How to start a profitable online business

In this post I wanted to show you how anyone can make money online, working from their laptop, location independent. It is something everyone can do, but only a small percentage will succeed. I’ll explain why that it. This post is organized in 8 sections:

1. how to decide what to do
2. how to create website, where to get domain and hosting
3. how to get audience
4. monetization strategy
5. ads- how much money u can make
6. affiliate marketing
7. product/service
8. sponsored posts

 

1. How to decide what to do

In this post I wanted to share with you how to start a profitable online business. I think we can divide people in 2 categories, those who want to have their own business and those who want to be employees and work for others.

If you are in the second category, this is not a post for you. Now, you may want to have an online business, and you can have your own reasons. My reasons for starting an online business was to be location independent. I love to travel, I don’t like asking people for permission to leave earlier or go on holidays. I just want to live my life on my own terms.

My friends often ask me how to start a blog, how to set up hosting ect. I always tell them to think about what it is that you are passionate about and can talk for hours. Once you pick that topic write 30 posts about it. 

You know what usually happens, they start, they would write 3-5 posts just to prove me they can do it, and then usually withn 3-4 days they say that they have so much on their plate and they stopped for a moment. Noone ever continues. 

People are not consistent, they get this fire inside them but it goes down. I would say 98% people need constant gratification, constant attention to keep going. Constant motivation. Only 2% people are willing to sacrifice, wait, continue without seeing results early on. This are the people who succeed.

So if you thought this is another article, that will serve you affiliate links to go open hosting to cash their affiliate income, nope my dear that is not the place. I will give you my affiliate link, but I also want to open your eyes that this route may not be for you. 

So don’t worry, you can always go and work for somebody and get your paycheck every 2 weeks. If you want to build something it is going to be hard work. So, to conclude this thought. Go to your browser history, check what pages are you accessing on a daily basis most often, go on your instagram, facebook, pinterest see what is it that you read about, what information you have.

Don’t worry if you already see posts you would want to write, even if this is out there already you can probably aggregate it and make it better. If you cant find the topic you are passionate about, ask your friends and family what is it that u keep on talking, asking, searching geeking about. They will tell you and you can be surprised as this may be far from what you actually do for work.

Once you have the topic go to Pinterest look what type of posts are showing up in this category, which ones would you read, add them to board, so you know what it is that caught your eye. That will help you pick the topics you should write about. And don’t think about money at this point at all, that should never be a factor of you picking your niche.

Second thing you may want to do is sit and write 30 posts, create 4 pins for each of those posts, so you have a 120 pins in your backlog ready. Those pins must be eye-catching, they must strike a nerve, make people want to click and find out more. 

The worst thing you can do when picking your online business is focusing on what someone already did and try to copy it. This doesn’t work. If you are not passionate about a topic you will quickly get discouraged and become the person who, “knew it wasn’t going to work out”. The only chance you have to succeed is doing something you would do anyway, even if it is not bringing you money. Just a couple of examples how you can make money on absolutely anything online:

1. play video games – If your parents told you get education, playing video games is waste of time, well this might have been truth in the old days, but it doesn’t apply anymore- PewDiePie estimated net worth is $20m 
2. dance choreography – some videos here have 5M views. 1M views per video can bring roughly $600-$7000, you can read about factors that determine the amount you can make, here
3. nail art – some videos here have 7M views
4. fitness, activewear – 24 year old Tammy (mommy of 2) has built 2 businesses. Ben built GymShark when he was only 19 years old.
5. make up
6. fashion
7. printables ($300k/month)
8. personal finance ($100k/month)
9. travel ($15k/month)

One thing all those people have in common is they love what they do. It took time for the business to take off so they started making good money from it. That is why my first tip to you is: Find something you are passionate about, google what people are searching for in this field and write 30 blogposts about it. This way you will see if this is something you really want to be doing. If you can’t write 30 posts about something than starting a blog is probably not a good idea anyway.

 

2. How to create website, where to get domain and hosting

Once you have 30 posts and 120 pins ready, now is the time to create your website. Think about a domain name, it should be easy to remember and straightforward.

Then you need hosting. I used Bluehost the first year as they offered free domain name and $100 on ad spend, this were 2 factors that made me pick them. I think I paid around $80 for the year in total. Next year I switched to Siteground as continuing with Bluehost would cost me $150, I paid around $70 with Siteground. I think the change is a good think as you get to experience different layout of the panel, statistics and stuff. Both providers are recommended and I never had any problems with them.

If you want to do a bigger research here is a post where i give you a list and comparison of 10 hosting services so you can check them out and pick one that would suit you best.

Next thing you want to do is pick your theme, this will determine how your blog would look like. I had a free blogger theme, but I am planning to change to Pipdig. Their themes are beautiful, easy to navigate and mobile responsive.

If you never had a website before you may feel this will be overwhelming, trust me it isn’t. You can learn how to navigate pretty fast plus you can always reach out to customer representative to get help.

 

3. How to get audience

Ok so now you have your posts, pins and blog ready, this is the time when you are going to publish your posts on your blog. You can publish everything at once, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I would most likely post every 3 days, which would give me 90 days of content upfront.

