How do you make money online?
It’s simple, and the same as any other type of transaction in life (whether it be social, financial, etc).
Remember: a transaction of any kind must be beneficial to all parties involved. Not just the buyer and seller — also the provider, employees, and everything else involved. Ethics.
You need 2 things:
- An Offer
An offer is a product or service.
Mainly, an offer is the specific desired outcome that you are promising they will get when they purchase and use it.
You are selling a desired benefit that helps resolve their pain.
Humans are emotional beings, not logical.
We are constantly looking for minor or major ways to change the quality of our lives.
- Interested Traffic
Traffic is people.
When you build an audience and plug your product, you are sending traffic to it. You are getting eyeballs on it. That is the only way you make sales.
Your offer isn’t just going to magically appear in front of peoples eyes.
You have to be intentional about where you are placing the offer, how it is perceived to that person, and place a heavy focus on how it impacts their life.
The same thing goes for dating — if you suck at dating, there’s one of two problems:
-
Your offer sucks (you don’t have enough perceived value to them).
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Your traffic sucks (you aren’t putting yourself in an environment where potential dates are).
We will dive into this more when we talk about awareness, but what if the traffic isn’t interested?
It is your job to educate them to the point of making them aware.
If you are selling a high level service but you are attracting beginners with your content — do you have free or paid resources (or content) in place to get them to the point of buying your high level service?
This is what a ‘funnel’ is in a nutshell.
You take people from unaware to aware and beginner level to your level.
Your Personal Distribution Network I understand that Facebook, Google, and other paid advertisements are helpful — but why would you rely on those when you can build a distribution network (and have traffic that you can send at will?)
Take this as an example:
I get 5-10 million impressions per month on Twitter alone.
Close to triple that when you account for other platforms.
(This would normally cost anywhere from $35,000 - $70,000 with paid ads.)
If you can get 10 people to buy a $27 product per day, you make 6 figures a year.
That means you need to get 400 of those 5-10 million people a day to click on your page.
If you have a low 2.5% conversion rate… you make 6 figures.
And that’s on a $27 product… imagine if you charge more, promote more, and have other offers in place to extend lifetime value.
Let your mind toy with that idea for a bit to show you what’s possible if you take this seriously.
Now, how do you build a network of potential traffic sources that you can send to your products nearly on demand?
- Your Audience
This is self-explanatory. You create content that pulls in a following. If you focus on awareness and education, you create interested traffic.
Start by dominating one platform — then use your validated content, social proof, and network to grow rapidly on other platforms (and funnel your audience there).
- Your Email List
You can get banned from platforms at any time for making a stupid mistake.
You cannot, however, have the CSV file of emails taken from you. They are yours.
If you get ‘banned’, which is unlikely, you just transfer them to another email provider.
If you have limiting beliefs about email marketing and its ability to make sales — eradicate them from your psyche now. Whatever they are, they are wrong. Don’t assume what you haven’t experienced.
- Your Network
I have ~350,000 followers.
I have made friends along my journey that have also grown a large following.
They are my friends, and always happy to help support me — as am I happy to support them — because we understand that cooperation is infinitely better than competition. Buyers buy again.
If we all get 5-10 million impressions per month and one of us does a promotion for our offer…
That’s 5-10+ friends of mine sending all of our traffic to one offer.
This stresses the importance of learning how to network, socialize, and make friends online (like you would in real life).
- A Community
If you have the bandwidth to start a free or paid community, this is another traffic source for you to promote to.
Think of a platform like Discord, Circle, Telegram, or somewhere else to build authority away from the algorithm.
All of these form your Personal Distribution Network.
As this grows, you gain leverage. You can begin to free up time and focus on bigger levers.
This also brings up the concept of social capital.
I have traded retweets for Instagram shares, LinkedIn comments, money, and really anything else.
This can also lead to brand deals, public speaking gigs, job opportunities, and people spreading your message throughout their daily life.
Money isn’t the only currency when you have leverage, distribution, and social capital.
Focus On Leverage, Not Money
What do you have that other people want?
Prior experience? An audience? Necessary skills?
Forget the money for a bit. Develop your value and practice offering it to others without expectation of anything in return.
How To Make Money When You Don’t Have Distribution I just told you to forget about money — but this is worth understanding.
When you don’t have an audience or other distribution built, you have to rely on outreach, referrals, and connections.
Meaning, you have to form the habit of DMing and meeting people that you can offer your value to.
You may not believe this, but higher ticket offers are easier to sell than lower ticket offers.
You don’t need an audience
You can make your offer hyper specific
You can talk people through the awareness and sales process
You can walk through a “sales page” on a call with them
If you create a minimum viable consulting offer (like a pack of 4 calls for $500-$1000), you can start earning immediately.
This is why I recommend starting with a service business, making some money, getting results, and packaging up that system into a product.
Also, you don’t have to be potential clients all the time.
Reach out to people that have:
Less followers than you
Similar followers as you
More followers than you
People that you would die to work with (the ones whose business you are passionate about, that excitement will show in your outreach message).
Want to start on the right foot?
Give them a compliment on a piece of content that didn’t go viral. A piece of content that you know is meaningful to them, that you vibe with, and that will pique their interest.
People like being praised for their work — especially the work that not many people noticed.
Then, ask them what they do and what they are working on.
If they mention something you can help with, offer help.
Start Small
Get in the habit of messaging 5 people a day. It can be anyone. The goal is to get used to meeting new people.
When you see a post that crosses your timeline that you really like, message the person telling them what resonated with you and start a conversation.