Finding your business niche and idea

The key to starting an online business is to find a niche that will pay you well into the future and without much competition.

The business niche that you choose will be based on your experience, qualification or passion.

Ask yourself the following questions when finding your niche and idea:

Is my target audience willing and able to pay for the product or service I am selling? If it is ‘no’, find another idea that pays. For example, university students may want your product or service but they may not be able to afford it.
Who are my competitors? Some level of competition is good. This is an indication that there are people interested who are prepared to buy.
Why you and not them? Are there too many successful businesses offering this? How can I differentiate my product or service from these businesses? What’s my unique selling point? If you cannot differentiate your product or service in value and benefits, find another business idea.
How much time, money and effort do I need to invest to make this work? If my business idea takes a year and $20,000 to start, do I have the time, money and effort for it? Is it better to go for a different idea that requires a lower time and money commitment?
Is my product or service something I am excited by or passionate about? (If you’re not excited by your own business idea, don’t expect your target customers to be.)
Can I explain my business idea in one sentence? Can I fit it into this tagline “[product/service] for [specific target market] to [the promise/ tangible outcome]”. For example, a 5-by-5 framework for business owners to increase their sales by 50%. If you can’t explain your idea in one sentence, move on to your next idea.

Validating your business idea

Looking through your list of business ideas that made the cut, you need to move to the next stage of evaluating and validating your ideas against various criteria (feel free to include other criteria):

Am I excited by the platforms or marketplaces I am using to promote and build my audience around this business idea? (Platforms include Facebook, eBay, etc.)
Does any of the business ideas truly interest or excite me? Can I see myself doing it during weeknights or weekends even if I am tired?
Do I have the required skills and experience to execute or implement this business idea?
Do I have the commitment to sustain this business idea for at least two years?

Making money online

Online businesses make money using the following sequence, which you must optimise at every stage:

Traffic – You actively attract visitors or prospects to your website with free or compelling content or paid advertisements. It’s an attraction – how new people know or learn about you and your products and services. Attraction strategies include public speaking, joint ventures, generating referrals, advertising, writing articles and guest blogging, search engine optimisation, networking and events, and social media – you only need to concentrate on one strategy when you are starting out.
Lead – You offer valuable freebies in exchange for your visitors’ email addresses, converting them into leads. Ideally, this stage is more than sign-ups. It’s about changing or transforming the state and mindset of the visitor so that they’re pre-framed to do business with you.
Trust – You build relationships and trust by providing useful and authoritative content through regular engagement and interactions. You consciously move them from cold leads to hot leads, ready to purchase from you. At this building relationships stage, you will do everything to foster a connection with your potential clients. You foster the connection through emails, videos, webinars, live events, surveys, free downloads, etc.
Convert – You offer products and services (solutions) for sale to your warm or hot leads. These products and services genuinely help your customers solve their problems, converting them to paid customers. You could start with inviting people to free initial seminars or events. At this stage of converting prospects to paying clients, you have to support them to identify the transformation they desire, help them identify what’s holding them back, assist them in developing a strategy for getting what they want, make a connection between what you offer and the strategy you’ve outlined together, and invite them to become your client or to buy your offer.

Remember, you are not just selling; you are also serving.

The following quote says it all.

“I slept and dreamt that life was a joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” (Rabindranath Tagore)

Internet traffic is the lifeblood of an online business. Once people come to your website as visitors, you should gather their contact details and convert them into leads so that you can sell solutions to them in the future. When these leads buy from you, you have converted them into paying customers.

To maximise your traffic, leads, and conversions (TLC), you need to learn about search engine optimisation (SEO), internet marketing, affiliate marketing, and various other methods of online promotion. Forming online relationships with other people is beneficial.

There are many things you can sell on your website and they include:

Digital products – Templates, music, software, photography, mobile apps, and games.
Education – Coaching, courses, books, eBooks, and seminars.
Physical goods – Art, electronics, clothing, supplements, and food.
Services – Financial, programming, designs, copywriting, and marketing.

Types of content management systems

WordPress is a very popular open-source content management system that makes it very easy to start an online business. Other systems include Joomla and Drupal. All three of these systems have a lot in common, each with their own pros and cons.

