Your Core Business, Niche & Competitors: Book 2 of the Make Money Online Entrepreneur Series

I would get a job. With that you would want to list an item with a high-profit margin, however even in a scenario like this you would still have trouble putting food on the table and a roof over your head. Some plan to live off savings for the first 2 years when starting their business, which is why having a strong personal foundation in addition to having the ability to pay your bills is a critical first step before starting a business.

Having a strong personal foundation is one of the key foundations of starting a new company. A strong personal foundation includes a pay the personal bills plan, strong personal support team and clear personal goals that align with your business plan. With only in the bank it would be clear to me that you do not have a strong pay the bills plan and need to get that in place first. Buy a course or an ebook to help you learn a specific skill that can help you succeed online.

Build a website to target that niche and execute on my differentiation plan. Picking a specific niche is irrelevant. What matter is how you can leverage your individual skills. How were they conducting their search to find one and where? What questions did they have about the process?

If their experience with web designers was bad, why? What did they wish they knew before starting a web design project? Did they have questions? Did they want a second set of eyes to look at anything? Did they want to brainstorm what to do next? Did they want a second opinion? Was there anything they wanted to know about the industry? And I would help them without offering my own services or charging them. This would start with a single person. Building a highly-relevant audience is the key.

I would hit up Amazon. From there I would run a Google search, and compose my query like this: After I discovered at least one product that has low competition keywords, I would then publish posts on my site based around these keywords—so I would look for keywords such as: From there I would spend the next 2 weeks straight building links in order to start ranking on page one of Google. Then once the traffic started to roll in, I would create income through the affiliate links on my site promoting the product I found during my keyword research.

Who would I be competing against? Where are the opportunities in this vertical? How can I truly solve a problem that addresses a huge market? Are they compelling enough to gain traction? What potential business models could I use? Then I would market my skills. This is something I feel I could help more people with.

Running is a big niche and I could quickly put together a six month program where I talked with people on a weekly or bi-weekly schedule. In the beginning I would mainly find customers in my current network as well as being active in several Facebook groups. At this point I would have some cashflow from the coaching clients and I would use Facebook ads to reach a bigger audience. You also get results that you can use in your marketing going forward.

The better you know your audience the better results you can get for them, and the easier your marketing will be. If I was looking to create something with high potential and a long-term focus my goal from the start would be to build a large and active email list. As far as the niche is concerned, I usually choose topics that interest me and that I want to learn more about. I also tend to look for popular niches and industries because of the higher income potential.

One of my favorite ways to build strong connections with other bloggers is to write guest posts. One post per week, or even twice a month, could be enough to start generating some traffic and subscribers with effective blogger outreach. There are affiliate products that can be promoted in just about any niche, so this is probably where I would start.

To figure it out what topic would work the best, I would think about what I would google if I were searching for answers in that niche, and then google those questions. The great thing about the internet is that it allows almost any skill of value to be turned into a business, and new skills are being created all the time. If I knew about crowdsourcing, for example, I might start a blog on how to crowdsource for your business. If I loved to ride horses, I might talk about how to solve whatever problems I commonly experience as a horse-owner.

And, after talking to a good number of folks between , probably , I could start to develop a product that I know people would be interested in buying. After all, I know their struggles now, right? Doing a webinar or a series of live calls allows more flexibility and a lower cost. You can turn that into a product later.

At the time I knew nothing about hosting and had never run a hosting company before, but I was willing to give it a shot. So it only makes practical sense for me to describe how I would build a bootstrap hosting company. I would signup at a host like asmallorange. With a reseller account, I get a free billing system license and typically would choose WHMCS because it is the most popular one. Then, I would go over to themeforest. Next, I would head to zomex. I would spend some time gathering a list of forums that have host advertising sections and then create a hosting ad to advertise my services.

I would slowly start posting these ads on weekly basis, become actively involved in the webhostingtalk.

How to select an industry for profitable business

By offering a decent service and being devoted to the success of your business, it is possible to make it no matter how saturated the market is. The key, especially in the hosting industry, is finding a specific niche to go after. Minecraft hosting is a popular area, along with many others. There is an analogy I like to use here. As a host, you do not want to be the general physician. There are many general physicians and they refer you to a specialist. It is harder to get repeat business as a general physician because there is so much competition. But if you have a specific ailment, your physician is going to refer you to a specialist.

As a host you need to be the specialist because it is easier to grow your company. Specialists have more control over setting their prices and there can be little to no competition. Every cPanel host offers the ability to host WordPress, yet WPengine, a host specifically designed for hosting WordPress blogs, has grown tremendously over the past few years. Now, WPengine has come to be almost synonymous with WordPress hosting. As a new host this is what you need to do, Spend some time researching specific software and software plugins, then find an untapped area using google.

To find untapped areas, look for search terms for software that are not returning any hosting companies. You can also set up individual landing pages for specific types of software or services and then hope to get listed on a search term relevant for that market. Not glamorous or particularly sexy, and certainly not instant riches, but the basis for a great business if you can see it through. From there, try to look at which might be the easiest to get in to. What niches are lagging behind others in terms of good, quality content? How could you monetize each niche in the future?

