The Top 7 Ways To Make Money Online Now in 2017 (FULL GUIDE)

• Mar 29, 2017
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The DEFINITIVE (Massive) Guide To How Money is Being Made Online in 2017

Thinking about of currently struggling to make that first $1,000 online? Too many different systems out there to choose from?

Well, the good news is it’s more than possible than ever.

The internet’s creating more millionaires than ever before right now.

Read on as I highlight (in my opinion) the 7 BEST strategies to get started today (that also conveniently require less than $100 to setup).

FEEL FREE TO BOOKMARK THIS PAGE – This is a big resource and you will want to come back to it later.

There’s a method here for EVERYBODY and every income goal – You pick yours! #1 in my opinion is at the bottom of this post.

1. Build A BIG Email List In 2017

Email marketing is still the daddy of online marketing.

Bold claim I know, but here’s why.

Once you acquire someone’s email, it becomes an asset.

You’re in control.

Here’s a screenshot inside one of my email lists.

How you market to that email is up to you.

Email marketing, put simply, is building a list of targeted leads (emails) in which you can market to.

Typically how it works is you’ll give them an incentive to opt in (enter their email) through a free gift and then you’ll send them promotions direct to their email inbox.

If you’ve had 1,000 people enter their email, you’ll have 1,000 people you can broadcast an email promotion too.

Pretty simple right?

But how do you make money from an email list?

Knowing how to get people to enter their email is one thing, but making money from it is where people typically fail.

The process is simple but the issue with email marketing is 95% of the time people do it wrong.

With attention shifting away from the inbox and open rates for many decreasing it’s important to focus on building trust and nurturing the people who sign up to your email list.

Want to see how I do it?

Here’s 40 minutes of content packed information which I put in a video for you.

Back to the quick point about why email marketing is more of an asset than building an audience on social media…

If you had 500,000 followers on Instagram you can easily generate an income online from that following. But if the attention shifts away from Instagram to another platform how many of those 500,000 followers are active and engaged? What happens if Instagram delete your profile? If Instagram as a platform gets shut down? Its simple… if any of those scenarios happen you lose your following.

Vine is a prime example.

There were people making 6 figures and above marketing to their audience on Vine. As the attention shifted away from Vine their audience decreased, until one day (date) Vine shutdown and deleted the app from the App Store.

A marketing channel that worked well for a lot of people and businesses was shut down overnight.

Gutting right?

People also find it easier to delete or remove their social media profiles, but their email? It’s something they like to keep.

So pay attention to email marketing.

2. Instantly Become A ‘Social Media Agency’

A social media agency? That sounds complicated.

But a social media agency is B2B (Business to business) and although this sounds ‘daunting’ it really isn’t.

Why am I recommending it?

Getting a customer (B2C) to pay $1000 for a service is often difficult but getting a business to pay $1000 for a service is easily achievable.

How?

Let’s say you know how to build a following on Instagram.

There are thousands of businesses and brands looking to increase their Instagram following and build more business from it.

You could charge a monthly or one time fee to increase their Instagram following and optimize their profile to generate more business.

Keeping with Instagram we could run a 5 minute search to look for businesses in a specific niche.

Let’s say we search for #DOGTRAINING.

You can see there’s 847,070 posts on Instagram that have tagged their image with the word #dogtraining.

I can start to look through them and see if I can find any dog training businesses I could then pitch my Instagram services too.

I’m simply looking for businesses or brands with low or average following and engagement so I can offer them my services to help build and improve their profile.

Here’s one that has an Instagram profile ID that looks like a business in the dog training niche…

I can simply click on the name and check out the profile.

If they seem like a fit I can simply reach out to them via email (through the contact button you’ll often find on the mobile app), I can send them a direct message on Instagram or I can do a Google search to find out more about the person in charge of the business.

This took me less than a minute to find one potential client…

Make a list of everyone you find and then reach out them one by one offering your services.

Quick Tip: Give them value first. Maybe showcase another brand you’ve helped, build some followers for them first or offer a free period.

Once agreed they can pay you upon invoicing them each month.

