I had a conversation today with one of my Mastermind Group members about making money online and thought I would share some of my suggestions. My entrepreneur friend is a recognized authority in his field but he is constantly trading his time for money. He wants to build a business where he can remove himself from the operations and he wanted to pick my brain on how to do it. I gave him the following suggestions to leverage his authority status and make the move online:
1) Write a blog, sell a product
One of the blogs I read on a daily basis is Aaron Wall’s SEOBook. Aaron never fails to disappoint by posting informative, timely, and easy to implement search engine optimization strategies. Since the SEO world is always evolving I appreciate Aaron’s expert and common sense advice. If you read SEOBook you will notice something strange that you do not see on many blogs these days – there are no ads. Aaron provides great information, has established himself as an expert and makes his money by selling his SEO services (still trading time for money). But he also sells his e-book on SEO which will run you $79. Because he has the credibility from the well-written blog, people trust him and it allows Aaron to stand out in a very crowded field of SEO “experts”. The lesson here is simple: write a blog to establish your online credibility and then sell a related product that gives away all the secrets you touch upon in the blog.
2) Turn your services into a product
No matter how you look at it, if you offer a service, you are trading your time for money. You have to be attentive to your customers and if you stop working, you stop getting paid. A great way around this is to videocast your service and charge a subscription fee. A recent example to look at is Salsa Boot Camp. Salsa Boot Camp is a website that was created by San Francisco salsa instructor Evan Margolin. Instead of running many classes which require his physical presence, Margolin records his salsa moves and puts them online. He sells monthly subscriptions and, 4 months after its launch, Margolin has increased his subscription fee from $9 to $37 per month and is making over $20,000 per month. By turning your service into a product you can pre-record your expertise into different segments and sell subscriptions online so you can make money while you sleep.
3) Create great content – and lots of it
The final suggestion I gave him was to generate a lot of great content and sell advertising space. While some bloggers are making 6 figures with their blogs, most are lucky if they get $10 per month from AdSense. It is very difficult to get enough quality content up on your website to make a viable living from it – you need to create critical mass. I learned this two years ago when I made a dramatic change to my website – I was no longer going to be the main writer and I would recruit others to help provide content. Fast forward to today and I now have over 1,000 writers and 25,000 pages of content on my site. My editors review the articles and I am removed from the day-to-day process. My authors benefit from the increased exposure they get on my site and the opportunity to meet my small business readers. There is no way I could have written 25,000 articles myself and it is unlikely that you will generate enough content yourself to make a serious income from your website. Pick a niche that has not been overly exploited, make a great looking website, and recruit experts to write for you so you can build your content base.
The advice gave my Mastermind Group member a few things to think about and I hope has sparked a few thoughts in your mind as well.
Evan Carmichael
