Why 99% Fail to Make Money Online (Avoid These Mistakes)

Most people watching this right now have already tried something online. Maybe a YouTube channel, a blog, a dropshipping store, an affiliate site. They put in a few months, nothing happened the way they expected, and then they stopped. They’ll tell you the niche was too saturated, or they ran out of time, or the timing just wasn’t right. That’s not why they failed. The real reason is something Alston walks through in this video, and it’s a harder conversation than most online business channels are willing to have.

This isn’t a tactics breakdown. It’s a mirror. The mistakes Alston identifies here aren’t rare outliers. They’re the default. If you’re honest with yourself while reading this, you’re probably going to recognize at least three of them in your own story.

What You’ll Walk Out With

Why setting “$100 a day” as your first goal is the thing keeping you from reaching it
The desperation trap that forces bad decisions when you need out of a job or debt badly enough
Why niche saturation is almost never the real problem, and what actually separates your content from everyone else’s
The “would you buy from you?” test that reveals whether your content is actually ready to convert
The output gap between what most people are doing and what the algorithm actually rewards in 2025
The efficiency shift Alston used to double his daily output without adding more hours to his day
How to identify the right starting point for your specific background and situation at finder.platformproof.com

Everything Is a Niche. That Is the Point.

Before he gets into the difficult conversation this video is really about, Alston does something worth noticing. He opens by rattling off niche ideas — not as a warmup gimmick, but to make a specific argument. He’s filming down by the lake. Fourth of July is a few weeks out. He mentions travel content, fireworks guides, holiday recipe roundups, best places to watch fireworks. Then he lands on swimming. He says directly that he doesn’t know how to swim at all. And then he explains why that’s still a viable niche.

The logic is simple: every year, new people are born. Out of every million, a few hundred thousand will eventually want to learn to swim. If you build evergreen content around swimming, the audience self-replenishes indefinitely. People never stop needing to learn basic skills. That’s not a niche with a ceiling. It compounds.

He also mentions boating while walking past the lake. Boating is an expensive niche — Bass Pro Shops sells boats, expensive ones, and affiliate partnerships in that space pay accordingly. No wake lake guides, boat comparison content, regional boating destinations. These are real content angles that a real person with real curiosity could build into a real audience.

The broader point isn’t about swimming or boating specifically. The point is that people who say they can’t find a niche are not actually stuck on the niche. They’re stuck on starting. They want someone to tell them their specific interest is valid enough to build around. This video is that permission. Use the skills, interests, hobbies, and passions you already have. Pick one and move.

Stop Chasing $100 a Day. Help 100 People First.

Alston asks early in the video: what is your first goal? Most people say something in the range of $100 per day. He says that’s the wrong goal. Not because $100 a day is a bad outcome — it isn’t — but because making it your first goal puts you in the wrong relationship with your own work from day one.

His recommended first goal: help 100 people. Free content can accomplish that. A single YouTube video can do it. A blog post, a short clip, an honest answer to the most common question in your niche. If you help 100 people, you’ve proven you can create genuine value for a real audience. Value is what eventually becomes income. But you can’t shortcut to the income before you’ve built the value.

He uses his own early experience as the example. When he first started, he spent hours watching videos from the Freedom Influencer — Nathan Lucas, who still creates content on YouTube today. Alston was studying Nathan’s channel trying to figure out what Nathan was doing to get views, what the formula was, how he could replicate it. The problem: he was consuming instead of creating. He was building nothing. He was watching someone else build while his own channel sat untouched.

Sprinting toward money creates a specific kind of blindness. You start measuring everything by whether it generates revenue right now. A video that helps 50 people but doesn’t produce a single affiliate click feels like a failure. It isn’t. It’s the foundation. But you can’t see that when your only metric is dollars in the account. The framework is upside down from the start, and that upside-down frame is what sends people into the wrong decisions for months or years before they notice.

The Desperation Trap

This is the section of the video that will hit people harder than they expect.

Alston describes what happens when you’re living paycheck to paycheck, behind on bills, or stuck in a job with a boss you can’t stand. That situation creates desperation. And desperation is not a good decision-making environment. When you need out badly enough, you start making moves that aren’t aligned with any real mission. You jump at anything that looks fast. You buy courses that promise a shortcut. You copy whatever someone else appears to be doing because it looks like it’s working for them. None of that is a strategy. It’s panic wearing a strategy’s clothes.