Repeat this process again and again until you’ve built up a good client base.

It’s often hard to make $10,000 a month by getting 200 customers to pay you $50 a month but it’s not that hard to get 10 businesses to pay you $1,000 a month for your services.

3. Sell Your Skills… Online

Ok this is the simplest of all our tactics. But you know what?

This is the BARE MINIMUM that literally anybody could get away with. Online freelancing is now at a place where there is literally no reason to work in the ‘real world’ these days if you don’t want to.

Online platforms like Upwork, PeoplePerHour and even Fiverr.com have opened up opportunities for anyone to profit off what they’re good at.

The good thing with these platforms? You don’t have to go looking for work… work finds you.

Freelancing isn’t the most exciting method but it could easily allow you to generate $2000 and above online working remotely from wherever you want (with a Pina Colada on the beach?)

Here’s how.

Once signed up to Upwork (free) I can search for relevant jobs. For this example let’s say I’m good at graphic design and I’m looking for some graphic work.

I’ve searched for the word ‘logo’ – This will provide all of the available jobs related to logo design…

Can you see that? Over 9,000 jobs available of people looking for graphic design work (in particular logo design).

I can hunt through the applications looking at the budgets and design briefs and decide which one I want to apply for.

Here’s an example. Someone is looking for a banner to be designed for their blog and offering $70 for it.

Not a groundbreaking figure but something any skilled graphic designer could do in an hour or two.

I’d simply apply for the job, showcase my previous work and offer them value.

The application process takes less than 5 minutes and I can head back to the results and apply for more.

This may be the least glamorous way of making money online (as at first you’re trading time for money) but it’s certainly a great way to get started with little upfront expense.

If the work starts to increase you can easily outsource to others (for less) freeing up your time but still keeping a profit.

Sounds fun right?

4. Get A Loyal Social Media Following

When you first get started online you’re typically told to find or create something that sells and then find an audience for it…

But what about doing it in reverse?

Once you have an audience, making money from it is entirely up to you (and there’s numerous ways to do it).

Take YouTube for example.

You could start today by creating and uploading videos around a given topic on YouTube. There’s an audience already there, you just need to get in front of it.

Create and publish videos consistently, promote them and after a while you’ll start to attract subscribers (the more subscribers you have the more people will be notified when you release a new video.)

Once you’ve started to build an audience you can start including call to actions and sending them to where you’ll make money.

Here’s a small case study…

A quick search for ‘mens fitness’ brings up this channel… Brian Turner.

He’s sitting at 160,000 subscribers right now (a good amount) but he’s a small fish compared to some of the other fitness channels on YouTube.

His production of videos aren’t great, he’s not the greatest online marketer to ever live but for a while he’s consistently put out new videos around a topic.

In other words, he hasn’t done anything extraordinary. He’s just consistently published new videos each week and he’s built an audience by tapping into the volume of visitors YouTube already gets.

He’s got just over 19 million views which means just by turning on ads for his channel (through Adsense) he would generate a pretty nice income. But he hasn’t just done that…

A click through to his website shows a few other ways he’s monetizing this audience.

He’s selling his own merchandise of clothing around his brand ‘Beyond The Weak’. Print on demand will mean he could pay printing costs once a t-shirt has been sold.

But that’s not all…

The original merchandise is selling well as he also has a range of ‘Vegan’ inspired clothing for both men and women alongside other merchandise such as mugs, hoodies and hats.

But what about digital products?

He’s got those too…

Selling two online programs he charges $349.99 for a 16 week package and $199.99 for an 8 week package.

Looking at those screenshots should open your eyes to the possibility alongside wake you up to how simple you can make it. His website doesn’t look amazing, his brand isn’t the best I’ve ever seen but he’s built an audience and now he’s monetizing it.

He’s also managed to build an audience on Instagram and through his own Podcast too.

There’s countless examples out there which I could use where people (who aren’t internet marketers like you) have build an audience on a social media platform and then monetized.

Tap into an existing audience using a social media platform of your choice, siphon off a small percentage for yourself and then sell to them.