Google algorithm would rather see you as someone who is publishing regularly rather than add all posts and then don’t add anything for weeks. Being consistent pays off. Plus even though you have your 30 posts ready that is not going to be the end. In the meantime when you have the posts scheduled for publishing you will write new posts to your backlog and create new pins as well. Not only for the newly created posts but for the existing ones as well.

Moreover, you need to have a business Pinterest account You need to create boards and add your pins. This seems like an easy thing to do and I’m not saying its not easy but you need to think about everything you add online as how search engine is going to find it. I share all the information in my ebook. Trust me this is very important step and you don’t want to do it wrong at the start.

Doing this part right will bring you much bigger traffic that you would ever expect. If you want to know my tricks of how to manage your Pinterest presence and get a large stream of traffic to your blog click here to get my ebook. If I had found this information early on I wouldn’t have spend 10 months having 700 page-views a month. In the first month when I applied this changes to my Pinterest account my page-views grew from 700 to 3300.  Next month I had 8.5k page-views.

If that is what you want and how you want to start your blog that this information is crucial. No-one is sharing it for free. I also found out about it by purchasing someones ebook about Pinterest. I consider my ebook better as i go step by step with actionable plan and I also give you a numbers worksheet so you can track your progress and have great analysis tool which helps a lot.

Anyway, when you create your Pinterest account, create boards for your pins you need to start growing this account. You want your pins to reach as many people as possible so you have a higher chance of having them click on your pin and come on your blog. Just fyi, if you dont have a blog, but you have a you tube channel, instagram account, store, website, pins can direct people to your sites, so it is not just for bloggers.

Look at some examples of the bloggers I personally follow. Look at how many followers they currently have and how big is their Pinterest reach. At this point i have 1k followers but my pins are visible to 1m Pinterest viewers. Just fyi, i had the same reach when I had 200 followers. At some point my reach was over 3.5m.

The reason i say that in the past tense is because I no longer work or drive traffic to my blog. This was an experiment for me to see what is achievable. I believe it is much easier to get high traffic to a blog that is focused on one topic. Mine is obviously different case. 

The reason why you want to have one topic blog is because you get followers that are interested in this topic. I don’t know whether this is something you do too or is it just me but when I follow someone on instagram, I follow them based on what they share. So let’s say I follow different topics that I’m interested in: travel, food, fitness, beauty, fashion, money, blogging, enerpreneursip, interiors, real-estate, luxury, rabbits.

So when I follow an account that shares some deliciously looking food and i suddenly see pics of the instagramer or their cat or dog I stop and think who is that and why I follow them as this is not something I expect to see in my feed. If they keep doing that i unfollow, as I only followed them for the food content.

So this happens rarely. Usually i see those people on instastories and they have the professional food pics in their feed but when I keep on seeing things I don’t enjoy I simply unfollow. Same will happen on Pinterest, keep it business, don’t pin food recipes to your public boards, if you profile is about drones. Keep it on this topic only. I consider myself someone who is not geeking out on one topic and i couldn’t post just one thing.

Coming back on the topic, you need to get access to group boards related to your niche so you can get access to the followers who follow those boards. This would grow your reach exponentially. When you start, you have no followers. The moment you start creating boards, adding your pins, pinning others content related to your niche, following people who add this content you will start getting followers on your own.

The best thing about Pinterest is that this platform is for inspiration. The content is evergreen, it’s not like last minute news that get outdated fast. That is why when you add a pin to your post it may bring you traffic for months and still be seen as a fresh content based on people interests and current need for information.

People who come to Pinterest have mainly two reasons to do so. First is to find information they are currently looking for, a recipe, what to see in Miami ect. They will see many recipes and many guides, the most eye catching, nerve striking pin is going to win. But also this pin have to be found by Pinterest search engine, so you need to name it correctly so the search engine can show it.

What you see at the top are the pins people share most, Pinterest want to show you most relevant content so if your pin is brand new, and had 2 repins it can’t compete with a pin that has 2k repins. If it is eyecatching enough and your followers pin it it may grow to 2k repins and go viral once it starts appearing on the top of the search results.

Joining group-boards is a way to go. In this post I give you 70+ places to promote your posts. It allows you to get your pins in front of tausands of people who are not your followers, but board followers. If they enjoy your pins they may become your own followers. The process is time consuming but inevitable so its best to do it asap. Joining group-boards is like getting a free reach boost, that you would normally have to pay on Instagram or Facebook. On Pinterest it is free.

Read how I grew my website traffic by 400% in one month here.

 

4. Monetization strategy

Now, this is the time when you need to think about how are you going to make money with your blog. I will share with you some of my favorite examples of young people who are doing great and it is worth to copy them. There are 4 basic ways to monetize a blog: with ads, with affiliate links, with your own product or service and with sponsored content. I will explain and give examples to all of that

 

5. Making money with ads- what to expect.

Before I started my blog I was reading a lot about blogging. I read income reports that showed me how much money people are making and I saw a pattern, the more pageviews, the more money. Here you can see 5 income reports, with different pageviews count so you know what to expect. I think Pinch of Yum have one of the best ideas for monetization. They gather best trending pins on pinterest and create a post using that content. Because the pins are already doing well, they use not their own pics, but others to get money from ads, meaning, they are getting large traffic and ad money flows.

