LANE #4 - THE INTERNET



I'm not going to tell you that making money online is easy, but like all wealth creation, it's simple when you know how.

I created a six-figure turnover business, The Money Gym, using a very simple marketing plan, online, but I had to work at it. But every month the passive income element of that business grew and grew and I built it one block at a time.

The most wonderful thing about the internet, is the low level of intial investment required. If you have time and no money, you can learn to do it yourself (I did) or if you have more money than time, and know what you want to achieve, you can outsource most of it. Making money online is a bit like becoming a millionaire in five years - simple but not easy! You can make money online by:

1. Promoting your real world business more effectively using the internet - using an EFFECTIVE website to generate more leads, building an ezine mailing list, Search Engine Optimisation, and Google Adwords to explode your traffic.

2. Creating spin off automated products from your real world business - like our client Paula Gardner did with www.DoYourOwnPR.com. See the section below for ideas.

3. Creating a series of one page websites, each to sell one ebook (or other product) - either your own, or as an affiliate.

4. Creating traffic flow and then recommending good products and service to them via affiliate links and an ezine. Other instant income sources for this business model include Google Adsense links.

5. Creating a free/paid level membership site (just think.....17,000 people paying you #5 a month is #1.02 million PER YEAR)

Which of these you decide on will depend on whether you have a real world business or expertise or not. I like to recommend people work through these in order, starting from the quick and simple routes to more income immediately and building up to the bigger projects.

However, and this is the most important element for synergy and focus between all your projects, and the part that many novice (and even more experienced!!) internet entrepreneurs get wrong.

Always choose and then working around a niche topic/subject - hobbies, leisure activities such as rowing, rock-climbing, obscure cuisines or knitting for example.

Or choose a broad topic (business building for example) ideally one in which you have some expertise, but offer it for a really tight niche of people (reiki healers as opposed to holistic therapists) or female accountants, for example.

IS MY WEBSITE WORKING?

As soon as someone asks me this, we ask them to find out the following:

1. Number of unique visitors to this page per week

2. Number of unique visitors to the sales page per week

3. Number of sales if any

4. Number of new additions to existing database / mailing list per week

5. Average value of sale (so if you sell a t-shirt for $20 and one for $10, the average value of sale would be $15)

6. Average profit per sale

These figures will enable us to work out

1. Conversion of unique visitors to leads in %

2. Conversion of unique visitors to sales in %

3. The value of each subscriber

4. The Value of each visitor

We would also be asking you to look up the main referring key words that people are using to find your page. You will find your website host gives you a statistics package where you can find this information.

Then I would be asking you how much (i.e. what percentage) of your income do you want to come from which potential income producing activity around your niche.

Potential other income streams include:

a) 101 tips - free b) ebook - 17.50 - 27.50 (but do it in dollars not pounds) c) one-off teleclasses 27.50 - 27.50 but record it and resell later d) membership site - 17,000 people giving you 5 a month = 1.02 million per year e) one day workshops - sell for 147 discounted to 97 for early birds d) group coaching programme - 79.50 a month - how many can you handle? e) 1:2:1 premium coaching programme - 279.50 - 379.50 per month - how many can you handle? f) associate fees - say 5 new associates per year paying XXX each to become your associate g) physical product - XXX - dropshipped ideally from manufacturer/supplier to customer h) any other ideas?

Ok. our business model has been decided on, we have established our products / services and we have decided on subject matter and the group of people we are aiming at. Even when you are affiliate marketing with other people's products and services, it's made easier by knowing who you want to attract to your internet business.

SO WHAT DO YOU NEED, AND IN WHAT ORDER?

I have seen many types of websites come and go, many tools and bits of software, and we have finally honed the Money Gym site into a finely tuned money making and client attracting machine. This is our business model for The Money Gym for new (cold) traffic.

1. Blog gets us indexed in search engines and attracts new visitors. We Also use PR/SEO/Google Adwords

2. Welcome / Squeeze page to convert visitors to mailing list.

3. Offered chance to win good value prizes by referring friends - choose yes or no

4. If yes, refer friends, get prize, jumped to ebook sales page. If no, jumped to ebook sales page

5. Ebook sales page, bundled with free month at Silver level of membership site

6. Decide to buy ebook / trial membership and click "buy now" button

7. Offered chance to buy ebook / paperback version / 3 months free trial of site

8. Decide yes (click to buy) or no (just buy ebook) or join mailing list

9. If just click to close page, popunder box offers free Wealth Tips (101 x tips & ezine)

The most exciting thing of all is that, since putting in the above system and getting all the elements right, we are now looking at a systematic conversion of traffic to subscribers, to sales of the ebook, of sales of the upsell offer, to trial memberships, to retention of memberships. We have worked out which percentage of visitors will take which action, at every stage of the process.

And you know what that means, don't you? More traffic = more visitors = more conversions = more revenue = more profit.

We are looking at an automated, predictable money machine, and what's more all of that is just the FRONT END.

SO WHERE DO I START NICOLA?

Here's my guide to getting started, quickly and inexpensively. what to do, in which order.

1. Set up a blog. Used Typepad or Wordpress (outsource the latter)

2. Attach it to a mailing list via a good shopping cart (you will need it later)

3. Use a "refer a friend" script at the point of signup

4. Set up a private Google Group, put signup box on blog

5. Blog every day, or at least once a week (and get your blog fed onto your MySpace/Facebook profiles via an RSS feed)

6. Set up profiles on MySpace, Facebook, Squidoo, Ecademy as a minimum, and link to your blog

7. Send even more traffic using Google Adwords, learn how to make video for YouTube

8. Set up Google Adsense on your blog

9. Find some GOOD products and services with affiliate schemes (sell our ebook, earn #12.50 per sale) and recommend on blog side panel, social network sites. Use a good affiliate link cloaking service.

10. Start creating a community / membership site - free membership until you get to 1000, then set up next level, under #5 / $10 a month

And my final tip, just make the decision that 2008 is the year that you will make a passive income online. If you just make enough to take two holidays a year, wouldn't that be worth turning off the TV occasionally?

Have fun and send me your stories of success - even if it's just about making your first $1 online, I love those best!

And the best thing of all is that internet businesses are even more attractive to potential purchasers than real-world businesses as they are largely automated, so the multiple of turnover / profit that you can sell an internet business for, is even higher.

CONCLUSION:

I hope that I've shown you here that it's not only possible to become a millionaire in five years, but given you some ideas on which Wealth Highway Lane would be the most easiest for you to use, to achieve that. The great thing is that by laying out the numbers like this, it makes it less of a mystery and more like a plan.