Build your online business like a pro

Take days, pick one, and go for it. Or you can build a basic site yourself using tons of free tools. After that, reach out to others you respect and admire in the online space. Offer to help them in some way, and tell them you like what they are doing. This will be the most important part of growing your site.

Get in a mastermind group. All of this stuff is free, and will have more of an impact than any amount of money you can throw at a site. I would start by listening to myself, and what I felt drawn to do. It might be working with someone else, doing consulting, or even freelance work. Not following a formula. Being open to steps and ideas, yes, but also being open to what I feel drawn to do.

That might lead to a profitable internet business, or it might lead to something entirely different. You get something no one else has. Kaleigh Moore, Freelance writer. I think people can see big success by combining two or three niches into a highly specialized micro-niche. For example, male nurses who are into CrossFit. I think the next wave of businesses who will emerge on the ecommerce scene are the service-oriented businesses that can personalize products at a high level.

Customers are increasingly demanding high levels of customization and personalization: For any emerging brand, I would almost demand they have a micro-niche strategy to reach the small clusters of devoted customers with ultra-personalized products and services. This advice comes from Suzy Moore, the founder and former owner of So Suzy Stamps —— an online stamping community she grew to valuation within 3 short years.

Ecommerce Business Ideas in [Advice From 27 Industry Experts]

If she says something has community power, you better believe it does. Instagram followers are in the K range. This is such a creative endeavor that it would be fabulous to have a company or site that could utilize these budding entrepreneurs and carry their items. Think outside of the box and get creative! More people than ever are reaching retiree age, and continuing to live long, healthy and happy lives past their retirement date.

And with that trend comes a boom in older generation technology and products. Soundwall has seen incredible success in nursing homes and the homes of older people. Their product suits users of all ages well, and the brand has a particular hand-me-down feel that goes from one generation to the other as the skill is passed down and picked back up. Many of the people who retire now have grown accustomed to using computers at work. This means we have an older generation who knows how to use computers and feel comfortable shopping online. Now and in the next years this group will grow and increasingly shop online.

For instance, yarn, which often appeal to the older consumer segment, can now target potential customers online as well. Instead, it means use the communities people are already forming around you to sell them things that help them identify. Nine Line does this incredibly well. Founded by two veterans, this brand brings patriots together in clothing and household items —— speaking to them as part of the community and ideology. Offensive or contentious products. Lots of ecommerce sites cater to offensive humor, but very few play to particular ideologies or soapbox topics exclusively.

Rand McNally has come a long way from just supplying the atlas in your classroom. Today, the brand pushes out new technology and GPS connection software —— all utilizing its atlases and mapping systems, of course. Nelson Education has taken to ecommerce in to sell both B2C and B2B, allowing parents and educators to get exactly what they need from the brand when they need it. The education niche seems fairly underserved by ecommerce.

Ecommerce entrepreneurs with a background in education publishing, and personalized content creation will have a significant advantage here. And where smaller, more knowledgeable brands like yours can really blossom. Discount Electronics offers detailed laptop and computer customization unparalleled nearly anywhere on the web. Why do they win in this vertical? Because they take those extra steps few others are willing to do. ShipperHQ is how they make it happen. An underserved market is custom-built items, mostly because there is an expense involved in adding a product to the site and then taking it down.

My advice is to start an ecommerce business with unique items and figure out a way to work with designers or other providers to create an online business outlet that is really known for high-quality one-of-a-kind pieces. Plus, you have to have an easy process for people to submit their ideas for their items and get them made. The keyword here is niche. Pick a narrow lane, and own it. It gives you edge over Amazon, and the other big guys. Annesley does a lot on their product pages right, but one of the best parts is allowing you to spin the board around and showing you exact length and measurements based on your own surfing level.

We see hundreds of brands that exist only on Amazon, where those brand owners know how to do a better job merchandising and clarifying the benefits of their products to Amazon customers. National brands need to start thinking more like those Amazon-only sellers. All in all, no matter the product you sell, the very first thing you have to be is passionate about it.

Because the days will get hard. Founded by husband and wife duo Evan and Jackie, this robe company takes pride in its ethical roots, as well as its very, very photogenic friends. It all started with a work trip to a local beach. Awful lighting in dressing rooms. Gross tags in the crouch. Really awful suit fits that nearly changed her mind about going to begin with. I agree with Seth Godin on this one. The process is largely the same - build a portfolio, gain testimonials and the money should start rolling in.

How profitable is freelance designing: Selling online courses is the best way to make money online in Online courses are a great way to earn money online because they allow you to monetize your skills, you create a course once and can sell it for years and they establish you as an authority and it's a lot easier than you think!

How profitable is selling online courses? The EdTech industry is booming. Valued as a billion dollar industry according to Forbes , the early-adopters are looking at courses and thinking: Download the PDF Report: We ran the numbers, and here at Teachable it takes 47 days on average for someone creating their course to go from first step to first sale.

