Determine Whether You Have a Money-Making Idea Before You Waste Your Time By Amanda McCormick Updated September 16, 2016 ...
Determine Whether You Have a Money-Making Idea Before You Waste Your Time
Updated
September 16, 2016
Here
on the Entrepreneurs' site, we naturally focus a lot on ways of
making money online, while working from home, or even while
you sleep.
Part of the entrepreneurs' credo is finding a way to maximize cash
inflow, while minimizing expenses and effort.
And
if you've been reading this site for a while, you probably know a bit
about various methods for making money online: from building
a profitable blog to information
products to affiliate
marketing and
beyond.
The
problem is that, as you know, the road to ruin is paved with good
intentions. So many good ideas flounder or never come to fruition.
Not because they are bad ideas, but because they aren't tested and
refined.
In
the spirit of the Lean Startup, I want to throw open the doors on the
process of settling on, and testing the validity of a profitable
online business.
Over
the next few months, I'll be launching a few pilots, to completely
walk you through the nuts and bolts of running and building a
worthwhile online business. Below, you'll find the first round of
ideas that I will now go about testing and "validating" as
actual online businesses.
Not
every idea is great, and not every idea will survive, but every idea
will offer lessons. Lessons you can learn from. Mistakes you can
avoid. Techniques you can implement to help your own ideas success.
I
hope you'll join me on the journey.
Training/Coaching
and Information Products
Many
entrepreneurs will urge you to learn to profit
from your own expertise,
so this is the first route I'm going to pursue for my first online
business experiment. Coaching and information product businesses are
all about turning your expertise into either a book, video
or course that
people will pay you for.
In
the past few months, it just so happens that I've picked up a hopping
sideline business in helping bloggers move from Blogspot or Typepad
to the much more feature-rich WordPress platform. From working with
these clients I have learned a lot about the market for services
related to helping bloggers enhance their blogs.
My
first experiment will thus be revampyourwebsite.com,
a coaching business that will include instruction and individualized
attention from me.
I
have a good feeling about this one because I already make a good
chunk of my living teaching students and providing training to
corporate clients. Online education is a field that I know well so at
this point my main challenge will be shaping the class and finding
students at the price point I set.
Try
it yourself: do
you have a special expertise you feel might be in demand as an online
class?
Affiliate Marketing
A
couple of years ago I read about the burgeoning appetite among
readers for a genre of book called "New Adult" -- basically
contemporary romance which picks up where "Young Adult"
leaves off. It seems that a crop of writers are making a living in
this niche by self-publishing for Amazon Kindle, and their output, in
the wake of the runaway success of Fifty Shades of Grey, can barely
keep up with demand.
At
the time, I bought the domain newadultreview.com,
and I am now looking to see whether I can build demand for this
niche. My model here will be built around Amazon Associates.
Try
it yourself: Attach
your passion for a particular subject an Amazon Associate
store. Here's
how to get started.
Hybrid
My
next online business pilot came from a joke with a colleague who
introduced me to the Lean Startup. "Just call me the "lean
copywriter," I joked, after tweaking a copy line. Hmmm, I
thought to myself, I wonder if that domain is available? It
wasand
I snapped it up.
With
this business, I'm hoping to realize a hybrid approach -- both the
sale of an online course (probably hosted on Udemy),
with affiliate revenue from other courses and maybe Amazon products.
Try
it yourself: It's
much easier to set up a site and build revenue than you might
think. Here's
how to get started.
Muse Business/Drop Shipping
Have
you ever heard of a "muse business"? I hadn't until I read
Tim Ferriss' The Four Hour Workweek. The idea is to create a business
that requires little effort from you and supports the rest of your
lifestyle (which hopefully involves a lot of sitting on the beach). A
popular concept for muse businesses is "drop shipping,"
where you outsource the shipping and fulfillment process for products
to a third party. You sell, and you don't pay for inventory unless
someone is buying. Simple yet very intriguing.
This
one seems like the hardest one to pull off from my perspective but I
love a challenge and I thought about something I really love (dogs!).
Pawsitively Fourth Street is the result. I'll reveal more about how I
plan to roll this out in the future but for now consider it my most
experimental idea.
Rejected Idea #1: Blogging
I
constantly have ideas for amazing blogs -- and I'm constantly
inspired by people who build businesses around blogs. The problem? I
know all too well how much time and effort it takes to build a
profitable blog. So this is one idea I'm tabling for the future.
Carve
your own path: Just because I'm lazy, doesn't mean you need to
be. Here's
how to build a profitable blog empire.
Rejected Idea #2: Podcast
Podcasts
are super hot right now (there's even one about building a podcasting
business). I love the idea of running a podcast, but like my
reservations about blogging, I just don't feel I have the time right
now to devote to content.
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