I get asked all of the time, what method is better to start with or to adopt fully as a model for making money online?
- affiliate marketing
- e-commerce
- advertising
- app/software development
- product creation
- authority sites/investment
- CPA
Great question…let me start by making a few points:
1. Combinations are the best...knowing how you will make money online form your market is a CRITICAL part of starting and succeeding at any business. However, it is NOT the first step. What I mean is that you start with your market, a problem or desire, then reach that market and finally – uncover how many different ways you can monetize that market with different products and services. So when you look at business from this perspective, you should be able to see that there are multiple combinations of how to make money online and you should use all of them that are relevant to your market
2. While you can evolve your business over time to offer multiple products and services and make money in multiple ways, there are patterns that de-risk and maximize your profit – one such model is shown below.
3. Relationship, Value and Equity. Concepts in traditional business of building a relationship with your market through adding ongoing value leads to growth, sustainability and eventually, equity have often been forgotten by those who treat online business as more of a lottery than a business. My advice (and what has worked extremely well for us) is to base your online business on the fundamentals of market, relationship, value for which you will profit and build equity over time
1 System For Making Money Online
One of the models we really like is offering information/services and solutions into markets. It is extremely low overhead, fast to start and limitless in terms of its potential.
The model looks like this…
1. Affiliate marketing – starting with a blog, forum or content rich set of pages we generate targeted traffic that allows us to get our traffic flowing, make some up-front cash and refine our knowledge of the key selling points and products/desires in that market. What we do here is identify a hot market through a combination of product research (find out what is already selling and why) and match that to our own passion or interest and enter the market on the back of a successful affiliate product. This is phase 1 – and can be quite lucrative all on its own.
2. Create and Launch Our Own Information Product – So we have initial traffic flowing, some early followers and champions and a pretty good idea of both the key messages/keywords as well as top selling affiliate products that sell. We are now ready to develop a strong adjacent product to enter the market and begin building our own brand, reputation and profit. We use the systems that are now outlined in full within Information Marketer’s Zone to do all of this in a 30-45 day window.
3. E-Commerce – some markets lend themselves better to tangible, real-stuff products and we have spun out sites that offer affiliate or licensed products into these markets. For example, we had a site devoted to Yoga that did extremely well in attracting traffic, so we began by offering Amazon affiliate products such as Yoga Clothes, Yoga Mats, etc…and then evolved to private licensing deals from wholesalers to boost our profits. You can flip these sites for 5-6 figures or continue to grow them over time – up to you.
4. Advertising or Subscription Services – Other sites lend themselves more to being informational or provide an ongoing service – these sites we make money by selling advertising space, by offering a paid subscription option or by flipping if we really feel the site has potential but do not want to take it on ourselves.
So as you can see, the combinations of money making methods is really the most powerful as long as you structure these around a solid market, target real desires, add value and continue to provide targeted products in different ways earning you profit.
