What Chess Can Teach Us About Internet Business

I was reading a forum yesterday and, as usual, I was seeing the same mistake over and over. Many webmasters are wondering why they can’t succeed or why they can’t seem to break through a certain income point. The game of Chess holds the answer.

In Chess, there’s a move that experienced players always play on first timers. It’s called Fool’s Mate and boy do I wish it would work more often.

Fool’s Mate is a four-move checkmate. It’s also known as mate-in-four, but that’s not important.

The point is that inexperienced players can go from starting to play to game over in four quick moves. And until they learn how to stop Fool’s Mate, they will continue to lose.

Many webmasters who start up sites to make money are like the inexperienced chess players who will be mated in four moves.

Move 1: Start a site.
Move 2: Start another site.
Move 3: Start some more sites.
Move 4: Welcome to mediocrity.

Rather than making one Web site and making it successful first, these webmasters start up many Web sites. The thinking is that more is better. If you have one Web site earning $10 a month, how great would it be if you had 300 of them?

Here’s the problem. If you haven’t made one Web site successful first, you’ll probably never achieve too much. All you are doing is compounding your inadequacy.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with having multiple Web sites—I’m definitely not one to speak against this—but start with one and make it successful.

Whatever success is to you–$100 monthly or $100,000 monthly—do it with one site and do it well. When you have it down, seek to replicate it one instance at a time. Don’t go out and start 100 more sites.

Just like Chess, doing business on the Internet is about making quality moves, predicting a few moves ahead and focusing your effort.

There’s a lot of money out there and you can have your piece if you are smart about how you run your business.