Being in pre-launch for my new business, it is time to plan out the methods I am going to use to make money.
My goal is to be making a full-time income of $3,000 a month after 12 months of my business operating. I have a short-term target of my business breaking even monthly by the end of month 3.
I have a 3-week window to get as much of my pre-launch planning and online set-up of my business completed before I launch in the first week of October 2020.
At this stage, towards the end of week 3 of pre-launch, I am doing pretty well on my business set-up, but most of my business ideas are yet to be committed to paper, or should that be the computer?
I want to use this article to play around some of the ideas currently floating around my head and turn them into concrete ideas for bringing in business revenue.
There is a multitude of training courses, PDFs, software, videos, audio courses, etc available. The majority of these purport to make you richer from a few hundred dollars a week to 6,7, and even 8 figure incomes.
Using my experience of working online previously, I want to focus on the methods I will use to build a solid business bringing in a full-time income in the next 12 months.
In this article, I will draw on my previous experience to highlight some of the pitfalls and distractions to building an online business and focus on the disciplines you need to succeed.
Tools and Training Courses Available
There is a plethora of advice out there to help you make it online. Some of it is free, some is paid for. It can be bewildering and the temptation to begin with is to buy everything that looks useful and great value for money.
I urge you not to take this approach and hold back from buying anything until you have read this article.
Having been around the online marketing scene for over 6 years now, it is fair to say I have seen my share of the following:
- Scams
- Exaggerated income claims
- Incomplete solutions
- Dodgy practices
- Outdated methods
- Business models the ‘expert’ obviously wasn’t implementing themselves
There are a lot more like this too.
The main problem I struggled with was incomplete training. Let me explain . . .
You purchase a training course for $997 (or more). The training is of good quality and the instructor knows what they are talking about.
You implement the steps as you follow the training and get everything set up. You launch your new business or process, then discover you are only seeing a part of the solution.
At best, the training course has delivered what it promised, but your inexperience of the system results in you not realising you needed more knowledge to make it work effectively.
This lack of knowledge could be any of the following (or more):
- You don’t know how to drive traffic (people) to your business offers
- You need to be experienced in Facebook Ads or Google Ads, otherwise, you are wasting your money on ad spend.
- You need to have an email list already built
- You need to know how to build an email list
- The system is not as effective in your country
- You need to pay for tools or online systems that you can’t afford until you start making some money (Catch 22!)
- The support for the training disappears as the trainer is now supporting their latest get-rich-quick scheme
- You just can’t fathom out how to implement a key part of the training because of inexperience in that area
- The training is riding the crest of the current fad and falls out of favour long before you see success. Does anyone remember the Periscope fad?
Then there are the problems caused by yourself. These tend to be a more likely source of failure before you even hit any from the list above:
- You don’t ever do anything at all with the training system you just paid good money for
- You start the training course, hit a problem, and give up
- You buy a subsequent training package and move on to implementing that one
- You don’t take massive action at the beginning and the enthusiasm dries up long before you see any results
- You switch to another course to give you the background you need to complete the current one but never return to the original training
If you have been around the make money online scene for more than a few months you will probably identify with many on this list. I certainly do – that list was constructed from my own painful memories.
How To Be Successful Online
Whatever you decide to do to make money online you have be willing to do the following:
- Do your research first
- Devise a plan
- Commit long term to the project
- Take massive action
- Keep yourself motivated
- Stick to the plan
I will go through these steps in more detail below, but if you are not willing to follow my advice then I suggest you save yourself some time and money and give up now.
There is no such thing as a quick rich scheme online. It all requires work. If you want to get rich quick, then spend your investment money on lottery tickets. You have a better chance of getting rich that way and we all know what the odds are of doing that!
Being in business is not easy, not at the beginning for sure. It requires hard work, dedication, perseverance, and probably a touch of luck here and there.
You must be willing to learn new skills and do stuff you really don’t want to do when it needs doing. You need self-discipline – there is no boss watching you to ensure you get the work completed.
I see loads of products offering solutions to failed business enterprises that use the phrase ‘It is not your fault’ when refering to past failures. Well I am here to tell you that is marketing hype. You will have the same result with their system if you don’t put the effort into it needed.
The bottom line is if you have faced failure over and over then it is porbably your fault. But before you get all aggressive with me about this, give yourself a chance to read the rest oif this article before you disagree.
Being your own boss can be a lonely journey unless you are working with a partner or as a team.
I know, I have been there and I still struggle with a lot of what I am going to advise you below.
1) Do your research first
This step is imperative. Depending on the level of your previous experience will determine how much research you need to do upfront, but you need to know enough about your proposed business to be confident you can follow all of the steps I am outlining here.