He says he can remember exactly what that felt like. He was so desperate to get to the money that he couldn’t take the step back he needed. He couldn’t look at his own content honestly and ask whether it was serving anyone other than himself. He couldn’t see that the content was self-serving because the desperation made that seem justified. That’s the trap: when you need out badly enough, self-serving content feels necessary. It isn’t. And it’s usually the specific reason the content doesn’t convert.

The way out of the desperation trap is the same as the way through it: shift the question. From “how do I make money?” to “how do I help people?” It sounds simple and it is not easy, especially when the rent is late. But the decisions change when the question changes. And the content changes when the decisions change.

Your Why Has to Be Bigger Than a Dollar Amount

Alston’s why is specific enough to name on a Tuesday evening. His dad worked third shift as a forklift operator. He was in the house, but he wasn’t really there — sleeping all day because he’d worked all night, too tired to play catch, which is why Alston was always late to baseball practice growing up. His dad was a great dad. His mom was a great mom. But the financial reality meant they worked constantly, and the time with their kids was the cost.

So when Alston had kids of his own, he decided that was going to look different. He went to college, got his bachelor’s degree, had a decent job. But he wanted more. Not the laptop-lifestyle fantasy — he says he wasn’t chasing that. He wanted to be home when his kids got out of school. To coach their sports. To be available for the things that happen on weekday evenings when most parents are stuck at work.

The night before filming this video, he coached his son’s coach-pitch baseball game. He watched his son grow and develop through the game. He says directly: that wouldn’t have been possible without the online business. That’s the why. Not abstract or aspirational. A specific game on a specific evening that he was actually present for.

He references a book called Start with Why by Simon Sinek, says he’ll put it in the description. The core test the book poses is whether your why includes doing something real for other people. A why that’s only about money or escaping your current situation will produce content that audiences can sense and distrust. A why rooted in something specific and personal gives you staying power when the results are slow and the algorithm is indifferent.

He puts it as plainly as possible: “If you spend all your time chasing the money, you’re going to have a very difficult time catching it and keeping it, because the money is always faster than you can be.” That’s not a motivational quote. It’s a description of what he lived through.

Niche Saturation Is Almost Always a Myth

A niche is only saturated when you’re trying to say the exact same thing in the exact same way as everyone else already in it. That’s Alston’s position, and it holds up under pressure.

Take basketball as an example. Millions of people are already making basketball content. That sounds discouraging right up until you realize what none of them have: your story. Alston played basketball in high school, wasn’t great. Then played division 3 college basketball, also wasn’t great, and rode the bench most of the time. Almost no one has built basketball content from the perspective of a division 3 benchwarmer who eventually started an online business and coaches his kid’s Little League team. That’s a real angle. It’s autobiographical, which means it can’t be copied, because it’s specific to one person’s experience on earth.

Five or ten years ago, YouTube was the primary arena, and standing out there required patience and a slower build. Now TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels reward short-form content in ways that let you test angles and find your audience faster than a long SEO game ever could. You can get in front of people within days of starting. That changes the math on “saturated” niches substantially.

Alston’s point here is direct: “We connect through stories. If you can tell a story, people are going to know, like, and trust you a bit better.” The people who consistently do well on TikTok and YouTube aren’t always the most polished or the most credentialed. They’re the ones who communicate in a way that feels real to ordinary people. You already have a story. The question is whether you’re actually using it or burying it under generic advice anyone could have written.

Would You Buy from You?

This is one of the more uncomfortable questions in the video, and Alston asks it as directly as questions can be asked.

If you’ve been making content for three years and have fewer than 1,000 subscribers, pull up your last 10 videos. Watch them the way a stranger would — someone who has no idea who you are, found your channel from a search result, and is evaluating in the first 30 seconds whether to stick around. Then ask yourself honestly: would you buy from this person? Would you take advice from this channel? Would you trust this person with your money?

He says most of the time, honestly, people would say no. And that’s the real problem. The internet is a skeptical environment by default. People have been burned by overpromising too many times. If the person who made the content wouldn’t buy from themselves — the audience absolutely won’t.

This isn’t a reason to quit. It’s a diagnostic. The fix isn’t abandoning the channel; it’s being honest about what would have to change for a stranger to trust it. List those things. Work through them one at a time. That’s the whole path from “no one is buying” to “this is actually working.”

Not sure what to sell, which platform to focus on, or how to turn what you already know into a starting point?

The Platform Proof Finder walks you through it in a few minutes at finder.platformproof.com.

The Output Gap: Are You Actually Doing Enough?

