced marketers no longer notice — like DNS settings or form integrations.
One Way to Remove Some of the Early Technical Weight
For beginners who mainly feel stuck at the setup stage, something like Plug-In Profit Site can be an optional starting point. It’s a done-for-you website setup that removes a lot of the technical barriers involved in getting your first affiliate-focused site online, which can make it easier to focus on learning how to create content and understand the basics before worrying about customization.
A More Honest Ending Than a Motivational One
If online business advice has felt confusing so far, that doesn’t mean you’re not cut out for this.
It usually means the advice was written by someone who forgot what it’s like not to know the difference between a landing page and a homepage.
Most progress I’ve made didn’t come from breakthroughs. It came from:
Leaving things imperfect
Learning one small piece at a time
Accepting slow results
And fixing mistakes after they happened instead of trying to avoid all of them in advance
The early stages are messy for almost everyone. You’re not behind — you’re just seeing the parts that usually get edited out.
