Every day, an alarming number of small businesses fail. In fact, research suggests that as many as half of all small businesses close their doors within just two years of opening. While some of these failures have to do with economic reasons or simple fate, many businesses fail because the business owner made a mistake, or a series of mistakes.

Here are the top ten reasons small business owners fail on and off line:

1. A lack of planning. Many business owners don’t plan much past opening their doors. To be successful in small business, you have to be able to look at the long term.

2. A lack of business skills. Just because you’re good at whatever business it is you’re in doesn’t mean you’re good at business. Tasks as basic as bookkeeping are integral to the success of a business, and have to be done right if you’re going to last.

3. Poor marketing. Creating a great blog, product or providing an amazing service isn’t enough. You have to tell people about your business, and you have to tell them WHY they need you.

4. Poor location. Many offline small businesses, especially service-based businesses, need an optimum location in order to succeed but online businesses need to be in good nieghbourhoods as well. Make sure you are were the customer are looking and can easily find you.

5. Inattention. A successful small business owner has a handle on all of her or his business processes. They know what’s going on from an accounting perspective, and understands the issues. While she or he doesn’t have to directly control everything, they are aware of what’s going on.

6. Insufficient funding. Small businesses take time to turn a profit. You can’t open your doors or start on a new blog and expect to be turning a profit in a matter of days. Yes there are many online businesses that seem to suddenly appear and make it big time but 99% of these are based on a foundation that was funded long before what you see has come to life. Successful small businesses have adequate funding, whether it’s savings, simply good budgeting or even small business loans or venture capital.

7. Staffing issues. For a small business to grow, you eventually have to hire others to do some of your work. Knowing how many people to hire, how much to pay them and where to find them is critical to your success.

8. Supplier and affiliate issues. While you can’t control the actual flow of supplies from your supplier, you can make the extra effort to choose reliable suppliers or affiliate products, and to recognize when a supplier or affiliate product might be taking a downturn.

9. Growing too fast. Just because you have twice as many orders and or revenue this month doesn’t guarantee that you’ll have twice as much the following month. Slow, steady growth is best, even if it means occasionally passing by a large opportunity.

10. Poor customer retention. To succeed as a small business, you need to have repeat buyers. If you can’t maintain a growing group of regular customers, your business is doomed to failure. Capture leads, provide them value and keep them around for the long term.

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