One of the biggest excuses when trying to make online is saying “They don’t know where to start”. While we gave out all of the major markets in Efficiency, making it impossible to not know where to start, this will boil it down even further to prevent the incessant excuses. At the end of the day, while it’s best to have recurring revenue, it’s not a guarantee that you start with recurring revenue. Even people who become billionaires have typically worked some sort of hourly wage job at some point in their lives. This will start at ground zero so there is absolutely no way that you earn $0 online in 2019.
Step 1 – Decide on the Service: That is right. Since we get a lot of complaints about how it is impossible to start a product from day one, instead we’re going to start a service. A service is a time for money exchange (not good long-term). But. It is also the easiest way to make money starting in month number one. Also. There is a 99% chance that you will go ahead and create a product after your first service experience. It makes logical sense as you’re going from service to product due to demand. So… What is your service? Your service is your current work.
Remember. There is only one way that you’ll have a job long-term. It means that you’re producing more value relative to your cost. Would you hire someone who lost you money every week or month? No. So by definition you’re earning less than you are worth since the Company needs to generate a profit. It needs to generate a profit and if you lose them money, you’ll find yourself in a conference room quite soon.
Step 2 – Pricing: So. We’ve already instantly killed the original part “what should i do”. You’re going to do whatever it is that you currently do but you’re going to offer it directly to the consumer. This means you’re going to offer the exact same service. Now all you have to do is come up with the pricing. What is the pricing? It is = to your (current income rate) * (1 + the margin line). If your current business unit makes a 20% profit, this means you should be able to charge your hourly rate + an additional 20% on top of it. Keeping it simple, if you make $100 an hour … that means $120.
Why do you need to charge more? Well the answer is clear. First you need to prove to yourself that you are worth more than you are currently earning at this point in time. How else can someone complain about pay if they can’t get anything better? If you’re really worth more than you’re being paid then you should certainly charge more than you’re currently being paid. Simple. The second reason? You’ll work a ton harder knowing that you’re factually earning more for your time than you did in the past. If your current boss told you you’ll get paid 20% more if you do “well” on some new project, we can all agree that you’d work harder.
Step 3 – Eliminating the Final Set of Excuses: If you work in a position that cannot be directly transferred online then we’re going to kill that argument as well. If you’re unable to take your current position and do the same thing (or similar) online then you’re going straight into the “looks” industry. What is the looks industry? It means anything that makes people look better. People are vain, insecure and always looking for an edge (pun intended). If you think the industry is saturated we’ve got news for you it absolutely isn’t.
There is a trick here as well. The reason why we’d recommend the looks industry is that you’re forced to be in shape and look good if you’re trying to sell a service into this space. It can be anything. You could become a style coach, a fitness coach, a makeup expert, a hair expert, a grooming expert. There are so many choices here that it is factually impossible to be unable to learn one of them. Don’t worry. The market is so huge that there is room for another person. There are hundreds of people making money with “looks” based businesses that are not special on a relative basis. The difference is that they are actually trying and working hard to get clients. Oh and by the way. By doing this you’ll earn more money as good looking people out-earn average looking people particularly in sales (unattractive sales people are rare).
Step 4 – The Boring Stuff: Don’t want to risk anything at all? Okay great. All you need is a website and the name of your service. “Name + service”. Just type in your last name followed by the service and that’s the basic domain. Really. That is it. If you don’t have the $150 to pay for the entire process which is simply website hosting and a clean wordpress domain… Then it is time to leave this website and never return. In fact, it’s smarter to do everything right which will cost closer to a few thousand dollars but the point of this post is to make money *now* and figure out the rest of the stuff as you move along. What do you need: 1) website, 2) hosting, 3) social media accounts. That’s really it. The first two items are at max $150 in a year and the last item is completely *free*. So nothing here that costs a penny. Cheap and free.
Step 5 – The Quick Hustle: Now you have something to offer. Who knows what it is since that isn’t the point of this post (we give out the major ones we’d do in Efficiency). Now you need to get some attention/traffic to the website. All you need is “free” stuff. We are putting free in quotes since you’re going to “break the rules”. Create some flyers if it’s going to be a local service (say fitness trainer). It could be anything but if you’re doing it for work in your city it usually means (99% of the time) that people are looking for that type of work in the same city! Amazing how that works. You’ll go ahead and get the flyer ready and *gasps* print it out at your current place of work. Sure you’re using the color printer for a hundred prints of your flyer but we doubt anyone will notice. People print out their tax returns and other non-employee items at work all the time. So. Simply print them out and begin the distribution process.
