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It seems like things always come full circle. When I first started my online store in 2012, I actually tried out Wix and it was the first website platform I actually got a sale on. Although, during that time I had decided to move to another platform, actually multiple platforms. I will say I am impressed and honestly amazed with how far Wix has come. My eCommerce brand and agency website is on 2 different platforms. The eCommerce website is on Shopify which is not designed to be a blog, it's a pure ecommerce platform that has blog functions. My other website is on a web builder that claimed to be easy. Unfortunately, I have had to hire designers and a web developer to get the website to look and function as I need it to. The Wix blog is easy to set up, simple to design, and search engine friendly (plus they have great support) So when I decided to start a blog, I wanted the blogging platform to be easy to set up, simple to design, and easily found in search engines. Wix has done all that and more. They actually have live chat and customer support. Not only do they have support but they were able to help me solve a really simple problem that many other platforms would never help with. I was not expecting that I could get the domain name, email and lead capture set up and managed all in wix. The Wix site can literally do it all and their app makes it insanely easy, I can even write new blog posts from my phone. How to start a blog on Wix - A step by step guide Step 1 - Go to Wix.com and click Get started Step 2 - Enter your email address, make a password and click Sign Up Step 3 - Click Get Started Step 4 - Decide what type of Wix site you want to start. For this one I chose BLOG and clicked Next Step 5 - Give your website a name. For this example, I just called it Test 1. Hopefully, you are more creative than I am in naming your blog. Type in your blog name and click Next Step 6 - Choose your goals for your Wix website. I chose to Build a Community (anything works to get started) Step 7 - Choose what you want to add to your website - I removed chat and only selected blog. You can add anything you want later as well. Click Next Step 8 - Click Go To Dashboard Step 10 - You made it to your dashboard - We are ready to start a blog post. Wix does a great job giving you step by step actions to take through the entire process. Click Create Blog Post Step 11- Write your first blog post! Even with taking screenshots, I think this took me less than 10 minutes to get from starting a new blog to my first blog post. Start typing your first blog post and click PUBLISH to make it live. Step 12 - Choose a domain for your website. This is amazing. Buying a domain from a third party and trying to point DNS servers was a bottleneck in the process for me. This makes it wildly simple. Choose a domain and click Let's Go Step 13 - I skipped building a custom domain since its a test site and went to the next step which is Customize Site. Enter your info and click Next. Step 14 - Time to make your blog sexy. I chose Timeless. Chose your theme and click Next > Step 14 - Pick a homepage design that speaks to you. This would be considered your blog template. Because Wix is so easy to design, you can pick any of the blog templates and really customize it to your liking. Choose one and click Next > Step 15 - Time to start adding pages to your site. I usually have an About and Contact page, but you can Skip or Chose one or All four and click Next > Step 16 - Your site is ALIVE. You are now officially a blogger. Well, you may need to start building blog pages and writing blog posts. But you got your wix blog started! Step 17 - Now it's really time to have fun with it and design your blog page, your blog posts, really your entire blog. I personally try not to go too crazy with design until I have created a number of blog posts. It's harder to design when you have no content complete. Pro Tip: Designing your first blog can take so much time. Don't get trapped by trying to make it look perfect. You are looking far closer are your website than your visitors. The most important part is to start blogging and writing quality content that the search engines can find and want to share. Step 18 - The majority of my traffic comes from mobile users, so it's really important to use the mobile site editor to make sure it looks good on mobile. ' I always publish and check on my personal Iphone to make sure mobile devices are rendering my blog content and blog articles exactly how I want them to look. Click Let's Go Step 19 - Choose a header design and Click Next > Step 20 - Decide if you want pop-up actions for your blog visitors. I personally clicked No Action Bar because it's a blog and I want them to consume the content. I don't want them to call or email me. Although I do like to talk to my visitors on Twitter and LinkedIn. Step 21 - Choose a back button and Click Next > Step 21 - Crushing it, click Go To Mobile Editor Here is a quick GIF to show you how easy the editor can be. I know you will make a stunning blog, but now we need content to reflect how awesome it looks! Remember content first, so get your first blog article posted before you get too deep into the design. Google likes great content, not necessarily overly designed websites with poor content or no content. How will you monetize your blog? This is a question I have been asking myself. My current strategy for my website is to monetize via ads. I believe this is one of the harder ways to monetize but it is more stable and doesn't require inventory or service to fulfill. I am using Google Adsense for my Wix blog and recently found out that the other ad networks such as Ezoic, Mediavine, and Adthrive don't work well with wix. If you want to monetize using those platforms on your Wix blog you may need to go with WordPress. What will your first blog post be? Once I got my blog started, I quickly wanted to start blogging so the search engines could find my site and get me ranking on the first page asap. Unfortunately, blogging just for blogging's sake may make ranking slower than you hoped. It was a rookie move on my part to not do any keyword research. Now I use Ahrefs to do my keyword research before I write my blog post. When I have the keywords and I am ready to create a blog, I will open up Surfer SEO. This tool allows me to optimize this blog for my target keyword phrase and helps me be seen by search engines. Update: I have been using RankIQ to find keyword phrases, its really powerful and the keywords are hand-selected. Here is the review. How do you earn money from a Wix blog? I will detail the high-level strategy that I am working on for this blog. Google AdSense (ad network) Affiliate offers Agency referrals Email marketing leads for my email agency Consulting Starting a blog with Wix is easy, waiting to get ranked by the search engines is the hard part No matter how you use Wix I hope you succeed online and hit your goals. Let me know in the comments how you will measure the success of your blog. Check out the 14 Best Font for Blogs post to make sure your readers can easily consume your content.

Shopify is a leader in the eCommerce space because it is easy to set up, simple to design, and always innovating. I have had my online store on Shopify for a long time, I think over 5 years at this point, and have no desire to switch. In the back end of your Shopify store, you can easily make coupon codes or discount codes (whatever you like to call them). One drawback when making discount codes on Shopify is the fact that multiple coupon codes can't be combined at checkout. As a merchant, it is a safeguard against customers taking advantage of multiple discount codes that they have found on the web. You can only use one discount code at checkout. Listen to your customer service team - Many customers called in asking to combine multiple coupon codes There is no doubt that I am a slow learner. College took me 5 years, but maybe that was on purpose. I did have a great time. Anyways, whenever customer service gives me feedback I try to really listen and not disregard it as a problem customer. The customer feedback you get can show you a potentially bigger problem or help lead you to a new product you never thought of launching. For my own store, we set up multiple discounts for different products. Each coupon code was unique to each product. So when a customer wanted to buy 2 or more products, they naturally wanted to use both coupons that were available. I don't blame them, I would too. Not to mention, that we had a pop-up with another discount code. Now add that to the discount codes that our customers found by using the power of google! This previously excited customer is now overwhelmed by the multiple discount codes they have stumbled upon. What do you do when you can use only one discount code? Well, I decided to make things simpler in hopes of increasing the conversion rate and our average order value. For my unique online store, it worked! Please note, that every online store is unique. If you decide you want to make the multiple discount codes more simple you can try this. One coupon code for all products - This is the simplest way to use discount codes Remove all coupon codes! - I know you just spit out your coffee. How could you remove your discount codes and still sell anything? I made the bold move of doing just this and marking our products at the price we use to sell after discount. We even went as far as removing the discount code section in checkout. Which you can do easily in Shopify by turning off your discount codes. What happened when we removed multiple discount codes The result for my online store was an increased average order value and increased conversion rate. It was just much simpler and the customers could just add multiple products without fear of not getting the best price. For my brand, this became the only acceptable solution. I never try to make any massive changes like this based only on pleasing the customer service team. Sometimes a small problem is just a small problem, but in this case it was hurting our conversion. No more discounts in Facebook Ads To go with the theme of listening and paying attention to our customers. We got feedback from customers that the price didn't match what was on the Facebook ad. In reality, it did match but they needed to enter the discount code. Customers were seeing multiple discount codes all over the place, from Facebook ads to the website to coupon sites. By removing the discount codes on the website we were able to remove the discount codes on Facebook ads as well. This made the experience from ad to product page much more...simple. Still, want to offer discount codes? I get it, it's a hard thing to stop using and it can provide leverage when you want to do a special or a reason to boost sales. So what type of discount code works best? Percentage discount vs. dollar off discount. Testing is the best way to see what really works best, for our store we found that a dollar off typically worked best because there was less math involved. Remember, I like simple! This is why we decided to use dollars off for each unique product. The challenge with a dollar-off discount code is that it may not make sense for each unique product. Which lead to the multiple discount codes problem in the first place. That is one argument for going straight percentage discount. Percentages mean you're making your customers do the math and sometimes difficult math. They just want to buy what you selling on your online store. An alternative to discount codes is Free Shipping At the core, we really are using discount codes to incentivize our potential customers to become a customer. You can make discounting as complicated as you like or as simple in my case. Free shipping is another option that doesn't actually discount your product price. I personally like to use this on the cart page to motivate additional purchases if you hit the free threshold of $250. As a store owner, there are so many things to focus on to grow your store. Making it simpler or easier for customers to checkout can increase your conversion rate, and sales and reduce customer service inquiries. How do you plan to use or not use discount codes on your own store? Let me know in the comments. Also, check out our recent product launch that did over $237,000 in a day!