You need to be able to answer most of these questions:
- What skills do you need?
- What tools do you need?
- What training courses do you need?
- What equipment do you need?
- Who is your ideal client?
- What services/products are you going to offer?
- What benefits do they offer your ideal client?
- What is the cost?
- What is the profit margin?
- What is the lifetime value of each client?
- What is your income target?
- How many clients do you need to reach your target?
- How will you attract clients?
- What are your startup costs?
- What are your ongoing costs?
- How will you fund your venture?
- What happens if you fall ill, or break an arm?
- Do you need to set up an LLC or a limited company?
- Do you need outside expertise (accountant, coach/mentor, social media agency, VA, web designers)
- What payment methods do you need to put in place?
- Do you want to expand the business to more employees or to different locations in the future?
The full list can be pretty exhaustive, but that should suffice to put off most of the less dedicated of you. If so, I have saved you some time, money, and grief. No need to thank me 🙂
By the time you have completed this research you should have a good idea of how you will make money, the cost involved, the type and number of clients you need to attract, and what you need to implement it all successfully.
2) Devise a plan
At the very least you need a business plan and a marketing plan in place before you start your business.
These are the roadmaps to building your empire and your success. Without them, you are doomed to failure. If you don’t have a map of where you are coming from and going to, you will flounder when you hit obstacles because you will not be able to make a diversion easily around them.
Your business plan should put in writing all of the key discoveries you made during your research phase. You should be able to give it to someone to read and they have a good idea of your business venture, how you will make money, and how much.
Your marketing plan will cover how you intend to get your business in front of the people who would benefit from it. Remember, good marketing is bringing your offer to the attention of people who need it. They should want your offer. It is not about selling.
This is why you need to have your ideal customer mapped out in detail and your offer marketed in a way they see the benefits to themselves straight away.
3) Commit medium to long term to the project
Most online business ventures fail because people don’t see instant success and get drawn to the next shiny object, thus starting the process off all over again.
If you have a good plan in place you should already know your figures. If you are not hitting them as expected, you need to go back to your plan and adjust the figures, or determine what part of the plan is not meeting expectations, then fix it.
My plan involves a 12-month target to make $3,000 a month. It has a specific goal by a specific date. I know what I need to do to reach that target. I have my plans roughed out and will be finalising them over the coming days.
I know my target is ambitious for the timescale, so I know I will have to put in extra effort at points along the way to keep it on track. What I have no intention of doing is saying,’I am behind on my projection, this business is not going to work, let’s do something else.’
That mindset is a surefire one-way ticket to failure. Yes, I have been down that track a few times too.
If you can’t commit long-term to your business then don’t commit to it at all. Otherwise, you will just be adding to the woeful statistics of people who fail online.
4) Take massive action
Your new business is like rolling a massive boulder uphill. It takes a lot of effort to get that boulder moving, but it becomes a little easier once you do.
If you stop for a breather you will lose momentum and have to put a massive effort into getting started again. This is the point you are most likely to quit.
If you keep on pushing until you reach the top, the boulder’s own momentum will take it forwards after that. Life becomes a lot easier and all you need to do is steer it in the right direction.
Your business will be the same.
Nevertheless, you will have doubts along the way:
- Did I pick the right hill?
- Should I have chosen a smaller boulder?
- Should I get someone else to do the pushing?
- Why am I pushing this boulder in the first place?
You must be willing to keep going until you reach the top. If your business plan is done correctly you should have a pretty good idea of where the summit is and how close you are from it.
5) Keep yourself motivated
Keeping motivated is hard, especially in the months after you launch. Initially, you have fed off the adrenalin of building your business to keep you going in the setup stage and the first month or so after launch. But now you are having to keep marketing, the number of clients you have is low, and the effort needed to keep going is high.
This is where you need to keep micro-planning. You need daily, weekly, and monthly goals that take you closer to your target. It is easy to look at the big picture and get discouraged, but if you set yourself tasks and goals you can keep ticking off along the way, then you can visibly see you are making progress.
Plan your schedule for the day each morning and revisit it each night to see your progress. This will keep you motivated. Focus on the end goal, keep in your mind the lifestyle you desire that made you start the business in the first place. If you are doing it for your family, then have a picture of them on your desk. If it is for a car, a holiday, a house, or whatever it is that drives you to succeed, have a picture of that where you can see it.
If you focus your attention on the micro-tasks you will not be daunted by the whole journey or how far you still have to go. You are running a marathon but can only take one step at a time.
6) Stick to the plan
With the exception of not having a plan in the first place, this is the biggest reason people fail.
