When the bottom drops out of your online business.

As you find the floor you're trying to stand on needs replacing...

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You may have run into this already - as your business is going along, you suddenly find out that some tool you've been using, or a method you've studied is actually just a gimmick. There are too many of these out there - they work for a very short time (usually only for the very early adopters, and no one after that) and you may have paid good money for it - but the results aren't there.

The next step is to pick yourself up and learn from that misstep.

Meanwhile, you find yourself trying to balance on the floor joists, because nothing else is under you.

I've done this more that once. I get all behind a certain company, building content and backlinks and so on in order to get the search engines sending me traffic - only to find out that the company or its products were never worth following. No, I never got that money back. I did get a lot of experience. But as I continue on, I find out not to spend a lot to get started. The intro versions will usually tell you if something is worth it.

Conversely, that is your own marketing as well. Be completely transparent and honest from the beginning. Give great value from the outset. Tell people exactly how everything works. Give away the core ideas and sell the tools to help them get implemented.

Perry Marshall, and others, long ago said that people don't want to buy a drill, they want a hole. So you tell them that holes are great things to want, very useful. And the best way to go about getting the hole they want is by using a drill - not just any drill, but this particular drill. So they buy your drill to get their hole. Even if they only use it once.

When you have found out that you were hoodwinked - you wanted to earn extra income online and you were sold a system, but it never produced for you - then back track your own wants and needs to more closely define exactly what it is that you wanted to begin with.

If you can recognize your own yearnings (much as Robert Cialdini did with his book "Influence") then you can proof yourself up against the scammers out there. (Or get the rest of this data and get scam free for good.)

Taking that further, you can then help your clients even more - by explaining how your services help them and why they are buying it. Be completely transparent (one marketer calls this "getting buck naked") in front of your clients.

Openhanded help is another way of stating it.

Your life-long clients will appreciate your honesty and candor. They know they can always go to you for the straight scoop.

And so, they'll return over and over.

This is how you build your own honest online business. Floor by floor.