As someone who owns an email marketing agency and also someone who uses an email marketing agency in my own eCommerce brand, I have seen all the ways you can charge for email marketing services and be charged. "You should charge a rate that gives your client a great ROI and you a healthy margin" Like any business, the higher the ROI the more you can and should charge. The lower the ROI, the harder it is to justify what you are asking for. As an eCommerce client, your email marketing agency should be one of the highest if not the actual highest ROI marketing you do for your online store. Email marketing services typically charge in 2 ways (Performance or flat rate) Performance - When you charge your client based on performance it is typically a percentage of revenue driven from email. It can vary based on revenue tiers. This is the least common type of pricing I see email marketing agencies charge. Example: Klaviyo email revenue for September = $500,000 x 3% = $15,000 That ROI for a client would be 33x! Since email marketing doesn't cost much in comparison to running paid media that ROI is even higher. Email marketing is a huge source of profit for most eCommerce brands. Flat rate pricing - This is pretty straightforward as you charge a flat rate for a set amount of deliverables. Example: 10 emails, 2 SMS campaigns for $4,200. There is no motivation for the email marketing agency to send more emails because it is a flat rate, not performance. Per Hour - I rarely see per hour or per email but some freelancers will do this. It is hard to do that if you are truly offering a done for your email marketing service that includes strategy, design, copy, and technical sending. How much will you charge for your email marketing services? The best way to charge for email marketing is to do the following: 1 - Audit your potential client's Klaviyo account 2 - Put together the best strategy you can 3 - Include a very clear list of deliverables. The greater the detail the better. The price you charge should vary based on how many deliverables will provide your client with the best results. The key takeaway for deciding how much to charge is to price based on what is needed to provide your client with the best results. This one statement will allow you to be fair to your client, you, and your employees. What does email marketing cost? The email service provider software itself is relatively inexpensive and variable as you gain new subscribers, not to mention this cost is incurred by the clients, not by the agency or freelancer offering email. The cost to build an email will depend on your team setup. Here is who you might expect would build your email campaigns and email marketing strategy. 1 - Copywriter 2 - Email Designer 3 - Klaviyo Tech 4 - Email Strategist 5 - Account manager The email marketing agency cost varies by how efficient you are with your employees. The cost of the team to make these email campaigns varies directly with how much you pay them to do the work. Typically if you are a freelancer and doing all the email marketing yourself, your profit margin will be the highest it will ever be. Building teams for an email marketing agency is extremely difficult and expensive. Your employee and client churn which is always influx is the biggest factor impacting your email marketing agency's cost to build email marketing campaigns. The cost of email marketing can be as high as 70% of a client's retainer and that is why having a lean and efficient team is required to run a profitable email marketing services company. Becoming a top email marketing agency takes a year of experience and typically a true understanding of what it takes to run an eCommerce business. How do you go from freelancer to email marketing agency? I believe in any business you start that you truly must be an expert in all areas before you can grow your freelance or start-up into an email marketing agency. The key to making this transition is processed. The nature of email marketing is fluid and it requires your team members to have a clear understanding of the deliverables and the strategy behind the service you offer. To make this transition successful: 1 - Document your current processes 2 - Simplify 3 - Simplify again - Seriously I mean it. You can't scale if it's complicated. (I had this conversation with my partner at my email marketing agency for years.) 4 - Make loom videos of every process 5- Only hire people who have the exact experience you are looking for 6 - Be crystal clear to your client exactly what your email marketing services include (you can't be too detailed) 7 - Try to use only one email marketing software (if possible - we only use Klaviyo - because its the best) 8 - Let your employees update your training for you to make it better (this is the holy grail) What services does an email marketing agency offer (Email marketing campaign, Email Design, etc.) The core of any successful email marketing service offer. Email marketing strategy Email campaigns that follow that strategy Flow projects (building out your automated emails) Email design and copy for those email campaigns Product launch strategy BFCM email strategy Email campaign calendar How much will you charge for your email marketing services? Let me know in the comments below.

Getting new customers is far more expensive than selling to your existing customers. Even though that seems obvious, I see many Shopify store owners who focus most of their time, money, and effort on only getting new purchases. In reality, we should really focus more on our current customer list to turn them into truly loyal customers. This is far easier said than done, but I want to go over how we turn customers into repeat customers. "More repeat customers equals a higher customer lifetime value." Take care of your customers and they will buy again. It is that simple right? Unfortunately, there are a lot of factors we can control and some we can't that impact your repeat customer rate. The best way to turn a customer into a repeat customer is to do the unexpected. At my ecommerce business, my only in-house employees are my customer service reps. I know, that sounds crazy since most ecommerce businesses look at customer service as an expense. I look at it as a true opportunity to wow customers and do the unexpected. This philosophy goes far beyond the tactics of turning first-time customers into returning customers. Unreal customer service is at the core of any customer retention program I personally have taught my employees that it is ok to spend anything to make a customer happy. Well almost anything, but they have no constraints in spending or refunding to make a customer happy. This strategy may sound like it costs us money, but if executed properly over a period of time it is guaranteed to increase the amount of returning customers. Returning customers know my support team by name Do your customers know your support team's name? Do they rave about them on social media? If they don't that could mean you have room to improve your customer experience. Here is a good example. We had a customer who had clubs stolen from his car. Without saying anything we sent him a free set. We do this for 2 reasons, we actually give a shit and we are thankful for our customers. Truly believing we are nothing without our customers will change how you treat them and increase your repeat purchase rate. Repeat customers make getting new customers far more profitable The best way to make getting new customers more affordable is to have repeat customers that truly love your brand and tell others! Word of mouth and referrals is a sure-fire way to help you get new customers. The average returning customer rate on Shopify can vary greatly depending on the products sold. Certain products, such as consumables and subscriptions have an inherently higher average returning customer rate than other products such as a golf club or a pair of skis that you can buy and use for years. What is the secret sauce to truly insane repeat customer rate? (Empathy) The best way to think of it is trying to scale the unscalable. Due to recent automation, some of this can be scaled easily and it is ok that some of it can't be scaled. The extra time and effort it takes is well worth it and I believe a big part of customers becoming repeat customers. Handwritten thank you cards using Thanks.io Thank you voicemails Private owners only Facebook group Thank you videos using Bonjoro Truly unreal customer service experience (do the unexpected over and over again Loyal customers want to be heard (talk to them and engage) Each one of these bullet points could easily be a blog post on how to implement them and the impact they have. These are great software, but they are just great tools that let us thank our customers. Being thankful and caring about your customers is the best way to ensure returning customers for life. Launch new products that your customers are begging for A new product launch is a fantastic way to give your customers another product to buy. The biggest challenge is making sure you are launching products that your customers actually want. I love to use simple A/B emails to ask my audience which product they want next. I do this in an authentic way and before I actually have made these products. I am always amazed at the replies. The replies are almost always for the product I didn't think they would want! Removing your ego and letting your customers run the show is a great way to increase repeat purchase rate and also engage with your customers. They feel like they are a part of your company because they actually are. Your average returning customer rate shouldn't be too high or too low Wait for a second, wouldn't a really high returning customer rate of 55% be a great thing? Yes, it's fantastic but it also means you probably aren't getting enough new customers from your online store. Depending on the product itself, we shoot for a repeat customer rate between 25-35%. We sell a hard good product that doesn't need to be replaced often, so it really comes down to product extensions and new launches. We recently had a very successful product launch that lead to a 74.88% returning customer rate in Shopify. This was for a product replacement, so many customers replaced products that they still can use because we truly have taken care of them for years and we used our hype product launch method. Shopify makes it really easy to find this number. Just go to ANALYTICS and your RETURNING CUSTOMER RATE is on the right side of the screen. How do you plan to increase repeat purchases for your Shopify store? Let me know in the comments below.