You lose sight of the end goal and don’t plan or take action on a day to day basis to stay on track.
With experience of running the business for a while, if you discover your original plan was way off the mark, then sit down and rewrite it with the actual data you have gathered in those early weeks.
If your assumptions were wrong change them. If your figures were wrong change those too.
If you rewrite your plan and your business is no longer viable then make a note of where your research and planning went wrong in the first place and learn from your experience.
Have a solid reason for not continuing with your business, don’t just wimp out. Wimping out is a bad habit to get into.
My Plan To Make Money Online
Well, that first section went on a bit longer than I expected. So let’s get to the original premise of this article – the methods I will use to get my business making a full-time income within 12 months.
Here is my 6 part plan:
1) Blogging
You can’t make money directly from blogging unless you get people to pay you to write the articles, and that is not my plan.
Nevertheless, blogging is a key part of my income strategy as it is the framework around which I build my other income streams.
Blogging will help build my authority, build my audience, therefore building my influence. My influence builds trust and that trust means more people will follow my directions when I recommend a course of action.
My blogging process, coupled with my social media process, means I will be getting my content out to various branded online properties across the web. By being consistent and reliable, I will build an audience and my influence will grow.
For my blogging journey, I am following the Project 24 training by Income School. It is called Project 24 because their plan is a 24-month process to build a full-time income. Their ‘Timeline’ projects an income of $264 a month after 12 months and $7,875 a month after 24 months. After the first 6 months you have income coming in, but you are yet to make your first $10 in total.
You can see how your income grows as your authority and influence grows over time, not just with people, but especially with the search engines too. Google wants to get to know you and find out if you are going to stay around before recommending you to it’s audience.
It is a very slow process, especially in those early months. This is when most people will quit and say blogging doesn’t work. Income School knows blogging takes time and their timeline is a great tool to set you expectations against.
If I stick to the Project 24 Timeline, I would reach my target of $3,000 a month around month 18 or 19. So, in order to reach my target of $3,000 a month in 12 months, I will have to speed up the timeline or to do additional income activities to the Project 24 process. My intention is to do both to increase my income quicker.
2) Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is getting paid a commission to recommend products to your circle of influence. You recommend or advertise a product, someone purchases the product, and the product vendor pays you a commission for making the sale for them. The cost the purchaser pays is the same as anyone else, your commission comes from the vendor’s profit margin.
The purchaser gets a product you are happy to recommend, the vendor makes a sale to someone who wouldn’t have purchased otherwise, and you get a commission for bringing the customer and the vendor together. Everybody wins.
Or do they?
The problem with much of the affiliate marketing that happens online, especially in the Internet Marketing arena, is that the people recommending the products are mainly interested in getting that commission payment. This means they will recommend stuff they haven’t used themselves, or have any intention of using in the future.
The whole transaction is driven by money.
In my case, my income targets are pretty meager compared to the effort I am willing to make to reach that target. My intention is to make friends along the way and I don’t see how I can do that unless I am genuine in the products I recommend and in the reviews of those products.
Believe me, I have purchased plenty of junk over the years that were recommended by people I trust (and still do trust). The problem stems from the inability to do proper reviews of the products before making the recommendation. In many cases, I have seen reviews appear before access to the product is even available, so conclusions are being made on what the sales blurb says, not from the actual use of the product. Not good.
The problem is exasperated by having short windows when these products are promoted after launch. Usually this is less than a week.
Having the time to get your hands on a product, do a thorough test of the claims made by the vendor, evaluate the benefits of the product, write a review, and still get it in front of your audience in time to get a sale in pretty nigh impossible in a 5-day launch window.
Even if you do manage it, the chances are they have already purchased using someone else’s affiliate link.
This is what fuels the poor reviews and recommendations and the vendors are not likely to change this process because it means they sell lots more copies of their product with the way things are. Creating false scarcity drives up sales, it is a proven fact.
So how do I overcome this problem and provide balanced reviews? Well, for one, I intend to review products that are more evergreen so you don’t have a limited window in which to buy them. Secondly, I will ask for a review access to the products I feel may be of benefit to the people who read my reviews.
I will also provide honest reviews. I will either use the products myself, or would use them for a specific task, or if I would buy them if I didn’t already have a similar tool already in use.
3) Online Advertising
This is a major part of most bloggers income arsenal, but my intention is not to concentrate on this in the beginning.
The reason being is you need to have a good amount of traffic coming to your website to attract the companies that pay the best prices for advertising and it takes months to build up those sorts of traffic levels.
My intention is to evaluate the space I have on my blog pages once I reach a decent level of monthly traffic and decide what is the most lucrative use of that space at the time.