In addition to this basic set up you’re going to blast text message every single person in your cell phone about your new service. Don’t want to blast message people? Then we suggest giving up and leaving this blog again. If you send one message and the person gets so upset that they complain about it then you shouldn’t have them in your phone in the first place. They did you a favor by showing their cards. So simply do it once, remove the people who get upset, say “thank you!” to the ones who help out and say “no problem!” to the people who aren’t interested. The only ones you “lose” by doing this are the ones you wanted to lose in the first place (the very first group that flips out over a simple 1-3 sentence message).
Step 6 – Get to 15 Hours a Week: That is the only objective here. Once you have 15 hours a week of consistent service by doing basic marketing tactics: flyers, social media and SEO on Google… You’re officially “in business”. No you’re not making a ton of money (probably nothing relative to the amount of work it took to start all this in the first place), But. You’re officially making money, cash flow positive and you haven’t lost a cent. There seems to be some obsession about “never losing money” which separates the eventual winners from losers (winners are willing to risk lots of money over time if the odds are good). That said. You’re making money and haven’t lost anything in the process. Congrats!
Step 7 – Product Ideas Begin: After you have consistent income coming in 15 hours a week, there is going to be a “tell”. This means that people will “tell” you what they want. This is essentially a fact. If someone is paying for your time, and they generate good results from your time, they will want a product from you. If you’re in the looks category for example, they will ask you for product recommendations. We are keeping this broad since “looks” makes it impossible to argue that there is no market. It could be products related to hair, skin, muscles, clothing, etc. When people keep asking you for a specific type of product write it down. You will then enter into product sales.
Step 8 – Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate marketing is nothing more than recommending someone else’s product. That is it. If you recommend that a person buys a $100 item you receive a small commission for it. By way of example lets go with $5. Congrats. You were going to recommend the product anyway so why not get paid for the recommendation in addition to helping the person. It does not cost them money. People get really really really upset when you talk about making money online and it’s essentially unwarranted. You’re not charging them more, you’re not charging them less. They would have paid the exact same amount of money either way. The only difference is you get a small part of the revenue. Anyone who complains about this stuff is not someone you want to be friends with and is not someone you want to associate with. In fact, people will be thrilled that you get paid something for it. If you’re helping your clients solve a problem, they are going to be extremely happy that you’re making a few bucks when they buy a product that works.
Step 9 – Product Creation: At this point your “online hobby” has evolved. You’re no longer selling just your time for money but you’re also selling products now. After selling a service and recommending products for a year to two years you’re going to realize that you could just sell your own product! Keeping it extremely basic, if people are always asking for moisturizing lotion for their skin… you can just create your own product. Why is this so easy? All you’d need to do is grab the ingredients of the product you’re currently selling for someone else and create the exact same thing with a few extra bells and whistles. This same concept applies to everything: 1) clothing, 2) grooming products, 3) protein powders…. The list goes on and on and on and on. Anything that you’re recommending can be recreated.
Step 10 – Scale: After doing all this you’ll realize that selling a product is the best possible way to earn money. You’ll wake up with more money in your account (people buying products as you’re sleeping) and you’ll look for ways to make the cash flows more consistent. Essentially you are going from the absolute bottom: time for money exchange to product sale to stabilizing the sales. Stabilizing the sales will include recurring billing like your cell phone bill or the numerous products offered on Amazon for weekly or monthly refills. This helps create more predictable earnings as you’re no longer forced to make constant one time sales that do not repeat. A big win.
The End of Excuses: While Efficiency gives the exact markets we would target, this post now makes it possible for anyone to earn money online. Absolutely no excuses at this point in time. Everyone wants the “lowest risk” avenue and we’ve now given it out in 10 basic steps. Anyone who is currently employed can follow along and make money. It really is that simple. The funny part? No one is going to try. Well not no one but maybe 1% of people will even bother. We’ve already seen this after our product launch as we had roughly 10 people actually execute on the plan and earn multiple six-figures online. The remainder? Continuing with the same tired old excuse: “Where do I start”.