If you told me that I would do nearly a quarter of a million dollars in 24 hours when I first started my online store in 2012, I would have laughed. How could I possibly sell that much from an online product launch in a single day? It doesn't seem possible. Now it is expected and is a repeatable part of our marketing strategy. It is my personal goal that future product launches always beat previous product launches. That is not always the case, but most of my product launches and even just back-in-stock launches are over 6 figures in just one day. This is not the first time and definitely not the last time we will have a six-figure product launch. Here is how to launch a product online and make a HUGE impact Here are the results from our recent product launch 😎 Over $238,790 in the first 24 hours (w/ $400,000+ in total launch sales) Over 1,500 orders were placed during the product launch Early access list growth to over 10,500 people Paid advertising results - 22X return on ad spend for launch day Pretty awesome right? I think so too, here is how we did it. Do you need social media for successful product launches? Having an active and engaging social media audience is a core part of a successful brand, but it is not a huge part of a successful product launch. I specifically am talking about social media pages such as your Facebook and Instagram pages. The organic reach is just too low and any external linking is almost guaranteed to throttle your social media posts reach. One of my biggest secrets...🤫 The best way to use social media marketing to launch a new product is to set up a private owners only facebook group This is one of my marketing strategies that I have kept secret for a long time, but its time to let the world know! I originally set the group up for my customer base to communicate with other owners. I like to to always put my customers first and truly try to wow them with every opportunity I have. The group is a great way to show your customers that they are the most important thing in your business. Well, because without them your business would not exist. So start treating them that way! Treat your customer base well for year over year and your brand will organically grow, because you actually give a shit about them. This group is invite only to our customers, which makes it exclusive and private. You can't join it unless you have bought our golf clubs. You will be denied, so don't try it! This is one more marketing channel that you can leverage to make sure your launch is a big one. To sum up my social media strategy it is to use my pages for engagement and my private owners only Facebook group for launches. Do not send one email and expect a major launch Launching a new product online can be exciting, but also can be underwhelming. Don't just send one email the day of our product launch. This strategy is a sure fire way to miss out on tons of revenue. The money is made in the hype and the follow up. You will not have a successful product launch with one email to your entire list. I can promise you that. Instead of talking about the different product launch strategies at a high level. I want to show you in detail the exact product launch strategy I used for my own online store to sell $238,740 in a single day. Have real conversations with your customers to have a successful launch Before I dive too deep into the tactics, you need to have an email list that is healthy and a customer list that truly wants to hear from you. The best way to do this is to send conversational emails that ask questions and actually engage with your customers and potential customers. Just blasting emails to the entire list that say buy buy buy doesn't work anymore. We have to earn the right to email our list. I like to refer to it as conversational email marketing. It seems obvious but changing your perspective on how you view your existing customers is critical to the tactics being effective. Ask simple questions to your email list (Their answers may surprise you) By asking real questions to your audience you can conduct market research and insights that you could never get without it. I launched one product without asking my audience and it turned out to be less successful than I had planned. A simple email you can start using today is an A/B email. Where you ask your list which product we should launch first, A or B. I guarantee you will be shocked by which product wins. This insight may seem simple to do, but it's incredibly powerful in figuring out which products your customers want. Not to mention, Google likes it because your customers are now replying to you. This means they want to hear from you and the likelihood of your email going to your inbox is far greater than before. Stay out of the promotions tab by talking with your customers. An effective email marketing strategy includes the following: Asking authentic questions you want answers to from your audience Sending a mix of plain text emails similar to the ones you would send to your friends Having a customer service team that wows customers and engages with all emails and text Using a conversational tone and empathy from a founder's perspective - honestly, you should want to thank your customers and actually care. (If you don't care, you shouldn't be in business.) Creates true urgency by having a specific launch date An irresistible offer One call to action Create buzz and build hype to launch a product (Like the movies 🎥) This is the single most important aspect of a successful product launch. The goal is simple, we need to build pent-up demand and real excitement. It is a similar strategy that the Movie industry has used for years. They are experts at building hype and buzz, that is the difference between a movie being a blockbuster or a failure. We just are doing the same thing online by sending conversational emails, text messages, and posts to our Facebook group. This is a product launch event, not just a product launch (Mark your calendar!) The key here is making the launch day a true event. Even if it's only online, we can build the same excitement as if it was a real in-person event. We are going to use our owned media channels as the core marketing strategy. These marketing channels include our email and SMS list and our Facebook owners-only group. Set a date and be extremely specific. Here is an example: New Golf Club launches on Tuesday, August 30th at 9 am eastern. Tell your customer base to mark their calendar. Remember this isn't a one-email product launch this is an actual product launch event with a real date and time that it becomes available. What emails and text messages did we send to hype the launch? ✉ We sent a total of 6 hype messages over the course of a week via email & sms - all with the singular goal of teasing the launch and getting people to simply reply back to the email to be put on the early access list. Hype Campaign - #1 - Email & SMS: We teased that something new was coming but didn’t reveal what it was. This drove some initial curiosity for people to reply and be put on the early access list. This resulted in about 3,000 replies for early access. Email Hype #1 SMS Hype #1 Hype Campaign - #2 - Email: We revealed that there are in fact new clubs launching, but didn’t provide any more information beyond that. This resulted in about 1,000 more replies for the early access list. Hype Email #2 Hype Campaign #3 Email & SMS: In this message, we revealed some information about what was launching, that it was a new model, and that it will be released for 3 products. We reiterated the launch time and the only CTA was to reply to the early access list. This resulted in about 1,500 more replies. Email Hype #3 SMS Hype #2 Hype Campaign - #4 - email: This was the last hype campaign sent the day before the early access launch. We reiterated the launch info, revealed we would be offering free shipping the day of, and that the website was going to be locked & without a password, you wouldn’t be able to shop. This resulted in about 1,000 more replies for early access. EARLY ACCESS LAUNCH CAMPAIGN #1: Email & SMS: This campaign was sent to 10,570 people, drove 4,648 people to the website, and resulted in $110,844 in sales. Additional follow-up messages were sent the day of, reiterating the early access & free shipping offer, driving hundreds of thousands of dollars in more sales. To create exclusivity and increase demand we locked our entire website (expert level product launch) 🔒 This sounds crazy because it is, but it is crazy awesome I promise. A big part of our launch plan is to lock our entire website. Once the website is actually locked we email everyone telling them it is locked. This gets people excited and generates a buzz and makes the product launch something special. You literally can't buy anything from the store. The only thing you can do when the website is locked is sign up to get an email with your secret password. By needing a password you create truly wild demand. In addition to using our lists, we also run paid ads via Facebook and Google to ensure we get as many people to the locked website as possible. Paid advertisements can only go so far as to generate buzz as the money is in the list. We really lean on our paid ad strategies post-launch to keep the momentum from our launch going. We spend money on ads daily, so we just amp it up for the week before to make sure the buzz stays strong. Website Lock Screen Pop Up Would Ask For Email To Get VIP Password I don't know a marketing team that wants to lock their website and lose out on that revenue for the day it was locked. But if the hype is executed well you will make up for it and a lot more on launch day. Keep it simple Running effective ads, email or any marketing for that matter requires that you have the same message from each channel to the product page you send them to. I don't like to overhaul my website for a launch but I want to make sure a few key areas of the website are changed so the customer experience is congruent from one channel to another. For example: When we send out the password to our lists, we add copy on the product page that says "You have unlocked access." Simple but very effective. What do you do after a product launch? 