5 Things to Consider Before Making Money Online

making money online

You need to ask yourself “How much do you want” before you start your online business. ~ Satyendra Pandey

Making money online, while totally attainable, has fallen prey to the advancement of misinformation and unethical marketing. How many times have you come across the next guru promising to teach you how to make millions on the internet with their simple 3 step process?

The reality is that the online world is always changing.

  1. Many years ago writers made legitimate and real money on content farms, now they’re receiving almost nothing thanks to Google algorithm changes.
  2. The same is true of ads. You’d have to be raking in a whole lot of page views (on your blog, videos or other content) to make any kind of money on Google AdSense because they do not pay out as much as they used to.

However, none of this means that you can’t make money online. I certainly do. And it’s been proven time and time again that it can be done honestly and ethically. The key is to keep some things in mind. The first of which is that none of this happens over night. Making money online takes hard work and dedication. The payoff is absolutely worth it, but it takes time and effort to get there.

The rest is a matter of asking yourself some important questions before putting out any offerings. Use our guide to help you determine how you can make money online.

Is there potential to scale?

This is important for those who want to build big companies. If you want to build a huge project it needs to be scalable, meaning the model can be replicated. For example, products are scalable because you create them once and then continue to sell them multiple times.

There’s one caveat here. Not everyone wants to build the next million dollar company – and that’s okay! That’s why who scalability isn’t the most important thing for everyone to keep in mind. Some people are just fine providing a service themselves and would prefer it that way.

Is there passive income?

Passive income is a bit of a buzzword when it comes to making money online. It’s also a complete misnomer. While you can theoretically make money in your sleep by selling affiliate products and your own products, you still need to work to sell them. If you’re relying on passive income from ad revenue you still need to work on getting eyeballs to your website.

While it’s not about just publishing a blog and then sitting back to watch the checks roll in, passive income is still a possibility and something worth looking into.

For example, my book still sells on Amazon regardless of whether I am marketing it or not – but that’s because I did much of the marketing work upfront before I even saw a dime. For a great guide on making passive income online check out Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income.

Do I get consistent income?

Ah, this is a piece of the puzzle that so many people forget about! What’s the point of making money online if it isn’t consistent?

I often like to give the example of providing copywriting services versus blogging (articles) services.

  • Copywriting (content primarily used for the purpose of advertising or marketing) doesn’t tend to be consistent because people need copy writers only when they are redoing a website or need a sales page.
  • On the other hand, people need articles to be written on a very consistent basis, meaning you get consistent income from month to month.

Does it fill a market need?

The reason so many people fail at making money online is because they don’t do any market research. They make the huge mistake of just assuming what people need and then putting it out there to zero sales.

You must test your idea to make sure it’s viable. You must listen to their audience and give them what they want. For instance, every product I put out is because my audience has specifically asked for it. I don’t try to guess what’s in their heads, I let them inform me about what they need.

If you can do this then you don’t have to spend so much attention on building your list or traffic. Those things are important, but you don’t need hundreds of thousands of people to make money if you give your people what they want.

Can I create something and re-sell?

This is a part of testing whether or not your offering is scalable. For example, can you create the product or offering once and then just focus on re-selling it again and again? Examples include books, licensing, courses and other kinds of products. In other words, it doesn’t really require your time other than selling it.

It’s a bit more difficult to do this with services. For instance, if you’re a writer you can’t write the same article for two clients. However, it is possible to make services more scalable. In fact, Pat Flynn has an awesome podcast episode about how to productize services.

Final Say on Making Money Online

As I previously mentioned, because of the nature of the internet and technology you’ll probably have to tweak stuff as time goes on. For instance, tons of people aren’t making as much money from ads because of Google algorithm changes like Panda and Penguin. This doesn’t mean it’s a bad model, it just means they need to change some things to account for new variables.

That being said, there are plenty of legitimate ways for making money online . While they do require a lot of work, it is well worth the effort.

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About the Author

Amanda Abella is an online business coach, speaker and author of the Amazon bestselling book - Make Money Your Honey. She is committed to helping individuals have a better relationship with work and money through entrepreneurship, online marketing and money mindset. Her work has been featured in Forbes, The Huffington Post, and more.

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