The internet is saturated with advice for entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, a lot of the advice is a waste of time. Here are 5 pieces of 'advice' you should ignore when you start your own business.

1. You need a business plan to be successful
For the vast majority of startups, a business plan will become irrelevant after only a few weeks. Why? Because you really don't know exactly how customers will embrace your product. Business plans are based upon assumptions (aka- guesses), which will inevitably need to be changed. On top of these assumptions, more assumptions are drawn, and on it goes. Sure, venture capitalists will want to see your business plan before investing in your idea, but your plan is a formality in their decision. They will invest in you, as in you the person first. Next, they will invest in your idea. They will not invest in your business plan, no matter how elegant it seems. Does this mean you should avoid planning before starting a business? Of course not (unless you enjoy the sensation of failure). What it means is, make sure you are solving an important problem for a certain segment of the market. Next, make sure you know exactly who you are going to sell your product to. And lastly, make sure that you can do it while making a profit. These are all going to be guesses; just make sure they are educated guesses. They're going to change, so don't waste your time amalgamating them into a fancy business plan document


2. If you have an original idea, you should keep it a secret, or someone might steal it
Almost no idea is original anymore. The chances of your business offering something that is truly unique, are very slim. On top of that, it will take thousands of hours of effort to make any 'idea' into a successful business; a passerby that happens to hear your idea is not going to put the time into it. Think about it; it's hard enough keeping yourself motivated when you start your own business, and it's your idea! In fact, most of the time, it is actually beneficial to discuss your business idea with others. You can get feedback immediately (some of which might be useful), and they might be able to key you in on key competitors you might not have thought of


3. You can be successful by relying exclusively on Google Adwords to bring traffic
Despite the claims of hundreds of 'get rich overnight' websites, you cannot build a sustainable business purely with Google Adwords. Why? First, the CPC estimates you begin with WILL change as you go along. Sometimes they will get cheaper for each keyword. Most of the time, they will increase. The CPC average is dependent on the performance of you advertisement. If you can keep a solid click-through-rate, you can keep the CPC costs down. But if you can't, they will rise exponentially. If you decided on the price of your product by factoring in your expected CPC costs and these CPC costs go up, your product might become unprofitable very quickly. On top of your CPC costs rising because of your ad performance, they can also increase if more competitors decide to bid on them. In light of this, you need organic search traffic to be your primary means of acquiring visitors


4. E-Books are a great way to make money
Information products have a fantastic advantage; they can be reproduced for free, and there is no inventory to ship out. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that most people are going to want your information product, unless you are an expert. By expert, I don't mean the guy that knows the most about a certain subject in your family. You have to have tangible credibility. What is tangible credibility? It's university degrees, certifications, citations, and media appearances. If you are a certified expert, you can sell information products, and have a decent shot at success. If you are posing as an expert, you will probably fail. You can find certified experts for virtually any type of subject matter online; it takes less than 2 minutes to locate them. With that in mind, why would somebody buy from you, when they can purchase from an expert with far more credibility? If you are serious about selling information products, make sure that you first become an expert with tangible credibility (Tim Ferriss's 4 hour work week book has a good amount of advice on how to become an 'expert')


5. You can make money with a blog by selling banner ads
A blog needs to pull in thousands of people per day to make any significant money on banner ads. Why? Because only a tiny fraction of your users are going to click the ads on your website. And it gets worse; when they do click them (hallelujah), you're only going to be making a tiny amount of money. The business model of strictly relying on a blog to make money is simply not feasible for the vast majority of entrepreneurs. Of course, there are bloggers out there that make decent money; but they all have thousands of people each day pouring into their website. If you are considering a new blog as your business' primary source of revenue, you need to go back to the drawing board. Don't start your own business on the premise that a blog will make you a quick income.
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