🍾 Hopefully, you are popping champagne and celebrating a record-breaking Shopify sales day! If it didn't go as well as you hoped, I still would drink the champagne. You can't let the bubbly go to waste. But, usually, if a product launch was not effective it means your offer wasn't great. Hype and Buzz are a core reason for your success but you must have a great product, a really irresistible offer, and an unbelievable customer experience. Remember, ask your audience way in advance to make sure your next product launch is actually something your target audience wants. Want help with your product launch? Apply now If you made it this far! Thank you, you are awesome. Let's go HUGE together. Sully Tyler

I am selfishly trying to answer that question. So, how long does it take to make money blogging online? The actual time to start making money depends on the following factors: 1 - Niche competition 2 - Keyword Research Skills 3 - Volume of content 4 - Quality of Content 5 - SEO Optimized Content 6 - Domain Authority (Backlinks) If you don't know what to do in each of these 6 areas you could blog for a long time and get NO RESULTS. When I understood that, I changed my entire approach to blogging. My goal is to start making money as quickly as I can. To do that, I need to start ranking as fast as possible. I built a simple system that has started to produce some results. I won't dive into my entire system, but I am using the following tools to get me ranked faster. Blogging Tools I Can't Live Without 1 - Keyword Research - RANKIQ 2 - SEO Optimization - SurferSEO (I could use rank, but surfer let's you share the content editor via a link to content writers) 3 - For blog content - WriterAccess (I am writing the in depth pillar posts and updates, but most I am outsourcing to writers) 4 - Backlinks - I hired a podcast booking agency to place me on 4 podcasts a month. On top of my normal podcast and case study interviews, this should help increase my domain authority quicker. I have a few other services I am testing out right now and will report back once the results come in. Here is why I like the concept of a money-making blog - No inventory - No service to fulfill - No employees (unless you want them) - No expert skills are needed (other than keyword research) - No podcast is required - No webinars or courses need to be made - Low cost to get started Here is what I don't like about blogging income Although making money blogging has a lot of positives, the time it can take to make money can cause many bloggers to quit. Search engine optimization and writing quality blog posts take time. On top of that, it can take a long time to rank to become a profitable blog and there is no guarantee you will actually make money blogging. If you are looking to make a full-time income quickly, I am not sure starting a blog is the best business for you to start. Having a full-time income or job while you start your blog is a great way to take the pressure off making money now because you can't just earn money the next day from organic traffic. Google doesn't work that way. No Inventory Or Capital Needed - Just Blog Post Just keep blogging, just keep blogging. I think that is what is so unique about this business. You just need to put in the right type of work consistently and you can build a business that doesn't require inventory or a lot of people. Yes, you can outsource writers but you don't necessarily need in-house employees or a large payroll. What is the best way to monetize your blog? (monetization methods) 1- Ads - Such as mediavine, Google Adsense (The challenge: you need high volume to make anything meaningful. For me, I am trying to build a blogging business that can drive 90% of its income from Google Adsense, Mediavine, or other ad networks. I believe this is the most stable way to build a profitable blog. It may not be the quickest or easiest because you need significant traffic, but I don't have to worry about the traffic converting on my offer or affiliate links. 2 - Affiliate offers - Any software, course, or product that I actually use to be successful I will offer to you as an affiliate offer. I think affiliate income is certainly quicker than ad income, but it seems less stable or guaranteed. You need to write blog posts that get your target audience to actually convert into a customer. I would rank this as more difficult to do, but can be quicker to make money blogging. 3 - Services - You can offer a service to your target audience. Such as consulting, writing blog posts, blogging strategy, or really any area you have expertise in. A service-based blog or business is the easiest and quickest to drive revenue, but it's harder to scale and can easily turn into a job. What should you focus on to make money from your blog? I am a simple guy, so I like to focus on big lever activities that will impact my businesses. For this blog, I believe the biggest things to focus on are the following. (it is a short list for a reason) 1 - Keyword research - My philosophy is to go after medium to low difficulty keywords in my specific niche. Write quality content from my unique perspective, this is a personal blog after all. My experience running an eCommerce brand and email marketing agency has top me that to be successful you need to have a strong position. If you just a digital marketing blog, it will be really hard to get traction. That is one of the reasons that I wanted to make this blog personal. 2- Blog faster - Just write more blog posts, guest posts, and any posts. Just keep writing and posting. I believe it is a numbers game and you need to write quality content at scale. Make money from your blog but have enough keywords for google to rank you. I think a lot of blogging efforts are wasted on tactics and hacks that don't have an impact. More blog visitors = more money blogging 3 - Gather emails - Email marketing has been at the core of both of my companies' success. My eCommerce brand drives 30-40% of income from our email marketing strategies. In addition to the revenue, it's truly the most valuable asset in that business. The same can be true for your own blog. Capture emails with one clear offer to build your list as your organic traffic grows. Not to mention, email is a great way to drive more traffic to your blog! Send a great email and see the traffic fly in, it's pretty awesome to watch. Check out my blog post on how I sold $238,790 in one day! I am assuming that because it takes time and effort most bloggers quit because they don't get blog traffic fast enough. Or they focus on the wrong things like website design, their logo, or keep refreshing their Adsense account (I am guilty of that as well). Just keep blogging to increase google traffic to a level that it can produce enough cash flow to be considered a "success." Why I would rather own a blog than have a job If done properly, you can cash flow as you build it to be an actual asset you can sell. This is the big reason. Cash flow and you can sell it. After selling my last online business, it changed my perspective on everything. Anything you spend work time on should be something that can be valuable to someone else, unlike a job. Being a professional blogger and doing that to make a full-time income is great, but why not build your own blog? Building your own blog will help you make the most money possible from your blog. The best way to sell your business is to build a profitable business and build it so it doesn't rely on you. You can always build better systems and dial in your operations once you have traction and decent money come in. Create content, make money and keep doing that until you have serious search traffic. My goal is to start outsourcing my content creation once I hit a consistent income and have a clear path to grow the blog. What would you consider "Real Income?" Let me know in the comments below. So, you want to start a blog and make some money from it. But how long does it really take to start generating an income?

