1) BUILD AN AUDIENCE
It’s no surprise that my top tip is that you have to build an audience of people who know, like, and trust you. I recently created a video where I shared with you my recurring revenue in my business, which at the time was about $20,000, and even in that video, I said to you I sell coaching and online courses, but all of it is based on the fact that I have built an audience.
Something that you’ve got to remember is that if people don’t know who you are, they can’t buy from you. They can’t buy your product. They can’t buy your service. If your business, or you as a brand, has no online visibility, it makes it really difficult for people to find what it is that you’re actually selling.
A lot of people focus most of their time on building the product or website and neglect to actually go out there and build their audience. This is why so many of these online businesses fail, building an audience of people who know, like, and trust you should be your number one focus when you are starting out.
The whole reason I’m doing what I do today is that I was given the advice to “get online and build an audience”. And since then, I’ve been able to grow to these income goals because I’ve so consistently built my audience.
It also needs to be an audience of people who actually are struggling with the problem you solve or need the product that you sell. It’s not enough to just build an audience of random people. You want to be building a focused, engaged, ideal audience of people who, as I said, know, like, and trust you, but also are probably going to be the ideal candidate for whatever it is that you are going to sell. And of course, the way in which you do that is by creating niche content, whatever area your product is going to sit in, creating niche content around that is going to help you bring in people, interested in that niche. And therefore interested in that product.
2) FIND A NICHE YOU LOVE
You need to choose a niche that you actually enjoy.
The fact of the matter is, if you don’t enjoy what you do, it’s going to be really difficult for you to learn all the things that you need to learn about your niche and continuously speak and teach and share about that particular thing.
You make it really difficult for yourself when you start with money in mind. So many people want to start a particular business because it’s the profitable thing to do, but if you don’t have any interest in that particular area, I guarantee you, it’s going to be extremely unsustainable for you.
Why would you put yourself through the pain of creating content about something that you absolutely hate or that you have no interest in?
So when it comes to making money online, yes, there are opportunities for you to just “make money fast”, but to build a sustainable business you need to find something that you’re truly passionate about.
3 ) MASTER YOUR NICHE
It’s not enough to just have surface-level knowledge about whatever it is that you’re trying to sell, or promote, or build a brand around.
Even though I’m someone who advocates, building a simple business and not really working that hard, I still spend a lot of time learning about my niche because I’m just so passionate about it. You have to be willing to put in the work and what the work usually involves is learning everything you possibly can about the thing that you are going to sell.
Whether it is that you create a course, a coaching program, a membership, or a product, when you’re creating niche content to build this audience, the more that you know, the more that you will grow. Why? Because people will just simply trust you more.
If you’re just showing up on Instagram, saying things that people have heard over and over and over again, it’s going to be really difficult for you to stand out. And when it’s difficult for you to stand out, it’s difficult for people to choose you as the one that they want to purchase from. Whereas when you go the extra mile, meaning that you actually master your niche, you will stand out naturally from the crowd. And the way that you’ll be able to articulate it with confidence and conviction will make you even more trustworthy.
You can literally learn everything. You can rent books from the library. You can go onto YouTube (there are 300 hours of content uploaded every single minute)…You’re telling me you can’t go onto YouTube and find a bunch of stuff to learn about your niche. You can go to audiobooks and listen to audiobooks. You can download courses. You can go to Skillshare. You can go and learn from mentors. Do not try to tell me that you don’t know enough about your niche because all you’ve got to do is actually go out there and learn.
4 ) SELL A SOLUTION
Create solutions, not more information. So many people when it comes to making money online, try to shove information into people’s space and then expect them to be excited to consume it. People don’t necessarily want to consume. They want to have a solution to their problem. They want to have a transformation.
So, when it does come to creating whatever product it is that you’re creating, make sure it’s focused on providing a solution or a transformation that isn’t just bulked with information. Through the process of learning about your niche and mastering your niche, you should be looking for the shortest point between two points: your customer’s problem and the solution that they desire to have. However you get them there is your business and is your product, and is the thing you will sell and make money online from. Just try to make that as succinct as possible.
5) VALIDATE YOUR PRODUCT
A lot of people will spend a lot of time creating a product or service based on their own assumptions of what will work. This isn’t going to help you in the long run and it’s going to be extremely detrimental to your brand.
Make sure, whether it be through working with free clients or giving it to people to test first, that the system or the method that gets someone from problem to transformation actually works. Make sure that you have done the proper research.
When you fully love what you do and, therefore, master your niche, all of this becomes easy, but in order to make good money online, the thing that you are selling needs to work. You need to be able to generate transformations and therefore testimonials from people that it has worked for before.
So before you go out there and start selling it, make sure it actually works.
6) FRICTIONLESS CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Why so many people struggle to make money online is because they literally want their audience to do a Tough Mudder run before they can actually purchase their products. It’s like decoding the DaVinci. Honestly, you have to make your experience from getting someone from say your content to your product as seamless as possible. Creating a seamless customer experience is about getting someone from not knowing you at all into someone who is like a raving diehard customer. There needs to be a very simple process between those points to make it super simple for your customers to buy.
You really need to build a system within your business to essentially sell your products. The fewer hoops that people have to jump through, the more money you will actually make.
7) YOU HAVE TO SELL
I don’t consider myself to be a sleazy salesperson, but I am good at selling because selling to me is just effortlessly communicating to you an invitation for where you can go next if you would like to continue this journey with me.
You’ve got to get good at self-promotion. You’ve got to get good at actually articulating to people what it is that they can buy. That becomes a part of that frictionless customer experience.
You literally have to spell it out for people. Whatever you’re trying to sell, once you’ve built that audience and taken all of those steps between, the final piece of the puzzle really is just communicating how or what they can buy from you.
Because if you don’t sell to them, they’re probably not going to buy it.
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