What do I mean by this?
Well let me explain… most people when they start out, particularly in the blogging arena have only one website/blog that they hope will generate all the income they need to leave their job. Build your blog, work on it day and night and one day you will make money!
I agree with the commitment and determination to make a process work and I personally know some incredibly successful bloggers.
But what does that really mean for you?
A very small percentage of bloggers ever make enough money from their blog to be able to leave their job, much less live a financially successful life. It’s a bit like being an actor or a writer. For every thousand that make it big, most don’t even cover the bills. Oh but don’t get discouraged. There is an easy solution and one everyone with a passion for working online should consider.
For most of us, we are trying to build our online business whilst holding down a J.O.B (Just over Broke), running a home, managing a family and squeezing in a little time for ourselves. So starting with one website/blog, of course, makes sense.
I did just that, while I was running my cafe, maintaining our farm and family life, I built my first website (related to my cafe) and sold e-recipe books and drop shipped some products. I used that as an educational experience and made some good money along the way.
I then added another website, for which, I built and developed my own products.
Now, this is starting to sound familiar, isn’t it? Most successful Bloggers tell you, they only really started making good and consistent income once they developed their own products. Yes, it takes work but developing your own products provides a great level of security to your online income. It’s yours so once it’s developed, you get to write the rules. (But that’s a whole other process we will discuss at a later date)
Now, what if you were able to take what you were learning, apply it in lots of different areas and create income from several websites, with less work than it would take to manage that one website/blog you started with.
What I am going to suggest is creating (over time) a portfolio of websites. I know this flies in the face of what we are taught. Most really successful Bloggers seem to make all their money from just the one site. So why shouldn’t you? By all means, if that’s what floats your boat, go for it, you may or may not be successful. But I prefer the security of multiple streams of income from many different types of online income. And it’s just not that hard.
To date, we have over 30 online businesses and make a lucrative and consistent income. Don’t go into over-whelm when you read this, it took us 5 years to get to that number. It doesn’t have to happen today. In fact, as one of our mentors says, the more desperate you are the less likely you are to succeed. So try and think of it as a longer term process. What if you could be making $500,000 p.a within 4 years, would it be worth the wait and the work?
Let me put it another way. If you were investing in shares, would you put your life savings in one company? Your broker should be shot if he even recommends that as a strategy. We all know diversification is the safest and surest way to make a consistent and reliable return on your investment. Well, how about thinking of your online income in the same way.
These days there are more ways to make money online than you can even start to imagine.
Here are some of the ways we make money online.
- Affiliate commissions, Amazon, and other sources
- Classified sales
- Buying, renovating and selling websites
- Adsense
- Blogging
- Our own online courses and products
- Drop-shipping
Some of the projects we are currently developing:
- Becoming an Amazon seller (this is going really well now, over 50k per month and growing)
- Becoming a Shopify store owner
- Selling leads to businesses
Some ways our friends make money online
- P.P.C websites
- Building websites for local businesses
- Writing for blogs and websites
- Social media management
- SEO, website management
And this truly is only a drop in the ocean. There are endless ways to make a really good income online.
One of our dearest friends and mentors has always maintained, you are better off to have 10 websites generating $1000 per month each than one generating $10,000 per month. Here’s an example of why.
Recently we had firsthand experience of how important diversification is. We are Amazon affiliates. It’s a great program; we do well with it and have great success. From that model alone we have made upwards of $50,000 in one month in the busy seasons. Now last month, Amazon decided to change the rules. Hey, it’s their game; they can play any which way they want. But they decided, with no notice, to drop some of the categories commissions from 8.5% to 4%. Ouch. That doesn’t seem like much, but we know people that make hundreds of thousands of dollars each year with Amazon and overnight their income was halved.
Did it hurt us? You bet. Were we cranky? You bet. Did we have other forms of income? You bet.
If we hadn’t protected ourselves and had other online projects, we would be back to square one. Having to rebuild and that would have been soul destroying, expensive and frustrating. This happens to too many people online when it doesn’t have to.
Now, we aren’t talking about a bricks and mortar store here with all your capital and time tied up in it. We are talking about a series of online presences that you can spend your time on as you have it. Yes, my friend, you may need to have a schedule and you may need to be focused, but if you are running any kind of business you should be all of that, and more anyway.
Heck, you may even have to learn how to outsource.
These days I am more of a project manager with a fantastic team all over the world. I have a brilliant Tech support person, who I couldn’t be without. I have writers for sites and products I don’t want to write about and we have graphic artists, designers… basically any skills we need we can find when we need them. I love the fact that I work with people in the Philippines, Bulgaria, Prague, Australia, Canada and the U.S. And yes you can learn how to do this too. I learned it and can help you to learn how to outsource and manage your team as you need one.
If you want it badly enough you will find a way. When I occasionally get overwhelmed, I go back to my WHY. We all have one. Mine happens to be the freedom to live my life that way I want to.
With this as a focus, we now own a beautiful 40-acre property. On this property, we get to have a private animal sanctuary for farm animals. We are able to support our family and take holidays when we want. We have no debt and live pretty much exactly as we want these days. What’s your WHY?
I hope I have given you a glimpse at what’s possible.
If you want to follow along with us, learn some of the strategies we have used and get to know some of the many ways there are to make a really decent (honest) income online why not join our mailing list. We will be introducing some of our friends to you and let them share how they make money online.
We will share some of the courses we have done that actually worked for us and the brilliant mentors we have found along the way and much more.
Here’s to your WHY
Lucy