Writing a blog post slowly is hard enough, how can you write a blog post fast and quality blog posts at that? Write blog posts faster by having a routine (same time, same place) For, I struggle to write blog posts during the day. I like to write blog posts as soon as my kids leave for school. My routine is the same, kids go to school and I sit down and write a blog post. It doesn't have to be the best blog post but it makes me feel accomplished to get my thoughts out of my head and written down. Then when my kids go to sleep, I will build upon and try to finish that blog post on the same day. Have a consistent blog writing process Having a blog template or style a blog writing process that is easily repeatable it will make your blog writing faster. I use to always look for custom images for my blogs, now I decided to make the same style of image for each blog that is still unique and on brand. I have it simply saved in Canva and it now takes me 1 minute or less for my perfect blog image. Use Surfer Seo to write your blog post As a new blogger, I struggled to really understand how to write a blog post fast and also a blog post that would rank for google. The Surfer Seo tool not only allows me to write a great blog post but also a blog post that will be seen by search engines. The All and Headings section show me exactly how many and what keywords I need to include in the paragraphs as well as my H2 headers. This alone acts as an outline for my blog and the keywords help guide the blog post. Surfer Seo gives you exactly what you need to write a blog post that will have it's the best chance of ranking on Google. It shows you how many words, headings, and all the keywords that you can write about. It is amazing. I am going to make a separate blog post reviewing Surfer in more detail. It is a necessity in my opinion. Give yourself a goal per week or per month The easiest way to miss your goals is to not set them. It sounds so simple, but I try to write at least 3 blog posts a week. Even if they aren't perfect, you can always go back and improve them. Keep writing and just hit publish. The best way to write blog posts faster is to stop being a perfectionist and just make the blog posts live. Your first 10, 20, 30 or 100 blog posts may not be great. Hopefully, it doesn't take me 100 blog posts to get it right. How to avoid writer's block and finish at least one blog post for the day? In addition to Surfer Seo which is the main tool, I use for writing blog posts fast (I am using it to write these blog posts). I started to use an AI tool to help build out blogs that are thin or need some inspiration. Robots are going to replace me? AI writing tools are on the market I will admit it, I don't love writing. In all of my businesses, I tend to be best at high-level strategic direction but awful at the execution of the tasks. I honestly would not be able to make this blog happen without AI writing software Jasper. When I found this software I thought. Well, that can't possibly help. But, I am writing this blog inside of Jasper as we speak. My brief introduction to AI blog writing I want to go over my real-world experience using it as a new blogger with the simple goal of writing great blog posts from my perspective fast and having an impact on my audience. My goal is to grow this blog from scratch to a real income and document my journey. I think I would have quit already if I didn't have support from the AI tool and Surfer SEO. First, some basics: You'll need to sign up for an account with Jasper. It's free to sign up and use the software. You can write as much or as little as you want; there are no limits. And, you can export your content in a variety of formats (including Word, PDF, and HTML) when you're done. Next, choose a topic. This can be anything that interests you or something that you're passionate about. For me, I'm passionate about online marketing as this is how I was able to break free from my job (well I was fired ha) and help small businesses grow. So, I tend to write about topics related to those things and my real-world experience as a father with multiple online companies. Take breaks to write a blog post fast (sitting for too long is not the answer) Now that you have a topic, it's time to start writing. The great thing about Jasper is that you don't have to write everything at once. You can write a little bit now and come back later to add more. In fact, I like to write in short bursts and then come back later to edit and add more content. I just moved into a new office that I strategically rented because it has a gym and pool in the same building. This makes taking a break so easy because I love lifting weights. If I feel at all unmotivated, I grab my headphones and go pump some iron. This makes me feel like I accomplished something and I feel better about sitting down to blog. To my surprise, it not only helps writing blogs fast, but it gives me ideas and new directions to take each blog post. As I talked about, I know what I want to talk about from my perspective but I needed help with the heavy lifting for each blog. Does it write the entire blog for me, no. But, I am able to write a blog post like this in 10-20 minutes and I just started with Jasper. So far, I am impressed. How do you actually use AI to write blog posts? To get started, simply click the "Create New Document" button on your Dashboard. This will open up a blank document for you to start writing in. When you're ready to start writing, simply begin typing in the "Your text here" box. As you're writing, Jasper will automatically suggest related topics and links that you may want to include in your post. Simply click on the "Insert" button to add these to your post. Jasper will also suggest images that you can add to your post by clicking on the "Add image" button. If you'd like to add one of these, simply click on the "Select" button. When you're done writing, simply click on the "Export" button and choose the format that you'd like to export your content in. That's it! You've now written a blog post using Jasper AI software in a fraction of the time it would have taken you to write it manually. A great way to write blog posts fast and monetize your blog Additionally, as I begin to build out this blog - I want to make sure that I write about how I monetize, what worked and what didn't work in the process. For this blog in particular I am going to monetize it with an Affiliate Link to Jasper. My ecom brand and my email marketing agency is our own product, so I thought selling other products was not for me. But, once I wrapped my head around only providing affiliate offers for products I am using it all started to make sense. Writing blog posts faster is great if you can monetize them Affiliate marketing can be a great way to monetize your blog and it works when you use the product. When you find a product that you're passionate about and use, it's easy to promote it to your audience. As an affiliate, you'll earn a commission for every sale that you make. If I can execute this properly it can generate an online income without having to be the one to make the product, service or software. This is the entire goal of this new blog. I will be providing updates of my income as things start kicking off! So, there you have it. Writing a blog post using Jasper is fast, easy, and painless. And, you can get started for free by signing up for an account today. So, what are you waiting for? Get started writing your next blog post now! One last thing, one of my main concerns when using Jasper was the fact that the copy could be plagiarized. Thankfully they have a plagiarism checker and I use it on every blog I write. Since I like to make these blogs unique I tend to only take ideas and snippets from Jasper. Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions. I will update as I write more blogs faster, I hope!

