How Long Does It Take to Make Money With an Online Business?

Different Ways to Make Money Online

The ways that you can make money online fall into several general categories: Active — Selling Services Active — Selling Products Passive — Affiliate Commissions Passive — Advertising Earnings As you might imagine, each method has its strengths and weaknesses, earning potential and investment demands. Selling Services, for instance, can be quite lucrative, particularly if you have highly sought-after skills and experience. But it doesn’t scale — you only have so many hours in the day to sell. Selling Products, on the other hand, can scale well, but requires more time to develop as a viable offer. Affiliate Commissions and Advertising Earnings might see initial revenue faster, but require high traffic levels to make the same kind of money as more active techniques. While there are variations and combinations of these methods, we’ll focus on these main categories so that you have a solid understanding and set of expectations for your new online business. “To make money online, you need one of two things (both are even better!): tons of traffic (to make a decent income from ads, for instance) or trust (to do just about anything else: sell product or a service, or do affiliate marketing). Either one takes time to build, no matter how you look at it. When I first started TrafficGenerationCafe.com, I gave it my all in terms of building both traffic and trust. So much so that this is what Dino Dogan, the founder of Triberr.com, said about my blog in those early days: Even with a robust audience quickly building around Traffic Generation Café, it STILL took me about 6 months to start seeing income from affiliate sales and about the same amount of time to start selling a service — blog audits at the time. Active — Selling Products One of the biggest misconceptions for entrepreneurs is that money will magically start rolling in from day one. The reality is that it takes a lot of time, effort, and hard work to make a living off your business, let alone build a successful and thriving company. I’ve founded/co-founded 5 businesses, and while each was different, there were similar themes. First is the 6 month window when the planning, preparation, word of mouth, and build out is happening. Second is the next 6 months when your sales process really takes shape. You’ve tested, tweaked, and continued to formulate next steps. During this time, don’t expect high dollars to roll in, unless you launch with an established platform, following, client base, or well-known name. That being said, your first year will be the hardest, but it’s not smooth sailing until year 3. That is, as long as you’ve laid the proper groundwork. I’m a firm believer in doing the tough stuff now that sets you up for success for years and years to come.” ~ Rebekah Radice, RebekahRadice.com While, traditionally, products are thought of as tangible objects one might purchase from the corner store, the Internet has brought us a variety of digital products that online businesses are uniquely suited to deliver. This includes: eBooks Printables Software as a Service (Saas) Courses Membership Communities …and more! While all of the above require at least some development time and effort (compared to near-none for “Services”), products scale better. Why? Because if it’s just you, there are only so many hours in the day that you can book and sell to clients. An eBook or printable, however, can be sold again and again once you have created it. For instance, last year I put together a series of calendars and worksheets to help bloggers plan out their editorial calendars for the coming year. It took a weekend to create and then all I had to do was promote it to start selling them. “…your first year will be the hardest, but it’s not smooth sailing until year 3” – Rebekah Radice That planner also serves as an example of how digital products earn revenue in proportion to their development time. It’s been nice to sell a couple hundred planners for a weekend’s worth of work, but that’s hardly a replacement income. But the more digital products I have, the more sales revenue I can generate. And if I spent more time developing the product, like an extensive online course, the more I could charge each member. On your worksheet, give some thought to how much you think you’re going to charge for your product(s), and how many you’ll need to sell to earn your desired income level. Also estimate how long you will need before your first product will be ready to sell — that’s going to represent an initial gap in income. Solo Build It! members gain access to specialized training that facilitates the creation and selling of digital products!