4) Training Packages
I want to get my own training courses out there so I can build my influence and help the people who fall within my circle.
I intend to create both self-development type training and online marketing type training. I feel the two go together. To make money online you need the tools and techniques to succeed, but for a greater chance of success, you need to become a better version of yourself to make the most of the skills you learn. I know that was certainly the case for myself.
I will look to sell the training courses individually, as bundles, and as part of a membership site, which brings us nicely on to the next income stream.
5) Membership Site
My plans for my membership site is to have at least 3 levels of access:
Silver- A free membership, open to all
Gold – A paid membership offering a range of training
Platinum – The big-daddy of memberships offering access to all (or mostly all) of my training.
People will be granted silver access by either applying for it, or when they opt-in for lead magnets within my business. All of my lead magnets will reside in my membership area.
By bringing people in to the free silver membership, I can market the benefits of the gold and platinum levels of service to them.
My plans are to charge monthly for the paid access. I have yet to decide if I will offer ‘lifetime’ access to these membership levels for a larger one-off payment.
The benefits of membership sites is they bring in ‘residual income’. This is income you receive month after month instead of receiving a one-time payment. The skill with membership sites is keeping the members happy enough that they see the monthly payment as a bargain, not a waste of money.
6) A niche site
Internet marketing is one of the toughest markets to be in when you start an online business. The competition is fierce and it is much harder to run adverts in Facebook compared to being in the quilting niche, the camping niche or the barbeque niche. as Facebook is strict on schemes offering money making claims.
I am knowledgable in the make money online niche because that is where I have been investing my time and money in for the last 6 years. Nevertheless, I wanted to try something in a different niche, mainly as a Plan B, because of the competitiveness of the online marketing niche.
A few months ago I began a project in the video gaming niche, but I canned it after a couple of months for a good reason. I was struggling to find a way to justify the work involved as it was difficult to sufficiently monetise it. There were no attractive affiliate marketing schemes and advertising companies paid less for adverts shown in this niche than the market average.
So I stopped and started a project in another niche. My intention was to build this business with my partner Andie (who I am a full-time carer for), especially as she was the expert in this niche. My hope was by giving her something to focus on, it would keep her positive and engaged despite her medical problems.
Over time though, it became obvious that the project was putting more pressure on her than it was helping her. She struggled to work on stuff and I sensed it was affecting her negatively – she was feeling guilt because I was beavering away with my tasks and she was struggling to do anything.
The website was built, the social accounts were set up, and the business plans were starting to take shape, but it just didn’t feel right. So I sat down with Andie and told her I was going to stop the project and begin one I could run myself in the Internet Marketing niche.
You could see the relief in her face immediately once the pressure had been lifted. She admitted to struggling and to feeling guilty about not helping me. The pressure just made it worse, so she had struggled. I had made the right decision.
Nevertheless, this project is still there. I had invested a lot of time and a decent amount of money in creating it and I don’t want it to go to waste. So my intention is to keep it going, on the back burner to begin with, as I build this business.
Andie can still advise on the project and I can always outsource articles once I have an income coming in from either projects.
The niche this earlier website is in is much more passionate than the Internet Marketing niche and a lot more money is spent in it. The signs are good for making a success of this project, it is just a case of the timing, management, and budgeting of it to get it bringing in money.
Whether I can get it to a stage where it is contributing to my monthly income within the coming 12 months will be an interesting side show to everything else I am doing.
I will keep you informed.
. . .
So there you have it, my plans to montise my business(es).
There are other ways to make money online.
In fact the project I have in the non-Internet Marketing niche has an ecommerce store attached to it and we were going to make products to sell in the online store.
There are other methods I have tried previously online with varying degress of success which involved having clients, such as lead generation or a local SEO agency, but with my current caring duties, these were not viable.
When I gave up working online previously I was running a local SEO agency, but when I started caring full-time for Andie, I felt I couldn’t maintain the level of service I demanded of myself for my existing clients, or have the time to attract new clients to keep my business growing.
So What Of The Future?
Even without my other commitments, my plans are ambitious. Only time will tell whether they are over ambitious or just plain ludicrous.
Some things I have no control of, Andie’s health being one of them. Plus, I am at an age myself where I am more likely to suffer with health problems. I will be celebrating my sixtieth birthday at the end of the 12 month target period.
Then there are the unforeseen expenses and events I haven’t catered for. You can research and plan as much as possible, but in the end you still don’t know what you don’t know.
Having a solid business plan and marketing plan will help bypass these oversights as they hit, but experience tells me there will be major obstacles to overcome along the way.
I am ready and excited for the coming journey. The question is, do you want to watch from the sidelines or are you motivated to start your journey too?