I don't even want to look at my Facebook ads manager to see how much we have sent on Facebook ads over the last 8 or so years. I can't remember the exact day that I started playing with Facebook ads. Facebook Ad Examples Great Facebook ads don't solve a bad product market fit They do however accelerate great product-market fits. Facebook has done a great job, and truly is one of the most powerful ad platforms in the world. I have spent millions myself for my own eCommerce brand. Running profitable ads on Facebook has been a key driver of our growth. How do you create a successful Facebook Ad Campaign? Are you looking to create a successful Facebook ad campaign? If so, you’re in luck! In this article, we will discuss what makes a great Facebook ad and provide tips for creating an effective campaign. We will also cover some common mistakes to avoid and explore how to measure the success of your campaign. Let’s get started! How to create an effective Facebook ad campaign When creating a Facebook ad, there are a few key elements to keep in mind. Facebook is one of the best ad platforms for targeting specific audiences, the most important part as a business owner is to make an irresistible offer and use direct response copy to get them to take action. If you have an impulse offer and great copy you are 80% of the way there to having a successful Facebook ad. I think the last 20% of having a successful Facebook ad is sending them to a website that is congruent with your ad. For example, if you are running a Facebook ad that says 25% off with this coupon and you send them to a website with a pop-up that says 10% off, that is going to confuse them and prevent them from buying. Or if you only have the coupon code in the ad but not on the actual web page, that can prevent them from buying. Keep the messaging the same from ad to website. This seems far to simple but is a massive piece of the puzzle when trying to run profitable Facebook ads. Measuring the success of your Facebook ad campaign So, how do you know if your Facebook ad campaign is successful? There are a few metrics you can use to measure the success of your campaign. First, look at your click-through rate (CTR). This metric measures how many people saw your ad and clicked on it. A high CTR indicates that your ad was relevant and interesting to users. Second, look at your conversion rate. This metric measures how many people who saw your ad took the desired action (e.g., clicked on a link, bought a product, etc.). A high conversion rate indicates that your ad was effective in driving users to take the desired action. Finally, look at your cost per click (CPC). This metric measures how much you paid for each click on your ad. A low CPC indicates that your ad was effective in driving traffic to your website at a low cost. MER and ROAS are my only focus For an eCommerce brand like my own the most important metric is ROAS or return on ad spend. We have well-defined target ROAS numbers to hit, if we don't hit them we aren't profitable. If they are too high, then we aren't pushing scale hard enough. Since the IOS update the metrics aren't reliable so we have moved to a MER metric which is stands for Marketing Efficiency Ratio which sounds cooler than it is. It is simply, the total revenue divided by total marketing spend. MER = Total Revenue / Total Marketing Spend (all channels) Example: Revenue for day is $40k / All ads for day is $10k = 4 MER or a 4X our ad spend. Let me know if this math doesn't make sense, but it helps us rely on actual dollars spent and not the individual ad platforms reporting. Mistakes to avoid when running a Facebook ad campaign There are a few common mistakes that advertisers make when running a Facebook ad campaign. First, they fail to set clear goals. Without goals, it’s difficult to measure the success of your campaign. Second, they create ads that are not visually appealing. Remember, your ad should capture users’ attention and make them want to learn more about your product or service. Third, they target too broad of an audience. Make sure you segment your audience and target those who are most likely to be interested in what you have to offer. Finally, they fail to monitor their campaign. Keep an eye on your metrics and adjust your budget or targeting as needed. There you have it! These are just a few tips for creating a successful Facebook ad campaign. Remember to set clear goals, create visually appealing ads, target a specific audience, and monitor your campaign regularly. And don’t forget to measure the success of your campaign using metrics like CTR, conversion rate, and CPC. Good luck! Do you use Facebook ads for your online store? Let me know in the comments below. P.S. Facebook ads can help hype your next product launch

Selling physical products through an online store traditionally means you need to stock your own inventory, have significant capital, and be an expert at inventory management. Buying the wrong inventory can make your cash flow vanish fast. This is one of the main reasons many look at Dropshipping vs Wholesale as a more affordable way to get into the Ecommerce Game. On top of the actual operations of running your online business, you will need to be an expert at Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Email Marketing, Customer service, SEO, and many more. You always need the traffic to drive conversions and sales. The traditional e-commerce business model of stocking your own inventory is difficult, but it can be extremely rewarding and have an amazing scale. The barrier to entry and capital investment it takes to scale can make it simply scary for someone looking to make an additional side income or start an online store from scratch. Dropshipping Vs. Wholesale - Both are great for Ecommerce Rookies Dropshipping makes eCommerce a more accessible business model for online store rookies The beautiful thing about dropshipping is that you don't need to buy and store inventory. Making inventory management and cash flow a nonissue. Although you will still need to ensure products are shipped by your dropshipped vendors and received by your customers. Acting as a middle man, means you never need to touch the product or store inventory. So why doesn't everyone run a dropshipping business? The three biggest problems with a dropshipping business are margins, trademarks, product quality, and shipping times to your customers. Product Margins Margins are often very thin in dropshipping, which means you have to sell a lot of products just to make a small profit. Running an online business requires high margins to pay for paid ads, fulfillment, and all the other hidden costs that fool you into thinking you are profitable. I have seen many eCommerce stores that think things are going well because revenue is high. It is only until they do their taxes do they realize that they actually lost money. Trademarks Just because you found a product to dropship doesn't mean you have right to sell that product. Many products you can find online through various product sourcing websites should not be sold, because they have trademarks on them. Shipping times Depending on the location of the dropshipper, you typically have no control over how fast they ship and how far away your customers are. Because of this, you may experience very long ship times that can easily tank your customer experience and store. Selling quality products on your ecommerce store is required. Selling unique branded products is ideal. Quality can also be an issue with dropshipping. Since you're not manufacturing the products yourself, you have no control over how they're made. And if the quality is poor, your customers will quickly become unhappy and may even leave negative reviews, which can damage your reputation. Finally, shipping times can be a real problem with drop shipping. Since the products are coming from overseas, it can often take weeks or even months for them to arrive. This can frustrate your customers and cause them to look elsewhere for their products. As a rule of thumb, the easier it is to start the harder it is to be successful. This is not to say that you can't make some quick cash doing this but it's unlikely with increased CPAS post IOS 14 that it's anything significant. This is how a wholesale business may be different (typically better margins and product control) A better alternative to dropshipping would be wholesaling legitimate branded products. . Regardless you are still battling thin margins and the actual manufacturers themselves. This makes it very difficult for a reseller to compete with the actual manufacturer themselves or the potential hundreds of different wholesalers selling the same products on their online store. You can still build a brand as a wholesale business, but it is difficult to truly stand out and have a differentiating factor. One way that you can be unique is to take your wholesale products and bundle them in unique ways. If your customers typically buy A, B and C product together you could bundle them together and offer a free gift with purchase or some unique reason for a customer to buy from you versus the company direct or another wholesaler. The hardest but highest margin method is manufacturing your own brand The best but most difficult method would be to design your own product and physically stock it at your warehouse or a 3PL. Manufacturing your products is the highest barrier to entry but gives you more margin and can help you build your unique brand position and competitive advantage. This is the path many of the most successful direct-to-consumer ecommerce brands have used like my own golf brand. How I think of dropshipping vs wholesale Dropshipping is best used as a way to learn how eCommerce works. Trying to sell ABC widget from your own store will help you understand what it takes to sell products, ship products, run paid traffic, keep your customers happy, and the entire process. I think the best way to think of dropshipping is as a training ground to learn ecommerce. Wholesale can be a legitimate way to build an online business. Depending on your online store, you may decide to store wholesale stock. This way you can control the order fulfillment and overall shipping process. At the end of the day, your customer satisfaction rate is the most important thing to having an eCommerce website that can last for years to come. Since you are selling branded products it can add trust to your online storefront.

Do small business owners really need email marketing? The short answer is yes. Email marketing is still the most effective marketing channel for building relationships and driving revenue. In fact, if you were to ever sell your online business, the biggest asset that you own is your customer and email list. Simple emails can be wildly effective For my own online store, we use a simple and wildly effective method of sending emails that start conversations, entice engagement, and drive revenue. Having a truly effective email marketing strategy makes paid traffic far more profitable. I like to think of it as having a real conversation with our customers and potential customers. Every business can and should leverage email no matter who says email marketing is dead...They just are doing it wrong. Email is like having a one-to-one conversation directly on your customers mobile devices What makes email marketing so effective? Unlike social media, consumers are used to taking action from emails in their email inboxes. In email marketing, you control the message and call to action. You're not at the mercy of an algorithm or News Feed. But, you still need to send relevant messages so you don't go to the spam folder! Email campaigns can go to many but feel personal at the same time Email marketing is personal. It's a direct line of communication from you to your customer. In email marketing, you can segment your list to send hyper-targeted messages. For example, you can send an email to customers who haven't purchased a certain product that exact product directly to their inbox. It's very powerful and many marketers have abused the channel and diminished the value of their email list by blasting coupons and deals over and over. If you are authentic and send great emails you will be rewarded over and over again. Try these Email Marketing Campaigns with your list Let me give a very simple example of an email marketing tactic you can use as part of a larger email strategy. It's so simple, that it will blow your mind. Every business wants to get their emails to go into the inbox and not the promotions tab. A great way to do this is to ask your email list questions. Simple Ask Email Campaign Example: Hey {first name}, We are working on 2 new products and want to you get your vote. Which one should we launch first? Reply back with your vote! A - Golf chipper B - 64* Wedge Thanks! Sully An email like this will elicit tons of customer engagement and replies. This will give you better insight on which product your customers actually want next and also show Google that your emails deserve to be in the inbox and not the promotions tab. Plain text emails are native to the platform and are a secret weapon in our email marketing strategy. Design can be powerful, but copy, engagement, and offer are king. Use this same tactic in your social media marketing The great thing about asking questions to your list is to encourage customers to engage and truly feel like they are part of the brand because they are! These A/B question-style emails can also be repurposed for social media marketing. They have been extremely effective in increasing our engagement on your social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok. More engagement means better reach, which for us helps lower our overall marketing ad costs. Customer acquisition through paid marketing is arguably the most expensive it has ever been, but strong email marketing can reduce your CAC and increase your profit. As a business owner, it gives me more control over the business because even if ads become unprofitable I still have a healthy list I can communicate with. Email marketing doesn't need to be expensive Email marketing is also relatively inexpensive compared to other marketing channels. You don't need a big budget to get started with email marketing. All you need is a laptop, an internet connection, and an email service provider like Klaviyo (eCommerce), Mailchimp, or Constant Contact. It should be one of the most cost-effective and highest ROI channels by far. If it is not, you need to take a look at your overall email marketing strategy. Email marketing can become expensive and laborious when you focus too much time on the design. Design is an important part of branding but it often can become the focus when the message you are delivering is actually the most important part. The old days of sending an overly designed email newsletter with 10 different calls to action are dead. Why you should ask your email list questions To recap, ask actual questions you want to know the answers to. By doing this you show google that your emails are relevant and it increases your chance of being moved from the promotions tab to the inbox. Combine this tactic with a true 2-way conversational strategy and you will be able to drive revenue, and engagement and own an asset that will pay you for years to come. If you're not sure if email marketing is right for your business, ask yourself this question: do you want to build better relationships with your customers and drive more revenue? If the answer is yes, email marketing is worth considering for your business.

