People wanted me to go more into the money I have made on affiliate marketing, adsense, drop shipping, selling other companies products and selling my own products all over the world.
Everyone wants to make money online and live the DOT COM life style but it isn't easy. With every route you take their are advantages and disadvantages.
I will briefly break down some of the advantages and disadvantages. A lot of people are pitched this idea that you can start with $0 and then make money online. It is somewhat true but the lower the barrier of entry the more competition there will be.
Even though it may seem that your skills are extra ordinary it is tough out there. Maybe you are a web developer, who can work with graphics and do video editing. That gives you a leg up for sure. It gets you past about 95% of the population probably. But we are talking about the world population. So suddenly you aren't alone.
Low Barrier of Entry Route
- Adsense On YouTube - Most people have a phone and a computer already for their daily activities so suddenly filming stuff can make you money. It is work and you have to know how to tag stuff and put decent screenshots up. The level of production depends on what you are filming and what your target audience is. This typically pays out $1 / 1000 views. I have one channel that pays out $2 / 1000 views on average but it isn't a huge channel with crazy views.
- Amazon Associates - This is their affiliate program and I wouldn't concentrate on doing this. I throw these links under YouTube videos if I have no other higher paying option. It is like a last ditch effort. The payout is 3.5% but if you get a certain amount of sales during the month then your commission goes up to 6% I believe.
- Other Affiliate Programs - Other networks such as Commission Junction, eBay Affiliates, and ShareASale provide a service for businesses to manage payouts to affiliates. Sometimes you can negotiate your commission with the company your are selling for. I have one program where I was able to negotiate it up to 12% and it is a higher dollar item. Which is nice since I don't hold inventory or deal with shipments for those products.
- Dropshiping - This is often pitched as a way to make a bunch of money with no money invested. It isn't so easy. I dropship quite a bit of products but it is because I really worked my way into the situation. For one particular supplement line I sell I had sold thousands of canisters of a competing product. I decided to expand and the new company wanted to be able to make sales like I was and knew I could leverage my sales list to promote the new products to my existing customers. If I hadn't built up a reputation for a couple of years it would have been hard for me to negotiate that deal.
Medium Barrier of Entry Route
- Selling Someone Elses Product - Competition is high with this on sites like eBay, Amazon, and Bonanza so working your way into a situation where you can make a decent margin and make it worth your time is tough. It takes a lot of time to build up your seller status on those sites as well. I consider those sites as a leads generator for my own websites. I'm just on there to bring customers to my own websites.
- "Picking" - Picking is where you go find random stuff to sell online by going to Goodwill, yard sales, estate sales, discount bins at big box stores, auctions.....etc. I don't like this method at all because it is an everyday treasure hunt and you have to spend so much time listing individual stuff. Some people really like this but in a lot of ways I don't consider that a business that can be sold besides maybe inventory you have acquired. It is an inconsistent workflow and you can't really brand anything.
- Selling Your Own Small Product - Making your own product and branding it can be a good way to make money but you are more likely to get stuck with inventory this way. Often times you don't exactly know the market and how the market will react to your product so it is a little more of a shot in the dark. You can mitigate this risk by selling very similar products and building up a huge list and then making your product pretty similar and then marketing to them. That is a shorter bridge to cross.
- Self Label Existing Stuff From China - You can get a lot of stuff done in China where the product already exist and then you are slapping your own branding on it and then having it shipped over here. A lot of people do this with products and have it shipped straight to Amazon FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon). The risk in this is getting stuck with inventory and 20 people selling the exact same thing with a different logo on it. You don't have a lot of quality control with that either because even if you get a nice sample from them they might cut corners on the final run and suddenly you have 2000 cheaply made cutting knives or whatever sitting at Amazon's warehouse.
High Barrier of Entry Route
- Sell Your Own Product That Cost A Lot To Make - This is tough to be in a situation where you can do this. When I say cost a lot to make I mean more like $100,000 plus just to do an initial run of them. I have a friend with a shoe company and his first run was $250,000. You are on another level if somehow you can get this done and actually sell the product effectively. Then instead of doing affiliate programs and all that. Your are running the affiliate program and have people running around softening up the market and selling your product for you.
- Sell Marking and Consulting Classes / Seminars - The reason I put this here is because I'm talking about these things that are done on a very high level with a lot of money injected into the ad campaign. Like Tai Lopez. Millions of dollars would have had to be injected into his YouTube ads before he would have potentially seen a profit. The Robert Kiyosaki seminars are a little like this too. A lot of advertising goes into promoting the whole thing. If you are going to replicate what these guys have done you have to have a lot of money or a huge credit line. These guys might give you way less information then I would give you about truly making money online but my word would never carry weight to the masses like those guys because I'm too ordinary and don't live in a mansion.
Here is a small example of some of the money coming into one of my business accounts where I get some Adsense Payments and Affiliate Marketing deposits. I'm not rich off of it but in a lot of ways some of that stuff is truly "Passive Income" because if I don't upload videos to my other YouTube channels for awhile I'm still making money off stuff I uploaded in 2012. The same with the Affiliate stuff. I already deployed the links and they are out there working 24/7 365.
One thing I referenced in the video is to not rely on one platform for your sole income. eBay, Amazon, Bonanza, Esty, or any affiliate program website could kick you out at anytime. They do it all the time. They aren't your business partners and you are just a number to them. I know that sounds negative but unfortunately it is the truth. Just search around Google and YouTube for what to do if you get kicked off of eBay. People's entire businesses are built around going "Stealth" and getting people back on eBay and Amazon. That tells you it happens all the time.
Summary
Making money online is always interesting to people. A lot of work can go into it and with the increased competition online in a lot of ways you have to be at the top of your game to really make it. And always look out for people who primarily make their money telling other people how to make money. More often than not they only know general info and just use every Jedi mind trick in the book to sell a dream.
Let me know what elements of this you want me to go into more detail about in a future post. Thanks for reading!
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