To make money online, you generally need 3 things:
There will always be exceptions to this rule, like the YouTube celebrities who don’t have their own site, but most of the successful entrepreneurs online (myself included) have figured out those 3 things.
An online business is a great asset; you can work from anywhere and serve people worldwide. Depending on how you have it set up, you can even earn money while you sleep. Ahh that elusive “passive income!”
The location-independent business models you’ll find here include blogging, podcasting, self-publishing, teaching online courses, and more.
If you’re not sure where to start, let me recommend this “Greatest Hits” collection:
I first met Ryan Gray at New Media Expo in 2014. He introduced himself and when I asked what he did, he said he was a doctor.
Turns out that Dr. Gray, along with his wife (also a doctor), was building MedicalSchoolHQ.net, a resource for med school and premed students.
It’s another perfect example of building an authority site around a particular area of expertise.
Brian Clark has been content marketing since before the term even existed. In fact, he left a miserable corporate job and built several successful businesses using these effective new marketing techniques.
Then he started this little side project called Copyblogger to share some his findings, tactics, and ideas with the rest of the world. Fast forward 10 years and Copyblogger is now Rainmaker Digital on track to do more than $10 million in sales this year.
I’ve had an idea for a new affiliate site kicking around in my head for a while now, so I thought I’d do a live walk-through of my thought-process and analysis of whether this is an opportunity I should pursue or not.
The idea?
A comparison and review site for meal delivery services like Blue Apron, Plated, Hello Fresh, Gobble, and others.
Tyler Zey turned his web development side hustle into a full-time business, but not without a few twists and turns along the way. Tyler’s actually a classically trained musician (clarinet), but now runs EasyAgentPro, one of the leading marketing services for real estate agents — despite having no background in real estate.
What he lacked in real estate knowledge he made up for with hustle.
Jon Schumacher is a side hustler turned full-time entrepreneur. In fact, when we met at Podcast Movement this summer, he’d punched the clock for the last time just a few weeks before.
He mentioned he’d been side hustling for years, and finally had hit on a business and marketing plan that worked. His target was $5k in monthly income before he quit, which he achieved this year and made the leap.
A viable startup business in 7 days … sound to good to be true?
Dan Norris is the co-founder of WP Curve, a service that offers unlimited 24/7 WordPress support for small jobs for $79 per month. He went from idea to paying customers in less than 7 days.
Based on his experience, Dan penned the bestselling book The 7 Day Startup, and stopped by The Side Hustle Show to share some of his insights.
Navid had been blogging and podcasting about lifestyle business topics, but wrote one epic “round-up” post that went viral on the subject of personal branding.
Sensing he was on to something, and noticing the success of virtual summits in other industries (like health and fitness), he decided to put together The Branding Summit.
At the time, Navid had a modest list of 1000 email subscribers. The summit quadrupled that number and generated $20,000 in revenue the month it went live.
There’s a seldom-discussed truth about online business:
No one really knows what they’re doing.
It’s a practice, a process, a call-and-response experiment. Sometimes things work and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes blog posts get a great reaction and sometimes they’re met with crickets. Sure, there are systems and formulas and “best practices” to follow, but no one can guarantee success.
In March I participated in my first online bundle sale.
It was hosted by Alexis Grant and the team over at The Write Life and featured 9 different products and resources for writers at a steep discount. ($1076 worth of stuff for just $99.)
I think coordinating bundle sales is a side hustle opportunity for bloggers — with or without an established audience.
This week, I’m joined by fellow online entrepreneur and freedom-seeker, Natalie Sisson.
Natalie is a masterful marketer, blogger, podcaster, and speaker, and on this call she breaks down how a blog post idea became a major turning point in her business, and was eventually re-purposed and repackaged more than a half-dozen ways — all ringing the cash register in some unique fashion.
The breakthrough moment was going from $0 to $15,000 in one month, with what I thought was a pretty savvy strategy.
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