I started my first business years before my first child was born and honestly, I wasn't expecting it to be a full-time business. I truly was passionate about it and was just having fun. That was until I was fired from my full-time job with a newborn on the way! That changed my perspective on not only being an employee but also being a parent. "Time is our greatest asset and I want to spend it with my kids" Being a parent is hard enough, but trying to build a direct-to-consumer golf brand as a first-time dad wasn't what I had planned for. It was the most challenging year of my life with the immense pressure of providing for my new family and trying to figure out how to scale my own business and provide an income at the same time. Looking back, getting fired was the kick in the butt I needed to make it happen. I was able to grow my simple online business idea into an established brand doing multi-million dollars online. The biggest lesson I learned, was to have multiple incomes that don't rely on each other. This way, if you do get fired...It's no big deal! Or if you are a working parent and want to become a stay-at-home mom or dad. There are many online businesses that you can start as a new parent, but not all of them will be equally successful. Some may take longer to get off the ground, while others may be more quickly profitable. These online business models can work for stay-at-home parents and also for those that are not new parents. Extra money makes most things in life a little bit easier. Not to say that any of these don't take hard work. Don't let the online gurus who sell online courses fool you. No business is easy, but the internet has been a great way for me to build a business and family life I can enjoy. So what is the best online business to start as a new parent or ideally before you become a new parent? The best online business to start as a new parent is one that doesn't take too much time to set up and get going. You don't want to be spending all your precious free time working on your business, so look for something that can be quickly and easily implemented. First, I think is best to define a realistic goal (Do you want extra income, do you want to replace your day job?) Make a super simple business plan before you choose one of the online business models below. My goal with this new business (the blog): Questions I ask myself when I am going to start a new online business: What do I have experience in already? I have had success in eCommerce and running an email marketing agency. I never built a content-based business like a blog, so for me, it is a new challenge. I hope I am up for the challenge. My main concern is my lack of patience! Time will tell. What do I want my day to look like? Work on my own schedule and when I want to, not have to. Low customer service and no service to fulfill. How much am I willing to invest upfront and ongoing? I am looking for low capital investment and low ongoing expenses. Once I have traction and some growth I can reinvest profits into content to grow. How will I make money from my online business? Affiliate marketing - Offering links to products I actually use in this business. Monetizing my organic traffic from blog articles through ads like Ezoic and Mediavine. Any agency referrals I send that are closed, I will receive a commission, Lastly, for anyone looking for coaching or consulting, I may work with them on monthly basis via a retainer. This is just a really short "business plan" or really just an outline of what you like to do that will help you find the type of business that will work for you. 1 - Start a blog ⛳⛳⛳⛳🏌️‍♀️ (4.5/5) Start Difficulty: Very Easy Time to monetize: Very Long How to make money (most common): Display ads, Affiliate offers, Sponsored posts Minimum Software required: Website (Wix or WordPress are most common), Ads (Google Adsense, Ezoic, Mediavine, Adthrive), RankIQ (Keyword Research) Challenges: Competition, easy barrier to entry, search engines can dictate your success or failure, and the time it takes to get real results. Technical hurdles: Must be able to set up a website, and install ads to monetize. Ease to sell the business (no exit is easy): Easy Expertise needed to grow it: Keyword research, quality SEO-focused content, a clear niche or brand positioning Why I like this business model: You aren't trading your time for dollars. If you put in the right work upfront you can scale it without needing inventory or employees. Keep writing great blog posts and over time the internet will reward you with organic traffic that you can monetize in several ways. 2 - Consulting business ⛳⛳⛳⛳⛳ (5/5) Start Difficulty: Very Easy Time to monetize: Very quick How to make money (most common): Exchanging your expertise for an hourly rate or monthly retainer Minimum Software required: None (You can get clients without a website) Challenges: Competition and easy barrier to entry. Hard to target ideal clients and must be willing to take phone calls. May be had to do with a full time job if clients want to talk with you directly. Technical hurdles: Low - Setting up a payment method for clients. Ease to sell the business (no exit is easy): Very difficult if you are the one doing the consulting. Expertise needed to grow it: You need to be a true expert at one specific thing. Maybe it's writing as a freelance writer, managing social media accounts for an online store, SEO, email marketing, Facebook ads, or something that you do for your day job. It is hard to try to become an expert and consult at the same time, do something you already are great at. Why I like this business model: Speed to cash. Consulting is the easiest way to start making money now. The challenge is building a clear offer that your ideal client will pay money for and you are trading your time for dollars. Running a consulting business is hard to scale and can turn into another job quickly. 3 - Ecommerce Store ⛳⛳⛳⛳🏌️‍♀️ (4.5/5) "Not Dropshipping" - Your own online store Start Difficulty: Very High Time to monetize: Medium - But cashflow can be difficult How to make money (most common): Selling physical products from your own website Minimum Software required: Website (Shopify, Bigcommerce, Wix, WordPress), Email Service Provider (Klaviyo), Email capture tool (Privy), SMS Software (Klaviyo or Postcript), Reviews App (Judge.Me) and the list can be much longer, but this is to get started. Challenges: Competition, Capital, and Expertise in Multiple Areas (Paid Traffic, Email Marketing, Fulfilment) Technical hurdles: Medium-High - Launching a store is "easy", but setting up everything to work smoothly can be difficult for newbies Ease to sell the business (no exit is easy): Medium - Scale can be amazing and exits can be large. I exited my own ecommerce brand in 2022 and it was life-changing, but it was 10 years in the making. Expertise needed to grow it: You need to be a true expert at many things. Product design, website design, brand positioning, Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Fulfilment, Customer Service, CRO, SEO, and Email Marketing. Eventually you can delegate if you have enough cash flow. Why I like this business model: Scale. Ecommerce has made more money than I ever thought possible. The ability to scale a physical products business is simply crazy. We sold over 1 million golf clubs! The size of exits can be absolutely wild because of the sheer scale, but it can be very capital-intensive. I personally needed to use working capital loans for 3 years and constantly reinvested profits back into inventory to scale. Overall very hard to do well, but can make a lot of money. 4 - Information Products and Online Courses ⛳⛳⛳⛳ (4/5) Start Difficulty: High Time to monetize: Medium - Good cashflow but hard to scale with paid traffic How to make money (most common): Selling an online course or e-book from your website Minimum Software required: Kajabi or Teachable (Online Course Platforms), Email Marketing (Convert Kit, Drip or GetResponse) Challenges: Selling a course is difficult and building a great course that creates transformation is very difficult. Must be able to market your course to drive revenue. Expertise in course creation paid traffic, email marketing, and offer creation is needed. Technical hurdles: Medium-High - Getting the various software to work well together and create a great user experience can be a challenge for some. Updating your course material as things change can create ongoing work as well. Ease to sell the business (no exit is easy): Low - Online courses in general are hard to scale to a large size and need to be updated by one expert typically. It is less common to see a course-based business for sale. Expertise needed to grow it: You need to be a true expert at many things. Product design, website design, brand positioning, Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Course Creation, Customer Service, Copywriting, and Email Marketing. Why I like this business model: Cashflow and low service fulfillment. Courses can be a great business model because you are selling a product without inventory and you don't have to fulfill a service. So its like e-commerce but with information. This makes it amazing, but I have seen many courses struggle to have a consistent scale. 