Simmilar example is forever free by any means which is a dyi blog. This is a great niche on Pinterest and that pattern can be copied by anybody. All you need to do is be patient and post regularly.

Tonny Folly had a great idea when he started his blog. He was interviewing athleets who already had big following. Once interview was published, influencers would let their audience know that an article about them was published. With this kind of ad he was getting a ton of targeted traffic imediately, no other advertising was needed.

1. Pinch of Yum – 4M pageviews equals $52k from ads (AdThrive)
2. Tony Folly – excellent idea for a massive traffic and ad revenue for his brand new website
3. Carly Mommy on Purpose 170k page-views $3400 from ads (AdThrive)

From those 2 examples we can deduct that 1M page-views may bring between $13k-$20k.

Even though it is the same ad provider in both cases, we have different ads being shown, different amount of clicks and different countries. So it is never easy to predict the amount of money you can make with ads on your website, but having big traffic definitely helps growing that number.

If you review different income reports available on Pinterest you will see that Pinterest is usually the biggest traffic provider and with right tools you can grow your audience exponentially.

As a  comparison to make $20k with Instagram, you would need to have an audience of about 1M.

1M views on YouTube would only give you $2k. That is why I think a blog is a way to go.

If you already have a large following on Instagram or YouTube that is fantastic. Now you can think of a way how to get those followers to come on your blog. If you have let’s say 20k followers on Instagram and you communicate on Instastories that you posted something on your blog you can expect to have a percentage of those followers come and check out your blog post. It must be interesting for your audience and best if related to what you do on Instagram. Than instead of making probably $200 with your Instagram you can get money from ads, which with 20k pageviews would be around $400.

 

6. Affiliate income

Michelle Schroeder Gardner is my leader when it comes to affiliate marketing. She makes over $44k monthly just by recommending Bluehost hosting. She wrote one post that already brought her over $500k and keeps on bringing her money every month for many months now. So in your monetization strategy you must think about how to pick the right affiliate product you want to promote and figure out a way to have a massive traffic being lead to the post with the affiliate link.

YouTubers often add their affiliate links in the description box below the video. You can add affiliate link on your instagram profile as well. The more people click on it and buy the service/product the bigger the commission. Your part is to keep the content interesting for your audience. If you post about one topic, than it doesn’t make sense to provide affiliate links for services that are not something that your readers can find useful. Awin are affiliate program aggregator where you can find 13 000 advertisers that allow you to promote their product in exchange for commission.

 

7. Product/ Service

My number one example is Sam Ovens, a 29 year old guy from New Zeland who started his consulting business 5 years ago helping plumbers getting clients. Since than he became a multimilionaire and is teaching people how to start their own consulting businesses. He is on Forbes list of 30 under 30. He created an elearning program when he teaches how to start consulting business and also how to master facebook ads.

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Click on the images to listen to interviews with Jeweliet and Dave.

He spends 2 millions on facebook ads, but make 10 millions due to the traffic that it generates him. He explains the algorithm as no-one else and I watched a lot of youtube videos of how to set up the fb ad account and it just pure wrong. The best thing I like about Sam and his course is that he never gives you a statement that he is not explaining. Every claim he makes he tells you where it came from, what is behind it.

The worst thing I see is when people tell you you should do that just because it works, this is not a case here, you can’t make people belive sth will just work without explainging how it actually works. And a good example of whatIi mean by that is in his last post that you can see here. He publishes a lot of content, on his YouTube channel and instagram so do follow him and if you are ready to get his consulting accelerator program email me and I will give you a nice discount. More about it here.

 

Another person that makes 300k monthly with their product is Sarah Titus. She is selling a product I would never expect there is a demand for but looks like there is. Check out for yourself and also read her story.

Tammy Hembrow– a fitness guru, with very big following on Instagram. Due to her amazing body and large instagram following she has made a fortune on her workout videos and workout clothes. She also is a face of jeans brand and supplement brand.

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Justin Kan– an enterpreneur who developed an app with his friends and sold it to amazon for $970M 

Travel in her shoes – Aggie, a traveller who created her online presets to help people edit their photos. 

 

• • 8. Sponsored Posts

To get sponsored posts offers bloggers have to have large followings. According to this source, you can expect 1% revenue based on the following you have. One of my favorite bloggers who participates in many luxury campaigns is Annabelle Fleur. She has amazing style and creates amazing content. You dont have to have such a big following to be able to get sponsored posts opportunities but the bigger the following the bigger the money.

 

You may also like:

Pinterest strategy I used to go from 700 – 8500 page views per month
Blogging tools you are going to fall in love with
Blogging income report after 10 months of blogging
December 2017 – blogging income report
My honest review of Sam Ovens Consulting Accelerator Program – read before buying
How to choose the right hosting for your blog

 

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