That is a magical question, the one about making money online. So, is it possible? Well, you’re asking the right person because I do that, it’s what I do.
I don’t have any off-line business at the moment, it’s all online, so yes you can. But, there is a caveat, if you’re doing it the right way and the problem is most people do not realize how to make money online.
So let’s just back up a bit and let me explain what I’m talking about.
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First of all, for the vast majority of people who wish to make money online, they are looking to supplement their income, or not get a proper job, or they’ve heard of others that make a fortune.
You don’t hear of anyone who’s not making a fortune, you only hear of the spectacular ones and it sounds great. By the time you hear about them, they’ve been at it for years and it appears to be an overnight success; when it’s discussed, it’s wow. That’s fantastic.
I mean, even in the off-line world, people like Richard Branson, who is very inspiring. I mean wow! I want to be like Richard, but Richard started publishing a magazine when he was still at school and he’s dyslexic.
He worked hard. When he built his business he worked in the office with everyone else trying to get subscribers and posting stuff out the door.
How hard are you prepared to work? If you simply think you can just make money online with a magic bullet, with a magic pill, something like that, then no, it’s not possible, there is no such thing.
And 90% of the people that will tell you that it is possible and tell you how to do it, are full of you know what.
Think about it, why on earth if they’re making so much, why stop and tell you the special secret of how to do it?
Unless of course they’re going to make more money by telling you how to do it. Unfortunately, that’s the way it goes and it’s always going to be like that; there will be people that tell you how to make money on the stock market.
If they had the secret sauce, why tell you they make so much money? They don’t need to bother.
Okay, so what I’m talking about is not that, I mean real business, really having a website that actually drives sales, creates customers and builds your business and makes money that way.
Now, the way I do it is I have three e-commerce sites and they sell fire safety equipment. They are pure online businesses.
In fact we do service fire safety equipment, but all of the sales come online, so it’s driven by the online business, not the other way around.
We don’t have any sales people and we have, over the last time I counted, was something like 105,000 customers but it will be more than that by now because it grows all the time and a lot of our customers will be repeat customers and they are the best ones, the secret sauce. So, how do you do it?
Simple –you build a marketing system. There is no, “We’ve got this for sale, come and buy it!” It doesn’t work; you have to build a marketing system.
There are a number of people who would buy from you on the spot because they are ready to buy, but there also a huge number of people who will be interested in your product at some point but they’re not ready to buy it now and they’re not particularly interested now.
What are you going to do about those? And that is the secret of making money online.
You need to build a list, you need to build a list of potential customers; you need to build the list of current customers, or past customers but you also need to build a list of potential customers, ones that may be interested at some time and you need to be there when they become interested.
People don’t tend to buy products when they’re not in the mood, when they’re not specifically looking with their credit card out, people don’t tend to buy like that very often.
But people do buy opportunities, they do buy offers and they can be tempted if they are in the ballpark. So, your way of making money through your website is to capture leads.
So when someone comes to a website, if you look at most of them, you’ll find some information and somewhere you will find a contact page, it might have a phone number at the top, but there’s no call to action, there’s no, okay, what now?
You just look, you go, that’s it. It’s not an e-commerce site, it’s not selling anything, the people obviously have a business, they obviously have an off-line business, they provide products they provide services, but they are hoping that the reader, will just pick up the phone and contact them.
And this is where everyone’s missing out, this is what the online marketers know and this is what everyone else doesn’t.
You need to capture the e-mails, capture the details of people who visit your website. You can see how many people visit through your Google analytics, but you have no idea who they are; so capture their details.
And the way we do that is by giving them something to ask permission. You can’t do this on any sneaky tricks; you have to ask permission to market to people.
You offer, or you give them something that is of value, something that they should be prepared to pay for that is in line with your products and services and is on topic and he keeps them interested.
Now it could be an e-book, it could be a short course, it could be daily tips, it could be how-to information, it could be videos, it could be further, like after a podcast it could be the full transcript, it could be absolutely anything, something that interests people.
It could be the enhanced version of a post, it could just simply be some downloadables, printables, whatever you call them, something that is interesting to your customers.
Now, that should be the first thing they see when they arrive at your website. They’ve come to your website, the first thing that should be offered to them is, “Hey, you’ve arrived here, we’ve got this for you. Grab it now, it will be downloaded instantly” and then display the information afterwards.
When they’ve read the information, it will be “Do you like this? We’ve got more of it, make sure you enter your e-mail and be the first that’s updated; 33,000 other people get updated this way.”
That kind of thing, obviously, don’t lie, but once you’ve captured their lead, and by the way, don’t ask for things like phone numbers and address and fax numbers and all that.
So if you have name and e-mail, a lot of people just ask for the e-mail, it doesn’t really matter what their name is.
You just get the e-mail, every extra step like the name, the phone number, a mobile, or a cell, an address, everything, everything else you ask, where did you hear of us, will drop off people, something like 50% for every single step running down. So don’t bother.
Just ask for the e-mail, make it very easy, and use a product such as Lead Pages. If you want to know what that is or any of these, just visit MarketingForOwners.Com/GreatTools.
You will find down there a list of what we recommend, what we use in-house, things like Mail Chimp, AWeber, Lead Pages, things like that and this probably a couple of was there through links. Go and have a look.
By the way, you must use an e-mail service provider to capture these and the whole system is automated, you don’t need any technical knowledge, it’s dead easy.
But once you’ve built up this list, you then e-mail, you lead nurture it’s called, you e-mail them and get them to know, like and trust you.
And over time, that builds up and then occasionally, you can make an offer once they’ve received a lot of information from you and that information needs to be of value, they’re getting hammered.
Look at your own e-mail inbox, how much stuff do you delete? So you need good subject lines, you need interesting information.
How many times do buy from somebody like Amazon. And then you just get offer after offer and you think, “I have bought it, I’m not interested.” And you just delete, delete, delete.
You don’t want people to be doing the same with yours. Give them information, more information of value, it’s not that hard.
Honestly, sign-up, find out competitors that are doing this, sign up for their e-mail list and see what they send out and do it better, do it similar but better.
That’s all you’ve got to do and that is the secret of how to make money online, by building a database of lifetime customers, not one off hits, not one off sales, people that love you and buy from you and recommended you and share your information on social media.
That’s the secret, so yes you can make money online but only through building a list and taking your time and being patient.
Drive Time Podcast
Talking of being nice, today is Thursday, it’s time for a drive time podcast and it’s The Good Life project from Jonathan Fields.
Jonathan is one of these serial entrepreneurs, but he’s a genuinely nice guy. The website is goodlifeproject.com and the podcast is called Good Life Project.
Now he has some short podcasts, like five, six minutes, but also once a week he has one for an hour, hour and a half, I think I even saw one for two hours, where he interviews top experts.
His type of guests are the people who speak at TEDx tours, people who are massive entrepreneurs and who are movement leaders or community leaders, or have spoken at TEDx.
Honestly, very very very inspirational. Go see The Good Life Project, let me know what you think, I’ll see you Friday.