5 - Print on Demand ⛳⛳⛳⛳ (4/5) Start Difficulty: Medium Time to monetize: Medium - Good for cash flow since you aren't stocking inventory. How to make money (most common): Selling dropshipped print-on-demand products through your website. Minimum Software required: Similar to Ecommerce - Print on Demand Partner (Printful, Printify), Website (Shopify, Bigcommerce, Wix, WordPress), Email Service Provider (Klaviyo), Email capture tool (Privy), SMS Software (Klaviyo or Postcript), Reviews App (Judge.Me), and the list can be much longer, but this is to get started. Challenges: Competition, Low Margin, Long Ship Times, Expertise in Multiple Areas (Paid Traffic, Email Marketing, Fulfilment) Technical hurdles: Medium-High - Launching a store is "easy", but setting up everything to work smoothly can be difficult for newbies Ease to sell the business (no exit is easy): Medium - Scale can be amazing and exits can be large. The margins and lack of control of shipping may be a hurdle for selling the company. Expertise needed to grow it: You need to be a true expert at many things. Product design, website design, brand positioning, Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Fulfilment, Customer Service, CRO, SEO, and Email Marketing., Eventually you can delegate if you have enough cash flow. Why I like this business model: Scale and cash flow. Print on demand is a great idea for those that want to learn e-commerce but don't want to risk capital to stock inventory or make their own brand of products in-house. 6 - Instagram Marketing ⛳⛳⛳🏌️‍♀️ (3.5/5) -Influencers Start Difficulty: Hard Time to monetize: Very Long - building up a following on Instagram that can earn an income is time-consuming, difficult, and very competitive. How to make money (most common): Sponsored posts and affiliate offers Minimum Software required: Instagram App and iPhone Challenges: Extreme competition, brands have so many options and prices for sponsored Instagrammers are lower than previously. You are 100% reliant on Instagram and Algorithim updates. Technical hurdles: Low - Just need to post photos and text Ease to sell the business (no exit is easy): Very difficult if attached to yourself. Typically Instagram is just a piece of the puzzle for a sellable business, not the entire business. Expertise needed to grow it: Must know what content goes viral and your target audience wants to consume. Why I like this business model: I personally am not a fan of this business model. I think it's great for having an online presence or maybe just a side hustle, but I wouldn't consider this a lucrative business or scalable as a stand-alone business. 7 - Digital Marketing Agency ⛳⛳⛳⛳🏌️‍♀️ (4.5/5) Start Difficulty: Very Easy Time to monetize: Very quick - one client can generate thousands of dollars per month. You don't need hundreds of clients to be a profitable business. A handful of clients can drive significant revenue. How to make money (most common): Typically a done-for-you service. Common types of digital marketing agencies include Facebook ads, Email Marketing, Website Design, Creative, CRO, and SEO. As an agency, you will provide the service that drives a specific result (typically an increase in revenue) and you are paid a monthly retainer, percent of ad spend or per video or photo that was produced. It depends on the service. Minimum Software required: None - You can get clients without a website. It becomes easier to have a branded website with a clear service offering. Challenges: Competition and easy barrier to entry. Hard to target ideal clients. Great clients are bombarded with sales messages from competing agencies daily. Difficult to scale as you need more experts to sign on more clients. Technical hurdles: Medium - Having a system to manage clients, manage employees, payroll, and also client invoicing can turn into a large operations demand. The more clients the more need for people to run the back-end fulfillment of the service and overall operations. Ease to sell the business (no exit is easy): Medium - A great agency with expert team members and clear systems and processes can be sold for a good multiple. Currently in demand as well. Expertise needed to grow it: You need to be a true expert that can drive real results for clients. You will need to become an expert at also hiring employees that can provide those same results for your clients. Must be able a true expert at direct sales and closing high-value retainers. Why I like this business model: Speed to cash and scale. Operating an agency can be rewarding but can be difficult to scale and can turn into another job quickly. Stick with one and go for it (remember you can start all these outside of your work schedule) The biggest challenge with all of these business models is the ability to stick with one and put in the time, effort, and energy to make it successful. I like to focus on things I truly love, then it won't feel like work. I once tried to sell a trending product, and I literally could not work on it. My only goal was money with that product and because of that, I quit. Do something that will fulfill you, the last thing you want is to build another job for yourself that you don't love. What type of online business will you start? An online shop? Consulting? A blog? Let me know what you think in the comments below.

There's no doubt that side hustles are becoming more and more popular. And it's not hard to see why. With the costs of living rising and the job market becoming increasingly competitive, people are looking for ways to make extra money. And what better way to do that than by starting your own side hustle? But the question is, what are the best side hustles in 2022? To help you out, we've put together a list of the 7 best side hustles in 2022. 1. Selling products online If you're looking for a side hustle that can generate some serious income, then selling products online is a great option. There are a number of ways to do this, including setting up an eCommerce website, selling products on eBay or Amazon, or even selling products through social media platforms like Instagram. Shopify is a great platform that makes it easy for anyone to start selling online through your own website that you own. 2. Starting a blog Blogging is another great side hustle that can earn you some serious cash. And the best part is, it's relatively easy to get started. all you need is a laptop and an internet connection. Once you've got your blog set up, you can start monetizing it in a number of ways, including through affiliate marketing, selling advertising space, or even by selling products and services. Just like this blog! We built it using WIX 3. Freelance writing If you're a good writer, then there's a good chance you can make some decent money through freelance writing. There are a number of ways to find writing work, including through online job boards, social media platforms, and even by contacting businesses directly. 4. Web design and development If you have experience in web design or development, then you can start offering your services to businesses and individuals who need a website. This is a great side hustle for anyone with some technical skills and an eye for detail. 5. Social media marketing Social media marketing is another side hustle that can earn you some serious cash. And the best part is, it's a side hustle that you can do entirely online. If you're good at promoting products and services on social media, then there's a good chance you can find some work as a social media marketing consultant. 6. Search engine optimization (SEO) If you're familiar with SEO, then you know how important it is for businesses to rank high in search engines. And if you can help businesses achieve this, then there's a good chance you can earn some decent money through SEO consulting. 7. Email marketing Email marketing is another side hustle that can be done entirely online. And if you're good at it, you can earn some serious cash. There are a number of ways to get started with email marketing, including through online courses or by contacting businesses directly. I liked this one so much that I started my own Email Marketing agency. You can keep it small 1-2 clients or grow it to be a larger company if you want. So, there you have it, the 7 best side hustles in 2022. So what are you waiting for? Start hustling!