If you are reading these lines, it is because you want to create an online business…
Maybe you even want your life to look like this:
You want to find THE good idea and then the money comes automatically, automatically, every month.
You are looking for the next technique that will make you a millionaire without moving a finger.
So you watch videos that teach you how to earn 100€/day by copying and pasting, a dropshipping e-commerce on Shopify or how to become rich on the internet by answering a survey. You are doing market research, a business plan, want to find an idea for your domain name, a host and hope to create a website or open a shop in your image.
I have bad news for you.
It doesn’t happen that way.
Yes, you can make (a lot) of money on the internet. But no, it’s not easy.
It’s a work. You are going to have to work.
The good news is that in this article I will show you where to start your internet business.
See it as a map, a road-map, a direction.
You won’t get rich reading it, but you will at least know where to go.
PS: the concepts I’m going to talk about adapt just as well to a WordPress blog (or other CMS), an Instagram account, a Facebook page, a website, a YouTube channel, an e-commerce store or whatever. ‘other. You will quickly see that what matters is your audience.
It doesn’t matter where you build it.
1. Sell online training
Selling online training is the holy grail of the web entrepreneur. Why ? Because :
- You are in control of the sale prices and the conditions of sale (we will see in the following methods that this is not always the case)
- Your margin is huge because as it is a digital product it costs you next to nothing to produce
- The e-learning sector is growing rapidly. You have to position yourself on it, it’s the future!
How do we do that ?
I thought it would be easier to tell you about it on video. You will therefore find the whole process for creating a website and selling products in the video below!
However, creating and selling e-learning training is not perfect.
Already, it will take you time. You have to start by creating an interested audience (it’s long). And then you have to create the content (and that too is long).
Then, training vendors sometimes have a bad reputation. They are often referred to as scammers and dream sellers. There are, yes, but most are honest and have a real skill to pass on.
Make sure you are one of them.
Finally, opening a website and creating a distance learning course costs money and requires some technical skills (at least more than the methods below). You will have to master a few marketing tools to offer a professional experience to your students and connect your means of payment.
To guide you through this jungle of webmarketing and set up a stunning website, I wrote an article that summarizes the 13 tools I use for my own online training.
2. Use advertising to make money on the web
Let’s move on to the best known way to make money on the web: advertising.
The best known, certainly, but not at all the most profitable of the web merchant. On the contrary.
Realize: you will receive an average of €0.10 for 1000 views. If you want to earn €1,500 per month, you need… 15 million monthly visitors. Just that.
Unless you have a site like The worldyou won’t get there right away (if at all).
Small clarification: this business model is only valid when you can insert advertisements, so a priori only on your websites, blogs and YouTube. Indeed, you do not have control over the code of your Instagram page for example.
How to put you there?
You need traffic. A lot of traffic. So create content that appeals.
On your virtual store, you can then insert the codes of Google Adsense who will be responsible for distributing advertising.
If you go through YouTube, you can monetize your channel in a few clicks (provided you meet certain criteria).
If you are interested in becoming a Professional YouTuber, read this article first!
3. Make an online affiliate business
Affiliation is the big unknown in online business. It’s selling someone else’s product or service to earn a commission on the sales. You are like an independent seller, but internet version.
Again, you need to start by building an audience. And if possible, a niche audience (in a certain niche, in a certain theme).
You will then promote products that might be of interest to your community, sending them to a personalized link for distance selling. It is this personalized link that will allow the seller to count your scores.
When I started in affiliation, I took Emma’s little video course, which I recommend. You will find the link to register for free in the useful resources at the bottom of this article.
A word of advice: you can use affiliation from the start to create your audience. How ? By interposing yourself between the seller and the customer.
4. Write sponsored articles for e-commerce business
Last but not least, sponsored articles on websites (or sponsored posts if you are on social networks).
What is it about ? An advertiser (a brand) pays you to write content that promotes it.
You can do this by directly canvassing the companies that interest you, or by registering on networking platforms (such as Seeding Up Where Victoria Talents).
This is a method widely used on Instagram, Snapchat or YouTube for example. If you are interested in this functioning, I recommend Magalie Berdah’s book which deals with influence. It may seem light at first glance, but it gives very relevant information! The link is in the resources at the bottom of the article.
Here again, you must have a specialized audience upstream. Indeed, the price at which you sell your sponsored content depends mainly on the number of people who are reached by this content. The larger and more specific your audience, the more you charge.
Personally, this is the method I like the least, because you are clearly selling your time for money. You do not benefit from a leverage effect to create a profitable business. This business model caps you at the 24 hours you have in the day. It’s not my idea of e-commerce.
Useful resources for creating an online business
NB: (special web store) learning how to create a niche site and then managing its content to have good natural referencing from search engines is essential to create an e-commerce store.
Indeed, properly referencing your new merchant site with SEO is a marketing strategy that will bring unlimited potential customers to your e-commerce blog.