Alston describes a pattern most people recognize the moment they hear it. Someone in your niche has 100,000 subscribers. They upload once a week and get 10,000 to 20,000 views per video. You’ve been uploading once a week for six months and averaging around 50 views. You tell yourself you’re doing the same thing they are.

You’re not. That creator earned the right to upload once a week. They built 100,000 subscribers through years of output, consistency, and iteration. The algorithm knows their track record. Their existing audience shows up reliably on day one of every new video. You don’t have any of that yet. So one video per week is not the same strategic move for a new channel as it is for an established one. The inputs look identical. The outputs are completely different.

His challenge is blunt: if competitors in your niche are doing three TikToks per day, are you willing to do six? If they’re doing YouTube only, are you willing to do YouTube plus TikTok? Are you taking what you observe others doing and going further than they’re going? Because if not, the results you’re getting are the results you’re earning.

When Alston finally got out of his own way early in his content career, he committed to uploading a video every single day and going live every single day. He says it didn’t immediately generate a flood of views. What it did was build confidence. It proved to himself that he could maintain that pace. It made him better at creating content faster because the volume forced rapid iteration. You can’t learn from videos you never made.

He also points out something most people genuinely miss: you don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes for the creator you’re comparing yourself to. That 100,000-subscriber channel might be running paid ads, building an email list, doing podcast appearances, repurposing content across five platforms, and spending ten hours a week on outreach you never see. What you observe on YouTube is one output of a larger machine. You’re comparing your full effort to their most visible result.

Getting Out of Your Own Way

Getting out of your own way, in Alston’s framing, is not a motivational phrase. It has a specific definition: stop creating mental blocks that don’t exist in the real world.

You don’t want to comment on other people’s videos because you’re worried about coming across as a creep. You don’t want to show your face on camera. You don’t want to upload too frequently because someone might think you’re everywhere. He pushes back on every one of these.

His direct response: “You’re the only one overthinking it. No one else really cares that you’re making 20 videos a day.” And if someone sees you too often and mutes you — they were never going to buy from you anyway. The fear of overexposure is almost always a rationalization for not doing the work. It feels like a reasonable concern. It functions as an excuse.

The same applies to face-on-camera. If you don’t want to show your face, that’s a real option and there are successful faceless channels. But you have to be willing to be exceptional at video editing, scripting, and audio to compensate for the trust that on-camera presence builds more naturally. You don’t get to opt out of effort. You only get to choose which form the effort takes.

Be Efficient with the Time You Have

The “I don’t have time to create content” objection comes up constantly. Alston doesn’t dismiss it, but he does challenge it directly with a concrete example from his own routine.

Last month, he committed to reaching 11,000 steps every day, with the goal of hitting that number before noon. Working from home, the most he was normally getting in a full day was around 6,000 steps. To close the gap, he started walking four miles during his lunch break — about an hour and a half of walking. It worked, but it wasn’t efficient.

Then he looked at his existing schedule. He was already going to the gym Monday through Saturday. So instead of standing around between sets, he started walking laps in the gym. By the time he filmed this video at 7:30 in the morning, he was already at 6,000 steps — without an hour-and-a-half lunchtime walk. Same goal. Same total movement. Arranged differently around the time he was already committed to spending.

The application to content creation is exact. If you have 45 minutes in the morning and two hours on weekends, you can batch record three or four short videos in a single session rather than starting and stopping every day. You can outline five blog posts on Sunday and draft one each evening during the week. You can record audio during a commute and turn it into a transcript later. The hours aren’t the constraint for most people. The structure is the constraint. And structure is a solvable problem.

Honest Drawbacks of This Approach

This video is genuinely motivating. It’s also incomplete in a few ways worth naming, because the gaps matter if you’re trying to apply this in your actual situation.

Alston’s main prescription is to double, triple, or quadruple your output. For someone who has been coasting or inconsistent, that’s exactly right. But volume without feedback loops can also mean four times as many pieces of content that all miss the same mark. High output only works when you’re getting signal and adjusting based on it. If you’re uploading 20 videos a week and none of them are finding an audience, the problem probably isn’t the quantity. It’s the angle, the hook, the audience fit — something in the content itself.

The “would you buy from you?” test is useful, but you’re also the worst judge of your own content because you’re too close to it. You know what you meant to say, which makes it hard to see what a stranger actually receives. Asking someone completely outside your niche to watch three videos and report back honestly is more diagnostic than self-assessment. What they take away from each video is the only thing that matters.