5. Creating Digital Products

My secret sauce. I’ve been lucky enough to generate over $20 million from digital publishing (i.e. my own digital products).

It’s been a game changer for me.

But it’s also something a lot of people have tried and have failed miserably with.

Here’s a screenshot of a letter I was sent by Clickbank recently showcasing the lifetime sale value of just under $13 million in digital sales…

But why did I focus on selling digital products over other methods (you’ll hardly see me on social media or promoting offers as an affiliate).

It’s simple…

As an affiliate you’ll typically make a percentage of the sale but if you send that traffic to your own offer instead of someone else’s… you’ll make 100% of the profit.

The main mistake people make with digital publishing is they overcomplicate the process (I certainly did when I first started).

It can be broken down into 6 steps…

1. Choose A Profitable Niche – There are thousands of niches out there and choosing the right one is important. Start with things you’re passionate about alongside using the Keyword Planner and Niche Tool to help you find one.

If you still struggle here’s 25 untapped niche markets I’ve put together for you free.

2. Niche Down To Solve A Specific Challenge/Problem – Creating a digital product around the weight loss niche is too broad, you need to niche down and solve a specific problem.

Therefore instead of creating a product on losing weight, your digital product could be about losing weight around the belly area for women without having to exercise. It’s more specific but it still solves a specific challenge that a big enough audience have.

3. Find Your Traffic Sources – Once you’ve chosen your niche and you have an idea of the challenge your product will solve spend a bit of time looking for potential traffic sources.

Are their blogs out there in your niche? Are there pages and profiles on Facebook and Instagram related to your niche with a highly engaged audience? Are there other related products on Clickbank? (This will show whether there  are targeted affiliates ready to promote or not).

4. Create The Product – Next comes creating the product and this isn’t as hard as you think.

Map out the content, create the content (either write an eBook or create videos) and then add a few bonuses to it to increase the perceived value.

You don’t even have to to this step yourself, you could easily outsource the product creation by paying someone to create it for you or teaming up with someone passionate about the subject.

5. Build The Offer – Create the sales page, the delivery page (where access to the product will be) and then choose a payment processor. ClickFunnels makes this whole process easier as it’s a page builder alongside allowing you to easily create sales funnels and integrate payment processors.

6. All Systems Go – With everything tested and ready to go it’s time to launch. Make sure the payment processor is working, start tapping into the traffic sources you’ve identified in step 3 and continue to tweak and test the offer and product as time goes on.

Digital Publishing Resources

ClickFunnels – Easily create sales pages and funnels.

Clickbank – Publish your own Digital Product on the popular marketplace Clickbank.

HireWriters – Outsource eBook creation to skilled writers for an affordable price.

6. Promoting Other Peoples Digital Products (Affiliate Marketing)

Affiliate marketing let’s others (typically the vendor) do the work whilst you refer others and reap the rewards.

In other words you find an offer, promote it (through your unique link) and when a sale is made you get paid a commission.

How much you get paid can vary dramatically but affiliate marketing saves you a lot of time and a lot of money when first starting out.

Now this strategy is something you probably already know about so I want to share with you the 2 key ingredients you need to be successful with affiliate marketing.

But first I just want this lesson to sink in…

Being a successful affiliate is all about the traffic you can generate. Focus on the traffic.

If you follow the advice below the rest will be taken care of.

1. Find A Good Offer – You want to give yourself as little work as possible, being able to drive traffic to an offer is enough work in itself. So finding a good offer is crucial to this strategy being worth your time.

A good offer will allow you to make more sales with less traffic.

It needs to convert.

It needs to solve a challenge that the visitors you send through your affiliate link face.

It needs to have a low refund rate.

Let’s do some quick math.

Imagine you found an offer which paid $50 for every sale you made.

If you send 1000 people to an offer through your affiliate link and 1 person buys you’ll make $50.

Sending 1000 visitors to a page can be a lot of work, just for $50?!

Now let’s say you sent the same 1000 people to another offer through your affiliate link and 25 people bought…

You’ll make $1250.

