Let me make a confession. I hate using terms like “make money online, make money on the Internet or whatsoever”. I was so reluctant to use that title but I had to use it since it’s what people understand and search for.
The problem with that term is that it removes the sense of business from anything you’re doing or want to do online. Once you’re engulfed with the thinking that you’re going to make money online, it makes you feel that all you actually need is go to the internet, do some magic stuff and money will come out.
Maybe out of your computer, right?
I don’t know…
The truth is; with that idea, the concept of running a business which should be your focus is completely lost.
And when that happens, it will be very hard for you to do things right which may lead to unnecessary struggles and eventually make you give up.
The fact is:
There’s nothing like make money online
Business is what people do online to generate income. Think of any business set up. Whether that of the government, private corporations or individual small businesses; they use the internet in one way or the other to enhance their business activities and processes.
Banks use the internet to render online transactions like ATM and other cashless services. Big and small businesses or organizations use the Internet to send emails and look for information.
These organizations or people will never tell you they make money online because they do not see the internet as a business but as a tool for their business.
This should be your thinking too. Don’t see the internet as a business but a tool for business that will help you render a service, sell a product and ultimately deliver values that people will pay for. It’s people like you and me that exchange money on the internet for values we receive, the internet doesn’t mint money.
With that understood, here are my top 10 ways to using the internet for business and ultimately “make money online” with integrity. And when the money starts coming in, No EFCC will run after you -:)
1. Take your business online
With the above short explanation, you should now have a glimpse of how the internet works for business. The most logical thing to do if you already have a business offline is to take it online to gain more customers beyond locality or reposition it online for new sources of income different entirely from what you used to do. The way you do this depends on the type of your business. From the other ways I’m giving below, you should get some ideas of what you can do.
2. Online Teaching and Training
This is a powerful way. If you are experienced in a skill or art, you can start a training based on it online, charge for it and build a reliable and sustainable income. There’s limitless to what you can teach online. Schools like the university of Phoenix have been treading this path and have recorded a huge success. Individuals and very small business that are not in formal academic line have also achieved great success in this.
You don’t need huge facilities and tools to start this. Just the knowledge of what you want to teach, access to the Internet and some basic free Internet tools will get you started.
I subscribed to BBM channel run by a lady based in Abuja and all she did is teach people fashion design on the Internet and charge for it.
3. Rendering a service Online
As you can do it offline, you can also do it online even with more freedom. You can become a freelancer rendering any possible service online to individuals and companies all over the world. It is a way to get yourself employed and start generating legitimate income online. Online portals like Fiverr, Upwork and others provide platforms for you to showcase your skill, knowledge, experience and start rendering almost any type of service for people around the world and getting paid for it.
And if you like it the other way round you can personally create your own website as a platform to showcase your skills or service business on the WEB and start getting customers.
One example of a business that does this in Nigeria is Printivo; a start-up that renders printing services online.
4. Selling Software products Online
This is top of my favorites which have really made me lots of money over the years. Software products are intangible products that you create once and sell over and over to thousands if not millions of people. It can be anything like a software application that does a particular task, ebooks, training materials or informational products that people can access through the internet after making payments.
Selling software products is what created huge wealth for people like Bill Gates at an early age and it’s the major thing Microsoft still does till date. They create Microsoft software that runs on computers and charge for it.
Even if you don’t have an idea of software to create as an individual, one way is to package your experience in short information products or reports and sell access to it online. The opportunity in it is huge and it’s billion dollar industry.
Let say you don’t even have an experience you can package as software products, the other way round is to buy what we call resale, white-label or reprints rights to software products created by others and start selling.
The major thing is to know how to do it for great profits.
5. Selling Physical Products
If you have not heard of companies like Amazon, I bet you’ve heard of companies like Konga or Jumia in Nigeria. All they do is selling physical products online for profits and it’s what we majorly call e-commerce business. Selling physical products is also very profitable if you know how to position yourself for business.
In fact, it’s also a billion dollar industry.
All you need to do is to source your products whether locally or internationally through importation and start selling it on WEB platforms whether you own it or the ones available around.
For instance platforms like Jumia, Konga and others now provide you access and opportunity to showcase and sell your products to millions of people on the internet.
I have a detailed training material that shows you how to do this for huge profits even if you know nothing about it now.
Few weeks before I’m writing this, I started a Niche-based e-commerce site selling physical products. And in about 14 days of launching the first product, I generated over N259.000 in revenue. This is a very profitable thing you should consider if you’re trying to start an online business.
6. Affiliate Marketing
Being an affiliate means you’re partnering. Affiliate marketing is all about partnering with a company or individual to market and ultimately sell their products for a commission or a share of the price and thereby you profit from your efforts of marketing without owning the product.
The product could either be physical or software products. I do this a lot marketing some products as an affiliate on this site. And I’m telling you it’s very profitable.
All you need to make this work out for you is to learn how to market and sell online and in no time you will be raking in an unbelievable amount of money.
7. Selling Events
This is the one I’ve not looked at over the years but I can tell you, it’s very profitable. I’ve seen people done it over and over, raking in a huge sum of money on a consistent basis. This has to do with organizing events like seminars, training, workshops, and conferences and charging people for it while you market and sell the events through the use of the internet.