And the “your why must include helping people” framework, while true and important, can be its own trap if you stop there. Wanting to help people is not the same as knowing what specific problem your specific audience has and how your specific knowledge solves it. Plenty of well-intentioned creators produce content that doesn’t help anyone in a practical sense because they never got specific enough about the problem they were solving. The motivation is real. The targeting is vague. The results are predictable.

None of this contradicts what Alston is teaching. It adds a layer. The mindset shifts in this video are real and most people need to hear them. Layering in specific audience research and regular feedback alongside the volume increase is what turns the output into traction rather than just practice.

Find Your X

The pattern across everything in this video is consistent: most people already have what they need to start. The skills, the knowledge, the time, the story. What’s usually missing is clarity about where to point all of it, and that missing clarity is what turns genuine effort into scattered work that doesn’t build toward anything.

The Platform Proof Finder at finder.platformproof.com is built specifically for that problem. It looks at what you already know, what you’ve already done, and maps that to the type of platform, audience, and content format that actually fits your situation. No guessing. No weeks spent in niche research rabbit holes. A clear starting point that connects to who you actually are and what you actually have to offer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do most people fail to make money online?

Alston’s answer is that most people fail because they’re chasing money before they’ve built the trust that produces it. They use revenue as the first metric instead of the last one. They also tend to do the bare minimum while comparing their results to creators who have been building for years, which generates frustration that leads to quitting before anything has had time to work.

Is any niche too saturated to enter in 2025?

Almost certainly not, at least not for the reason most people think. A niche becomes saturated when everyone in it is saying the same thing the same way. Your specific story, background, and angle are automatically different from everyone else’s. Short-form platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts make it faster than ever to test whether your specific angle resonates before committing to a long-form content build. The tools to differentiate yourself are more accessible than they’ve ever been.

What should my first goal be when starting an online business?

Help 100 people. Not make $100 a day. Getting your first 100 people helped forces you to figure out what your audience actually needs, which format works for them, and what you can deliver consistently. Revenue tends to follow once you’ve demonstrated that you can create genuine value for a real group of people. Setting revenue as the first goal skips the step that makes revenue possible.

How do I know if my content is good enough to generate sales?

Watch your last ten pieces of content as a stranger who has no prior relationship with you. Then ask honestly: would you buy from this person? If the answer is no, that’s your starting point — not a reason to quit. List specifically what would have to change for a stranger to trust the content. Then work through that list. If you can’t assess your own work objectively because you’re too close to it, ask someone completely outside your niche to watch three pieces and report what they actually took away.

I don’t have time to create content consistently. What should I do?

Be more efficient with the time you already have, rather than searching for new time. Batch recording multiple pieces of content in a single session is more efficient than starting and stopping daily. Treat your content creation window — even if it’s only 30 or 45 minutes — as fixed and non-negotiable. Structure beats duration. Small blocks of time, used consistently and without compromise, compound in ways that sporadic longer sessions don’t.

How much content do I need to create to start seeing results?

More than you’re probably creating now, and on more platforms than just one. The comparison trap — “that creator only uploads once a week and gets thousands of views” — ignores the years of work and audience trust behind those results. Early on, volume is what builds skills and generates feedback. Alston uploaded every day and went live every day when starting out, not because it guaranteed an immediate audience, but because it made him a better creator faster than any other approach would have.

What if I don’t want to show my face on camera?

Faceless content works in plenty of niches and it’s a real option. But it means investing more in video editing, scripting quality, and audio production to compensate for the trust that on-camera presence builds more easily. You don’t get to opt out of effort — you only get to choose the form it takes. Faceless channels that succeed tend to be technically strong in the areas that face-to-camera channels can get away with being mediocre in.

How do I find my “why” for building an online business?

Start with Simon Sinek’s book Start with Why, which Alston references directly in the video. The key test is whether your why includes something real you want to do for other people, not just something you want to escape. Alston’s why was being present for his kids in the way his dad, a third-shift forklift operator, couldn’t be for him. Concrete, personal, and not replaceable by any amount of money-based motivation. A why that specific is what keeps you going when the results are slow.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “Why 99% Fail to Make Money Online (Avoid These Mistakes)” — YouTube, https://youtu.be/QxmFfcHMgeI
Simon Sinek, Start with Why — referenced in video as recommended reading for finding your core motivation
Nathan Lucas / Freedom Influencer — YouTube channel referenced in video as an example Alston studied early in his content career