5 Ways to Make Money in Online Business
Building up revenue online isn’t always simple, but it isn’t impossible either. You need to put in the effort and implement the best online business strategies to receive the results you hope for. But you’ll find that there are many effective ways to make money online in 2017.
Some of the best money-making practices don’t require an MBA or large amounts of funding to get started. What is required is an understanding of your target market and a commitment to try new methods and persevere through failures. Because yes, you will experience some failures. But those who make a fortune in online business embrace failures until they find that sweet spot where the money rolls in.
Where should you start? Here are a few of the best practices for making money today in online business.
Create and Sell
Renting a brick-and-mortar store to sell a product can be expensive, especially if you are just starting out. Plus, the market for ecommerce is on the rise every day. Over half of the American population prefers to shop online. Out of the 96% of Americans who have shopped online before, 80% of them made an online purchase within the past month. Isn’t it time to go where the money’s at?
For the creatives among us, or anyone with a marketable product or talent, building a presence in the world of ecommerce is the way to go. Platforms like Woocommerce and Shopify make creating and maintaining an ecommerce site easier than ever.
For a greater profit, don’t forget to also sell your products on other online marketplaces. For example, designers can upload their designs onto sites like CafePress or Zazzle that can then be transferred onto clothes, bags and other merchandise sold on these third-party sites. They handle the transactions and creation of the merchandise, while both of you profit from the sale.
Other marketplaces, like Amazon and Etsy, also make it easy to promote your product on their sites. In addition, they already have a fanbase and following that’s hard to beat. If you can’t beat them, join them! Do a little research on which marketplaces would be best for your product, which have an audience most similar to yours, which bring in the most traffic and which have the lowest fees with the best results. Along the way, keep in mind your end goal of bringing the customer back to your home site for future sales, engagement and customer retention.
Offer Online Courses or Ebooks
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Don’t have a product to sell? Offer your expertise instead! Video tutorials, webinars, podcasts and ebooks are becoming increasingly popular in a self-taught, DIY culture. You can provide your services to individuals through one-on-one tutoring sessions or to a wider audience through Facebook Live, so that viewers can ask you questions and receive answers in real-time.
Each of these options require a lot of preparation and confidence in your expertise. But if you are providing quality content where viewers can easily find it, then it can be a great source of passive income. Again, use an already-established third-party site, such as YouTube and Amazon, as a platform for your tutorials and ebooks, along with selling and promoting them on your own site.
Practice Affiliate Marketing
Even without products or services of your own, your website could be a platform to sell or promote others’ products and services, what we call affiliate marketing. In return, you receive a part of the commission. Sounds like a pretty simple process, but the key is finding the right network of companies to be an affiliate for. Those third-party sites like eBay or the ever-popular Amazon can be a good place to start your career as an affiliate. But your own site can gain a lot of traffic, too, when you work with another company to promote a product. Plus, you don’t have to spend the time developing the product yourself; most of the creative dirty work is done for you.
For the best outcome, be picky about which products you choose to promote. If the product doesn’t connect with your audience, you won’t make much of a profit anyway. Is the product you are choosing to sell valuable to your brand and your target market? If not, search some more.
Include a Blog on your Site
Blogging is not just for foodies looking to document their latest culinary creation, or for young mothers who want to adopt a creative pastime. It’s one of the online entrepreneur’s greatest assets when used correctly.
Blogs don’t always bring in the most money at first, but over time blogs can bring a huge increase in traffic to your business’s website. They are your SEO secret weapon if your content is something that resonates well with your audience. 77% of people online read blogs, which is probably why over 80% of companies say that their blog is crucial to their business’s success.
Quality blog content will be shared by readers and will organically improve your search ratings and audience engagement. It’s a great way to expand your influence on social media, as well, when your audience posts your blog posts on their pages. They help bring in website traffic for you! More traffic results in more customers, more customers results in more revenue…you get the picture.
Some blog monetization tools like Google Adsense can keep the money rolling in little by little, but the key to building a fortune with blogging is to build trust with your customers. Form a relationship with them through relatable and relevant posts, and they’ll begin to trust your brand more and more, becoming the loyal customers you want. A blog is a great platform for affiliate marketing, too. With that built-up trust, customers will rely on your taste and be confident that the products you promote are worth their time.
Make an App
Making a fortune in online business is about giving the customers what they want. Today, some of the most popular products you can offer your audience are mobile apps. The demand for apps are rising. On average, users are downloading 8.8 apps per month, a number that is rising 5% every year. Again, it’s time to go where the money’s at.
Even without an expertise in coding or a large budget, you can easily develop an app that improves the customer experience. Your audience is more likely to return to your business when they associate your brand with that positive experience. You make a greater profit by creating and selling apps without having to pay for shipping or production costs. The results are worth the effort.
The Key to Making Money Online
Whether you’re looking to make a little extra cash or to bring home the big bucks, these practices will be some of your greatest allies to succeed in online business.
There is always risk associated with starting a company. The businesses that succeed are the ones who understand what their market is looking for and then fill that gap. For some markets, that means creating a product that makes their customers’ lives a little easier, writing inspirational blog posts, or developing an app that improves customer convenience. What are the customers in your market missing? How can you fill that gap?