In this third part of the article on how to become a
millionaire within five years, I'm going to cover
LANE #4 - THE INTERNET
I'm not going to tell you that making money online is easy,
but like all wealth creation, it's simple when you know how.
I created a six-figure turnover business, The Money Gym,
using a very simple marketing plan, online, but I had to
work at it. But every month the passive income element of
that business grew and grew and I built it one block at a
time.
The most wonderful thing about the internet, is the low
level of intial investment required. If you have time and
no money, you can learn to do it yourself (I did) or if you
have more money than time, and know what you want to
achieve, you can outsource most of it. Making money online
is a bit like becoming a millionaire in five years - simple
but not easy! You can make money online by:
1. Promoting your real world business more effectively
using the internet - using an EFFECTIVE website to generate
more leads, building an ezine mailing list, Search Engine
Optimisation, and Google Adwords to explode your traffic.
2. Creating spin off automated products from your real
world business - like our client Paula Gardner did with
www.DoYourOwnPR.com.
See the section below for ideas.
3. Creating a series of one page websites, each to sell
one ebook (or other product) - either your own, or as an
affiliate.
4. Creating traffic flow and then recommending good
products and service to them via affiliate links and an
ezine. Other instant income sources for this business model
include Google Adsense links.
5. Creating a free/paid level membership site (just
think.....17,000 people paying you #5 a month is #1.02
million PER YEAR)
Which of these you decide on will depend on whether you
have a real world business or expertise or not. I like to
recommend people work through these in order, starting from
the quick and simple routes to more income immediately and
building up to the bigger projects.
However, and this is the most important element for synergy
and focus between all your projects, and the part that many
novice (and even more experienced!!) internet entrepreneurs
get wrong.
Always choose and then working around a niche topic/subject
- hobbies, leisure activities such as rowing,
rock-climbing, obscure cuisines or knitting for example.
Or choose a broad topic (business building for example)
ideally one in which you have some expertise, but offer it
for a really tight niche of people (reiki healers as
opposed to holistic therapists) or female accountants, for
example.
IS MY WEBSITE WORKING?
As soon as someone asks me this, we ask them to find out
the following:
1. Number of unique visitors to this page per week
2. Number of unique visitors to the sales page per week
3. Number of sales if any
4. Number of new additions to existing database / mailing
list per week
5. Average value of sale (so if you sell a t-shirt for $20
and one for $10, the average value of sale would be $15)
6. Average profit per sale
These figures will enable us to work out
1. Conversion of unique visitors to leads in %
2. Conversion of unique visitors to sales in %
3. The value of each subscriber
4. The Value of each visitor
We would also be asking you to look up the main referring
key words that people are using to find your page. Most
website stats packages give this info.
Then I would be asking you how much (i.e. what percentage)
of your income do you want to come from which potential
income producing activity around your niche.
Potential other income streams include:
a) 101 tips - free b) ebook - 17.50 - 27.50 (but do it in
dollars not pounds) c) one-off teleclasses 27.50 - 27.50
but record it and resell later d) membership site - 17,000
people giving you 5 a month = 1.02 million per year e) one
day workshops - sell for 147 discounted to 97 for early
birds d) group coaching programme - 79.50 a month - how
many can you handle? e) 1:2:1 premium coaching programme -
279.50 - 379.50 per month - how many can you handle? f)
associate fees - say 5 new associates per year paying XXX
each to become your associate g) physical product - XXX -
dropshipped ideally from manufacturer/supplier to customer
h) any other ideas?
Ok. so we have chosen our business model, decided on our
products / services and honed down our topics and even
decided which niche of people we are aiming at. Even when
you are affiliate marketing with other people's products
and services, it's made easier by knowing who you want to
attract to your internet business.
SO WHAT DO YOU NEED, AND IN WHAT ORDER?
I have seen many types of websites come and go, many tools
and bits of software, and we have finally honed the Money
Gym site into a finely tuned money making and client
attracting machine. This is our business model for The
Money Gym for new (cold) traffic.
1. Blog gets us indexed in search engines and attracts new
visitors. We Also use PR/SEO/Google Adwords
2. Welcome / Squeeze page to convert visitors to mailing
list.
3. Offered chance to win good value prizes by referring
friends - choose yes or no
4. If yes, refer friends, get prize, jumped to ebook sales
page. If no, jumped to ebook sales page
5. Ebook sales page, bundled with free month at Silver
level of membership site
6. Decide to buy ebook / trial membership and click "buy
now" button
7. Offered chance to buy ebook / paperback version / 3
months free trial of site
8. Decide yes (click to buy) or no (just buy ebook) or
join mailing list
9. If just click to close page, popunder box offers free
Wealth Tips (101 x tips & ezine)
The most exciting thing of all is that, since putting in
the above system and getting all the elements right, we are
now looking at a systematic conversion of traffic to
subscribers, to sales of the ebook, of sales of the upsell
offer, to trial memberships, to retention of memberships.
We have just done the figures for the last quarter of 2007
and worked out which percentage of visitors will do what,
at every stage.
And you know what that means, don't you? More traffic =
more visitors = more conversions = more revenue = more
profit.
We are looking at an automated, predictable money machine,
and what's more all of that is just the FRONT END.
SO WHERE DO I START NICOLA?
Here's my guide to getting started, quickly and
inexpensively. what to do, in which order.
1. Set up a blog. Used Typepad or Wordpress (outsource
the latter)
2. Attach it to a mailing list via a good shopping cart
(you will need it later)
3. Use a "refer a friend" script at the point of signup
4. Set up a private Google Group, put signup box on blog
5. Blog every day, or at least once a week (and get your
blog fed onto your MySpace/Facebook profiles via an RSS
feed)
6. Set up profiles on MySpace, Facebook, Squidoo, Ecademy
as a minimum, and link to your blog
7. Send even more traffic using Google Adwords, learn how
to make video for YouTube
8. Set up Google Adsense on your blog
9. Find some GOOD products and services with affiliate
schemes (sell our ebook, earn #12.50 per sale) and
recommend on blog side panel, social network sites. Use a
good affiliate link cloaking service.
10. Start creating a community / membership site - free
membership until you get to 1000, then set up next level,
under #5 / $10 a month
And my final tip, just make the decision that 2008 is the
year that you will make a passive income online. If you
just make enough to take two holidays a year, wouldn't that
be worth turning off the TV occasionally?
Have fun and send me your stories of success - even if it's
just about making your first $1 online, I love those best!
And the best thing of all is that internet businesses are
even more attractive to potential purchasers than
real-world businesses as they are largely automated, so the
multiple of turnover / profit that you can sell an internet
business for, is even higher.
CONCLUSION:
I hope that I've shown you here that it's not only possible
to become a millionaire in five years, but given you some
ideas on which Wealth Highway Lane would be the most
easiest for you to use, to achieve that. The great thing
is that by laying out the numbers like this, it makes it
less of a mystery and more like a plan.
----------------------------------------------------
Nicola Cairncross
Wealth Coach, Author, Speaker &
Founder of The Money Gym
http://www.TheMoneyGym.com/Blog
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