Money. Dollars. Cents. Euros. Pounds. Yen. However you want to look at it, your viewpoint on what money is and how it’s made is likely unbreakable. Over the years, you’ve either trained yourself to think that money is easy to make or it’s very difficult to come by. This is the result of decades of thinking and conditioning. It comes not only from your personal values and beliefs. But also from those of your parents, guardians, society and peers. Maybe. Just maybe. You’re a well-networked, high-flying entrepreneur with multi-millionaire buddies. In that case, you probably look at making money online differently than say a student who’s grown up poor their entire lives.
Yet, no matter how you look at money, nor what you believe, there is one thing that’s undeniable. And that is this. Today, there’s an enormous shift that’s occurring. This shift no longer necessitates higher education, geographical location, gender, sex or any other factor, with our ability to make money. Especially when we’re talking about earning an income on the internet. Whether we sell graphic design services or peddle products on Amazon FBA, it’s clear that you can start from anywhere and end up incredibly rich thanks to the conveniences afforded to us by the internet.
How Easy Is It To Make Money Online?
But how easy is it really? What if you start out broker than broke, so to speak? Can you really make enough money online to not only survive, but also to thrive? And if that’s actually the case, how do you go from a life where you’re struggling just to get by and pay your bills, to one where you’re absolutely crushing the income game? Well, I’m here to break it down for you. I’ll give you a roadmap to success and how you can achieve your dreams over time rather than continue to wallow away in self-pity. Will it be easy? Nope. Don’t think for a moment that it will be. But I will tell you this. It will most certainly be worth it.
Easy should not be in your vocabulary if you’re serious about designing your life rather than living it according to someone else’s rules. We spend our entire lives just working for the so-called man.
How To Make Money Online
Okay, before I jump into the strategies and the tactics of making money online, I have to discuss one important principal with you. And that boils down to the importance of your time. Time is finite. It is the only thing that it is universally identical amongst each and every one of us. We all have the same amount of time. Just 24 hours in a given day. That’s it. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Whether you’re rich or poor, the color of your skin, your gender, your race, your religious beliefs, where you live, or anything else for that matter. We all have the same amount of time. Now, what separates those who achieve success from those who don’t is that some people like to dabble. Others go all in. If you simply dabble, making money online isn’t for you. You’ll always think it’s some elusive thing or it’s a scam or it’s fake.
I know plenty of dabblers. They don’t do what it takes. They don’t invest their time wisely. Instead, they put things off. They procrastinate. The indulge in bad habits. And they don’t put in the time now so that they can reap the benefits later. Not only are they poor managers of their time, they complete disregard the concept of time management altogether. Now, that doesn’t mean that they don’t care. They simply don’t prioritize what’s important.
Breaking Down Online Income Types
Okay. You want to make money on the internet. I get it. It’s truly there for the taking. But there are some fundamentals that you have to understand first. There are several types of income that you can create. When you understand these types of income, you’ll see that focusing only on a specific area is how you’ll break free from the shackles of a 9-to-5 that likely binds you to some job that you are no longer passionate about.
1. Active Income
You likely have an active income at your regular job. This is where you directly exchange your time for money. This is okay if you need cash in a hurry, but it won’t help you in the long-term. Why? Because, if you can’t work and you’re injured or incapacitated, you can’t earn. Plus, this also means that you have far less freedom. You’re tethered to a job. True financial freedom comes from cutting that cord.
Now, I’m not telling to avoid side hustling. If you’re working hard and doing gigs or services for people in exchange for some cash, that’s great. But that won’t get you to seven figures unless you build out your own platform or find other ways to scale your business fast. One option would be to use a sales funnel. But if you don’t already know what a sales funnel is or how it works, there might be a steep learning curve.
2. Residual Income
Residual income is the next logical step beyond active income. Rather than constantly exchanging your time for money, residual income allows you to partially automate your income. It’s not as powerful as passive income. But it’s still a potent tool that you can use to build out a 7-figure empire. In fact, residual income and passive income are the two types of income that I spend almost all my time in.
Residual income can be defined as things such as having a network marketing business. While you earn passive income from that team, it’s more of a residual income. Why? Because you have to do more work to maintain it than you do a regular passive income stream. Other types of residual income are things like drop-shipping businesses through Shopify. Also, Amazon FBA sellers who have listings up and running and simply need to replenish supply every once in a while.
Other things like affiliate marketing, email marketing and other forms of online marketing as well can produce residual incomes. Still other forms of this are things like real estate rental income, franchise business income, coin-operated laundromats, and other physical businesses that you are not personally running.
3. Passive Income
Passive income is the Holy Grail of income. It is the most powerful form of income you can possibly create. Yet, too many people don’t understand just how much of an impact passive income can make on your life. So what is passive income really and how do you create it? To best explain this concept, you need to understand one concept. In active income, you’re directly exchanging your time for money. But, in active income, you’re putting a lot of time upfront with no pay in hopes that it will pay you back down the road.
