Online Business

To make money online, you generally need 3 things:

A website (don’t worry, they’re not that hard to make)
An audience
Something to sell

There will always be exceptions to this rule, like the YouTube celebrities who don’t have their own site, but most of the successful entrepreneurs online (myself included) have figured out those 3 things.

An online business is a great asset; you can work from anywhere and serve people worldwide. Depending on how you have it set up, you can even earn money while you sleep. Ahh that elusive “passive income!”

The location-independent business models you’ll find here include blogging, podcasting, self-publishing, teaching online courses, and more.

If you’re not sure where to start, let me recommend this “Greatest Hits” collection:

130: How to Create Massive Influence and Profit with Virtual Summits – Even If You Have No Audience, with Navid Moazzez

November 4, 2021August 27, 2015

Navid had been blogging and podcasting about lifestyle business topics, but wrote one epic “round-up” post that went viral on the subject of personal branding.

Sensing he was on to something, and noticing the success of virtual summits in other industries (like health and fitness), he decided to put together The Branding Summit.

At the time, Navid had a modest list of 1000 email subscribers. The summit quadrupled that number and generated $20,000 in revenue the month it went live.

The Truth About Online Business

October 15, 2018August 24, 2015

There’s a seldom-discussed truth about online business:

No one really knows what they’re doing.

It’s a practice, a process, a call-and-response experiment. Sometimes things work and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes blog posts get a great reaction and sometimes they’re met with crickets. Sure, there are systems and formulas and “best practices” to follow, but no one can guarantee success.

Why Guest Blogging Sucks (and 3 Things You Should Do Instead)

November 4, 2021August 10, 2015

The conventional wisdom when starting a blog is to “get the word out” by guest posting on established higher traffic sites.

It makes sense, right? They’ve already got the readership and eyeballs you’re after, so why not go directly to the source and try and siphon off some of their audience to become your audience.

But there’s a problem: guest posting sucks.

126: $120k in Pre-Sales in 6 Months – With No List, with John Logar

November 4, 2021August 6, 2015

John Logar is the king of pre-selling software. As one of The Foundation’s top students, he’s broken all their records and even broken the mold on some of the methods they teach.

In fact, he sold $120k worth of software within his first 6 months of joining the program.

Since he was already a consultant, doing idea extraction and finding pain points for businesses was second nature. He just knew nothing about software before so just added a new weapon to his arsenal. (Without learning how to program.)

How to Organize a Bundle Sale (With Examples from a $72k 3-day Sale)

October 23, 2019August 3, 2015

In March I participated in my first online bundle sale.

It was hosted by Alexis Grant and the team over at The Write Life and featured 9 different products and resources for writers at a steep discount. ($1076 worth of stuff for just $99.)

I think coordinating bundle sales is a side hustle opportunity for bloggers — with or without an established audience.

122: How to Re-Purpose Content Into Multiple Income Streams

November 22, 2021July 9, 2015

This week, I’m joined by fellow online entrepreneur and freedom-seeker, Natalie Sisson.

Natalie is a masterful marketer, blogger, podcaster, and speaker, and on this call she breaks down how a blog post idea became a major turning point in her business, and was eventually re-purposed and repackaged more than a half-dozen ways — all ringing the cash register in some unique fashion.

The breakthrough moment was going from $0 to $15,000 in one month, with what I thought was a pretty savvy strategy.

121: An Engineer’s Approach to Building a $1500 per Month Side Hustle

November 6, 2021July 2, 2015

Tim Johnson is a man of many hustles. In fact, when he applied for my Inner Circle Mastermind last year, I had a hard time keeping them all straight.

Between his day job as a product engineer, his awesome self-publishing business, his Amazon FBA activities, and an upcoming brick-and-mortar project — and twin 2 year old boys — there’s no doubt he’s keeping busy!

On this call, we focus on his book business, which has earned a consistent $1000-1500 a month in author royalties.

Permafree on Amazon: How and Why to Give Your Book Away, Plus My Results

December 4, 2020June 29, 2015

In January, I had a chance to sit down with Nick Stephenson, a top-selling Kindle author in both fiction and nonfiction. We recorded a podcast session on building an email list from Amazon.

The “hook” was Nick built a massive list of 15,000 email subscribers in just a few short months, using one pillar strategy: giving his books away for free.

The first was with his fiction work, a crime thriller series where he decided to make the first title in the series “permafree.” Later, he pulled the same trick in non-fiction with a giveaway (very meta) called Reader Magnets.

How a Part-Time Blogger Earns $4k a Month

December 3, 2020June 22, 2015

Which is why I was nervous about publishing this post. Would my readers be confused or turned off by this sort of content?

To my surprise and delight, my first-ever income report was well received. Even readers who have zero interest in the business of blogging liked the post.

They enjoyed the opportunity to look “behind the curtain” and appreciated my transparency.

117: The Fastest Path to Side Hustle Cash Flow?

November 6, 2021June 18, 2015

One podcast I’ve been following for a really long time is the Empire Flippers show with Justin Cooke and Joe Magnotti. It’s been fun to watch their evolution from building tiny Adsense sites, running an outsourcing company in the Philippines, selling WordPress themes, and now really focusing in on their website brokerage business.

Consider this: it’s MUCH easier to buy an existing cash flow than to create one entirely from scratch.

In this episode we get into the business model of investing in sites, where to look for these “digital real estate” opportunities, some pitfalls to avoid, and even some creative financing options.

Usually Hustling, Occasionally Social