Nothing has changed your end, you’ve spent the same time, you’ve done the same work and sent 1000 visitors to each offer. But with one converting at a “rate” and the other at “rate” you’ll see a huge difference in the earnings you’ll make.

2. Send Targeted Traffic – As I’ve said traffic is king when you’re using affiliate marketing as a way to make money online. But don’t focus on volume, focus on targeting.

If you send 10,000 people to an offer which wasn’t related to anything they wanted you’ll struggle to make a sale, but if you sent 500 people who were extremely targeted to the offer you’ll have a much bigger chance of making sales.

(Visitors I sent as an affiliate last year)

Now the digital age makes finding targeted visitors easier than you can imagine. People search for things on Google, on YouTube and on social media. You just need to get in front of them once they’ve searched.

Ad platforms like Facebook Ads and Google Adwords also allows you to pay small amounts for ads you create to be shown to a targeted volume of people.

Don’t focus on the amount of traffic you can send, focus on the type of traffic you can send.

Affiliate Resources

Clickbank – A digital marketplace which offers hundreds of high converting offers in various niches. Free to sign up as an affiliate.

Pretty Link – Cloak and shorten your affiliate links by using the Pretty Link plugin.

17 Articles To Read About Affiliate Marketing – Here’s a great resource that shares some great insights into Affiliate Marketing.

7. Dropshipping Physical Products

Dropshipping allows you to sell physical products without spending money upfront or fulfilling the stock yourself.

How does it work?

You’re simply playing the middle man.

Let’s say the dropshipper has a t-shirt they sell for $10. They have this t-shirt in their physical possession and will deliver it too.

I can take this t-shirt and sell it myself for $25. Once a customer buys it from me at $25 I purchase it from the dropshipper at $10 and then keep the $15 profit. The dropshipper sends it direct to the customer and won’t include the sales receipt.

With this method there’s very little risk and it also saves you a lot of time in the process.

There’s a lot of people using this strategy to make six figures and above right now using Shopify and dropshipping directly from Aliexpress and eBay.

Here’s how it’s done…

You can sign up for a free 14 day trial of Shopify. Shopify will allow you to build your own online retail store without knowing code or being good at graphics. It’s simply the e-commerce alternative to WordPress (which you may have heard before).

Once signed up building and customising your store is pretty straightforward, Shopify will come with tutorials and documentation plus there’s a lot of free training already out there.

Once you’ve set up with Shopify (remember it’s free for 14 days and then only $29 a month after) you need to find a Dropshipping service.

There are thousands online in a variety of niches and a quick Google search will show you some options (remember the Dropshipper has the stock in their possession already, you can resell it at a higher price and then the Dropshipper will fulfil the order).

There’s over 4 million results for ‘fashion dropshippers’ but you’d tailor the search to whatever niche you were in.

Alongside using a designated Dropshipping service you can also dropship direct from Aliexpress or eBay.

The same principle applies…

I could find a product on Aliexpress, sell it on my Shopify site at a higher price and then get them to send it direct to the customer.

If I’m in the Yoga niche I can head to Aliexpress.com and search for products.

There’s thousands of potential products I could sell but here’s some Yoga pants that I could list and sell on my Shopify store…

The price including delivery to the United States is $17.99, so I would mark these up when listing them on my store.

For example if I listed them for $35 and made a sale, I’d order them for $17.99 and keep $17.01 profit. Not bad considering I didn’t invest in the product in the first place.

Once a customer purchases from my store I receive the $35, I spend $17.99 on Aliexpress and give the customers address for delivery. I also make a note to say not to include any invoice or purchase receipts showing the $17.99.

This strategy gives you opportunity to sell a huge range of physical products without investing any money upfront.

What Now?

This is a pretty comprehensive guide to getting started online but I don’t want it to confuse you…

These are 7 strategies that ALL work but this isn’t me telling you to do them all.

Choose one, take action on it and don’t give up.

For me building an email list and creating digital products has allowed me to be successful online but I know numerous marketers making money online from the other options I’ve given you in this training.

So go ahead…

Get started.

What one will you choose?

Let me know in the comments below and don’t forget to share this with your friends if you think it will help them.

George.