It’s very easy to do. I just don’t why I’ve never been doing it. Maybe because I like doing my stuff indoors. Or, am I lazy?
All you need to get started is to package a knowledge or idea about a skill people are willing to learn and pay for, identify a venue to use, and start promoting it on different WEB channels.
It will be easier if you already have a group of audience and following online but that shouldn’t stop you. You might not even be the one delivering at the event. You can just be the host/organizer and invite different experts to deliver on a different topic.
Events are of different range. There are events that are as high as N50,000 – N500,000 or even more per participant and there are events that people are charged as low as N5,000- N25,000. It all depends on your audience, packaging, and what the event is all about.
8. Build Content Site to Sell Adverts
Content is the major thing that makes people go online and I’m telling you now that contents are what drive sales on the WEB. But I will not be able to tell you how to use content to drive sales now. That is another topic entirely.
This idea is about creating a type of content website popularly known as blogs and start sharing content that people will consume and share. The content could be specialist content, entertainment, news, or just anything that people will consume.
Then as your audience grows, you can sell advert space to individuals and companies. You can partner with big companies like Google and others to put pay per click adverts on your content site. You can even advertise your own products, sell affiliate products. What you can do is endless.
This is what Linda Ikeji is doing and she is raking in her millions monthly. There are lots of others like Saharareporters, naij, ogbongeblog, and all like that. What these people are creating is content to attract and build a community of audience.
It’s the new way of building a million-dollar Media Company with very little start-up capital.
9. Online Platform-based business
I hope you will get this idea. It’s software-based. This is not like selling software products. But it’s about creating a software platform to solve a common problem or render a service (SaaS) and making it available online either as a pay to use a platform or a free to use platform with a profit model.
It’s one of the most profitable ways you can build a million-dollar business. Think of channels like Facebook, Google, Whatsapp, etc.. that’s what they do. They are one group of what I call Online Platform-based business. This group creates free a software platform for people to use with a profit model attach to it. The other group is called the “Software as a Service” SaaS business. This group has to do with creating a software platform to render a service.
Don’t be intimidated by the big names to underestimate yourself that you can’t build this kind of business. It might be easier than you think as there are different approaches to it.
You don’t need to be a guru programmer or even have coding knowledge at all to do this. I have seen people without any programming background and who did not even learn to write a line of code that has achieved great success in this. All they do is find a great programmer to partner with and the rest is history.
The other way around it is to find a script online based on your idea to create your platform for a start and as you grow you can find a programmer to do some coding for you according to your taste or as demanded.
This was how Nairaland started. I bet Seun Osewa knew little or nothing about programming before creating Nairaland and today Nairaland is worth millions as a top Nigerian site.
10. Rendering WEB marketing services
If you have read most of my articles, you will know when I say WEB; I’m not referring to only websites but different online channels and platforms like GSMs, Social Media like BBM, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and other Online portals like Email, blogs, etc. We’re now in a connected world.
One thing every business needs in common is marketing to makes more and more sales. If you know how to effectively market and sell on these platforms, there are lots of businesses out there who are ready to pay you just to help them market their businesses on these platforms for more sales and profits. Most people call it Digital marketing but I call it WEB marketing i.e marketing in a connected world.
Even if you don’t do it for any company, you can do it to build any type of business you want. Every major way to “make money online” I have given above requires WEB marketing and sales to really profit from it. So you’ve got to learn how to market and sell on the WEB.
Bonus:
11. Brand and Sell Yourself Online
People have always asked me questions like: Which business can I start? How Can I get a job? And many other related questions like that. What I have discovered is people don’t invest and brand themselves.
Our parents always tell you and me that our name is the most important asset we have. But I have an objection to that. Your name is only an important asset when lots of people know about it. If nobody knows you or your name for anything, it worths nothing.
The way out is to invest in yourself. You’re a business.
It’s when lots of people know about you for something great that you will have the opportunities from lots of people who want to do business or work with you.
Brand yourself for your career, idea, or something you’re passionate about and let every possible person know about it in your community, in your country, and everybody on planet earth. Let them know who you’re and what you do.
This way you will open doors of opportunities for yourself and the world will beat the path to your door.
You can easily do in this age with the power of online marketing and selling. For instance, if you brand yourself and lots of people know you on the WEB, companies or businesses will pay you to do almost anything or even nothing. Many will be ready to hire you just because of YOU.
It’s unfortunate, we spent years in school to acquire different careers but the school never taught us how to sell ourselves with these careers. But with the power of the WEB, you’ve got no excuse. All you need to do is learn about WEB marketing and start applying it immediately to sell and build wealth.
There you have it. These ways can be compressed to just 4-6 major ways and I can even break them down to over a hundred ways.
I just decided to use these top 10 ways. No matter how many ways I put them, the most important thing is to get an idea to run with and start doing something great.
I have many training guides that can help you on this subject, one of them is Internet Business Profits. It’s like no other training material you see out there. It will open your eyes and help you understand everything you need to know and do to build and create your own opportunities through the WEB.
It is not that nothing will happen to you if you do nothing. Doing nothing means you’ve decided not to take control and when you take no control, you’re guaranteed of losing.
Take Control, it’s the only thing that pays
Olusola
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