The best way to start this article is to highlight its purpose with a relevant quote - and of one of my personal favourites: "By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail" - Benjamin Franklin. We don't always pay enough attention to the wisdom of those who have come before us. This idea rings as true today as it did back then especially in business issues. Realistically nobody is going to deliberately set out on a new business venture planning to fail almost entirely. That, however, is exactly what many new online entrepreneurs actually do. They're totally and utterly unprepared for what lies ahead of them and 95% of them will never achieve anything above a few dollars per month income. So what exact steps do you need to take to fail at making money online?

Do not attempt to research your market under any circumstances. Don't even dream of checking how competitive or profitable a market might be. Simply pick the first idea that pops into your head and design a product or website around it and then hope that the money comes pouring it. Market and keyword research is for suckers right?

Now you need a webhost for your new "creation". Never research the forums and messageboards for feedback on great webhosting. No just go ahead and find the cheapest, most unreliable, most akward, free web hosting package on the 'net and upload your work to that. Who cares if it's covered with annoying banner ads, shuts itself down for hours at a time and the tech support guys never get back to you? A webhost is a webhost and your potential customers and visitors won't care will they?

Do not focus on a single niche market. Build a website that has information on everything in the universe and that is purely random in nature. While you're at it sign up for as many flashing, rotating banner programs as you can and just paste them all over the place. It doesn't matter if they're for dating, viagra or lasik eye surgery - your visitors are sure to just keep clicking on them so you can get paid.

Forget about mailing lists. All the guru types are full of crap when they say "the money is in the list". Never set up a sequential autoresponder series on your website. Basically do everything you can to avoid collecting customer and visitor information. Oh and never offer any kind of incentive for them to give you this data.

Search engines? Smearch engines! You've spent at least an hour designing your website and you have it stuffed full of the right words. That's what search engines love don't they? I mean your website is such a work of art that Google, Yahoo and MSN will be beating a path to your door to send visitors to you. Title tags, Meta Description tags? Pointless! Building incoming links? Why bother! Somebody said that SEO was all hocus pocus anyways.... so they're probably right aren't they?

Do everything yourself. Spend weeks learning html, php and graphic design. Create all your own templates, write every single word of content yourself and never, ever stop. Never invest in any tool which might make your life even a little bit easier or make you more productive. Nobody can do it any better than you right? Why outsource your work and pay somebody else when you'll get it all done... eventually... one way or the other.

Never finish any project you start - no matter what. Once you get 50% of the way through any online project just stop and leave it there. Start on the next project because you're bored with the last one. Your ideas are so utterly brilliant that they'll generate money regardless of whether or not you finish them.

Never try anything different. Don't create a new line of products or even dream of becoming involved in a different market. Do not create a mixture of Adsense and affiliate sites. Create an information product to sell online? Why would you even try? Don't attempt to learn anything new and do not, under any circumstances, find a mentor that you can learn from. You know best after all.

Does the above seem overly sarcastic and cynical? I'd agree - it is. The shocking part is that I've personally made all of the above mistakes to some extent over the years - as have the vast majority of online business people. Use this article to help you avoid making the same mistakes. Now that you know where all the pitfalls are you can just sidestep them on your way to success.