There are two reasons for this. Firstly, courses are gated content. An author makes only cents on every dollar made on their book. Secondly, people are willing to pay for a course more naturally than other online products. When people think of blogs, they think of something free AND they think of new content. Take Mariah Coz of Webinar Rockstar for instance, she says: The over-saturation of blogs and websites means that competition is fierce. Simple supply and demand - there are more blogs and they all want a piece, which means advertisers will pay less and less.

This is also the slowest and worst way to make money as a beginner.

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Making a living online with ad revenue means you have to waste years building up traffic. Even tiny bloggers with small audiences can make a living with their own products. A podcast is similar to a blog in that people expect to download your content for free. You also have to continually put out new pieces of content to grow. Another big point, you have to be creative and skilled. Considering my crafts are generally worthy of pinterest fails, this is not a medium that works well for me. Compare this to an online course. Ebooks take a substantial time investment. The beautiful thing about a course is that you get about as much out of them as you put into them.

If you want to do one course launch, make a few thousand bucks and walk away, you can do that. If you want to create multiple courses around a general topic and run an academy that you advertise through webinars, podcasts, blogs, and joint-ventures and build a lifestyle business from your home, you can do that too! A course scales to the amount of work you want to put into it, which means you can generate passive, part time or full-time income. Courses are a high ROI way to help monetize already existing content and audiences. Take Nick Stephenson , he created an online course, Get Your First 10, Readers , for writers and authors to help them build their email list and make money off of, what I feel, is a very undervalued talent.

A course works for this because they utilize already existing content, keeping initial time investment small. Simply take your chapters to an ebook and put them into course sections. Take your watercoloring tutorials from YouTube and create a course like Angela Fehr. Courses allow you to gate and charge for your content, which works extremely well. Unlike a blog or podcast which require fresh content to keep readers engaged, a course can easily be repurposed and resold.

If you weren't happy with your first stab at a course, you can update it and relaunch. If you feel you've exhausted the content in your course and create a new one, you can also use your first course as a lead magnet , bonus, or part of the offer in selling your second, third, or fourth course. Here at Teachable, we believe that everyone is an expert and can teach. After just completing a programming bootcamp and with no experience teaching, they launched a course that made over 2 million dollars.

One of the major reasons for this is because they had just learned, they were better in touch with the issues beginners' face. We have courses on hundreds of topics, some creative, some technical, some entrepreneurial focused. Instead, we batch filming multiple videos into a single day. This leads to releasing videos on a consistent basis, which is how you actually build a thriving audience online. This means you're saving time and money, so you can focus your energy on the rest of your business instead fiddling with cameras, lights, microphones, and editing videos multiple days a month.

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One of my favorite things about courses is their ability to quickly spread ideas, words and skills rapidly. They are one of the quickest ways to share your knowledge with people who need it. That is a beautiful and powerful thing. At the time, I felt unfulfilled and unhappy with my job and life, so TNC rapidly became my after-work obsession A course has the amazing benefit of quickly helping you create a community around yourself. You can do this within your course, or, as many instructors choose, through a Facebook group or Slack group. You become the moderator of these communities and it can be fun and incentivizing to see an active community around your product.

In this position, you also become an influencer in your niche and an authority on your topic that you can leverage to grow your business. Take for instance Kim Coles , actress, comedian and game show host best known for her role as a cast member on the sketch comedy, In Living Color. And even better, we will be accountable to each other! We are going to look in the rear view mirror and be amazed at how far we have come! Courses are a great way to monetize your knowledge or presence online, and many of the above options can be converted to online courses.

Offering different pricing tiers. By setting an additional or more pricing tiers for each course, you can unlock more money from the same customers you are already selling to without considerable additional effort. Why do multiple prices work so well? The solution you are selling is worth drastically different amounts to different people. Think about it… your audience probably: May be purchasing for their business - Purchases made on behalf of a company are made with very different considerations with price usually less of an issue.

Has different leverage on the information you are sharing - While your course could be a cool weekend project for a hobbyist photographer, it could help a photography teacher charge their clients more. With everyone having a different propensity to pay, can you see why having only a single price for your course is naive? We have entire blog posts on creating your online course , and many more detailing everything you need to know to be successful on the Teachable Blog. Morgan Timm is a content marketer at Teachable with a background in blogging and social media.

She runs Mostly Morgan, a life and style blog that reaches an audience of 40, people monthly. Build your online business like a pro Join , other online entrepreneurs and get the latest tips to grow your business and create online courses that sell Subscribe. Morgan Timm Jun 28, Download the step-by-step guide to making money online when you have little time and money. Get this entire guide which includes all the methods, descriptions, actionable steps to get started, and an analysis of cost, time investment, and revenue potential.

How to make a living online. Choose a program to apply to, a few options are: Check through the requirements and make sure you qualify to teach English as a second language. Depending on the program you chose, you may be matched with students automatically, or they may choose you based on your profile. Take photos of your space and list them on the website.

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