It takes a lot of upfront work to get passive income to start paying your monthly expenses. But not only will that help you exit the rat race, it’s the single biggest contributor to making people incredibley rich and wealthy. You see, the richest people on this planet don’t directly exchange their time for money. They have multiple streams of passive income that continue to pay them whether they’re asleep, watching television or spending time with friends and family.
Some forms of passive income include the following:
- Start a blog – blogs are a very powerful source of passive income. However, they do take time to get off the ground. But once they’re up and going, and you have specific niche traffic, it’s quite powerful
- Write an ebook and publish on Amazon – this is one of the first strategies I used to create passive income from digital assets. The best part is that you can do this with virtually no money out of your pocket.
- Create a course – another one of my favorite strategies for generating passive income are courses and once your course is done that income stream doesn’t require much maintenance
- Produce an audiobook – another great way to make money online through passive income is to produce an audiobook, which you can essentially do after you write an ebook
- Do affiliate marketing – affiliate marketing is a great way to produce passive income, but you do need some traffic source such as an email list or some other group of customers to tap into
- Launch sales funnels using clickfunnels – sales funnels are a great source of passive income once they are up and running and you’ve automated the traffic sources to it
- Create smartphone apps – while not as popular as they once were, apps can still earn some passive income
- Earn royalties from songs, videos or shows – clearly, you need some great creative skills for doing something like this, but it’s a very powerful way to earn fully passive income
- Create YouTube tutorials – this is my new go-to for building passive income streams using YouTube tutorials
- Invest in dividend stocks – this is a pretty straightforward method for earning passive income but you need some upfront capital to start
- Real estate rental income – not 100% passive but a very good way to automate your income
What To Sell Online
Okay, you’re likely convinced that it’s possible to make money online. But maybe you have no clue what you want to sell. And that’s okay. There are plenty of ways to earn. However, only a few of them could potentially result in a significant amount of income for you. Your choice is really one of two choices that you can make when you enter into the online world:
- Digital products – this is a great way to start because it’s cost effective, but it is very time intensive… meaning you don’t need much capital to get started but you do need time and some expertise in an area.
- Physical products – ecommerce is enormous right now and you can easily tap into selling products online either through drop-shipping or private labeling with an Amazon FBA storefront
Keep in mind that whatever route you take that getting to 7 figures is going to take some work and some effort. The most powerful way to sell online is through something called sales funnels. If you don’t know what a sales funnel is, it’s kind of like having your best salesperson grab the customer, hold their hand and walk them through your store and give them all the things that they want.
Websites are a thing of the past because there are far too many options that it’s often overwhelming for most people. They’ll come to your site and start looking around and then leave. People have very limited attention spans. Of course, Amazon overcomes that hurdle through trust. So, if you’re serious about selling stuff online and you want to make 7 figures quickly, then I would suggest going with Amazon FBA.
Work Backwards
Okay, think about it this way. You want to hit 7 figures. That means a million dollars per year or more. Let’s just take a million dollars. That’s $83,333.33 per month. That comes to $2739.73 per day. Yes, per day. So what can you sell that will make you $2739.73 per day? Well, if you have capital to invest, there’s plenty of things you can sell. So if you have money and aren’t afraid of some hard work, then Amazon FBA is the ticket.
If you don’t have the money to invest, or you have a small amount, then it’s digital products. What can you teach people? Ebooks are great, but unless you combine them with sales funnels with one-time offer up-sells and down-sells, then you might find it difficult to make enough money to get you to the 7-figure mark. Courses are terrific as well. Again, you need to market them through sales funnels. I prefer webinar funnels to sell courses.
Other ideas include continuity programs that are membership-based. That means, you’re creating content on an on-going basis for your members and they’re paying you a monthly fee in exchange. This will give you passive income, which is terrific! This is also applicable in a group coaching setting. Of course, to really get yourself there you need to sell something at a high value. For example, a course that’s $1997 can get you very close to 7 figures if you just sold only one of those every single day!
Your Mindset Is Key To Making Money Online
If you are overwhelmed and don’t know what to sell, you can become an affiliate and sell other products and services. But you need to understand a thing or two about marketing. Without that , it’s hard to make money online. Even harder to earn 7 figures working from home. But, I think the biggest thing that mindset is key here. If you don’t believe you can earn 7 figures, you never will. It’s as simple and basic as that.
Most of us feel like we’re stuck in life because we’ve been doing the same thing repeatedly without getting the results we truly want. But if you don’t change, nothing will change. You have to elevate your mindset. You have to think big. Not only dream big. But also put those dreams into real and massive action that you do on a consistent basis. If you sit around for too long thinking about things without taking action, you won’t get ahead.
Set some real goals and work backwards. Find something you can sell that will net you a high dollar amount and then go out there and sell furiously. You don’t need a massive budget. But you do need to have some serious work ethic. Tap into social media and go out there and give major value to others and watch as the money comes rolling in over time. Just don’t expect it to happen overnight. It never does! But it will happen over time, eventually as long as you don’t give up!