In addition to open-source content management systems like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, there are the close source DIY website builders like Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace. With these closed source systems, there are limitations as to what you can do.

A summary of all these content management systems can be found here.

WordPress examples will be used in this guide.

General steps to launching your online business

The general steps for you to launch your online business include the following:

Brainstorm and select a potentially profitable business idea that solves a burning problem for your potential customers who are willing and able to pay you.
Conduct in-depth due diligence of your target niche market and of your potential customers.
Quickly validate your business idea by surveying, prototyping, and selling your minimum viable product or service to your potential customers as a proof of concept.
Validate any feedback received from your proof of concept.
Improve and commercialise your product or service, especially if the numbers are right. (If not, select another business idea and repeat these steps until you have found one that will most likely generate profits for you.)
Build a ‘good enough’ (not poor quality) website (see below) and fill it with great content. Use words and phrases your visitors will find familiar. Speak as they would speak, if you will. Take a cue from the types of calls to action your direct and indirect competitors are using. Font, color, and images all have emotional values. Be purposeful when choosing them. Writing copy that tells a story can help you make an emotional appeal.
Start attracting visitors to your website and convert them into leads; more importantly warm or hot leads. Offer a free gift where people only pay for shipping. Push visitors to subscribe to your email list or download a relevant free resource. Once they’ve made a small commitment, they’re more likely to make a bigger commitment. Use visual cues to direct visitors down the page, especially if you have valuable product information below the ‘fold’.
Encourage social sharing at every stage. Market and promote your products or services to your leads by regularly engaging with them.
Optimise your sales and profit by converting your leads into paying customers. Offer a welcome discount for first-time buyers, product samples, an unexpected free gift to go along with an ordered product, etc. Offer a tripwire, an irresistible and low price product designed not to make money, but to change the relationship from casual visitor to the actual buyer. Have an influencer or expert endorse or provide a testimonial for your product. Show the number of people who have purchased recently or how many people are currently viewing the product. Offer limited-time-only discounts and deals. A countdown to when the discount or deal ends can spur purchases. In the cart, show how much the visitor saved with a call to action to check-out before the savings expire.
Offer free express shipping or something similar to those who purchase before a certain time of day.
Upsell other products and services to these paying customers, especially higher-priced items. Send appreciation cards and notes to existing customers.

General technical steps to build a website

Steps to build a website include the following:

Find a niche that you have practical solutions for solving your potential customers’ problems. By solving their pain points, your website will attract readers or traffic. For ideas, go to Trend Hunter, Kickstarter, Uncrate, and Fancy without leaving out social media platforms.
Select either a self-hosted WordPress site or a free page on com. If you are a blogger who does not care about making money, go with WordPress.com. If you are a blogger trying to make blogging as a profitable career, you will want to use self-hosted WordPress website that will cost money to set up. Note that these costs are tax deductible if you are a start-up business.
Pick the right domain name from Namecheap or GoDaddy. If you choose the wrong domain name, it can be a hassle to switch later on without hurting your brand and search rankings. That’s why it’s extremely important that you choose the best domain name from the start. Keep in mind the following: stick with .com; use keywords in your domain name that will tell search engines what your website is about; keep it short (aim for no more than three words); make it easy to pronounce and spell; keep it unique and brandable; avoid hyphens; avoid doubled letters; avoid “cutesy” names and abbreviations; stay clear of copyright issues; protect your privacy with a privacy service; and leave room to expand.
Choose a WordPress hosting service like Bluehost, Dreamhost, HostGator or SiteGround. There are different types of WordPress hosting options available such as free, shared, virtual server hosting, dedicated and managed hosting.
Install WordPress on your website using MOJO Marketplace, Softaculous, QuickInstall (preferred), Fantastico, or file transfer protocol.
Select a WordPress theme that enables what you are doing. (As an analogy, WordPress is the basic engine of a car and the WordPress theme is the design and style of the car) Your chosen WordPress theme should complement the content of your website. For example, if you are starting a blog on politics or social issues, you want a WordPress theme that improves readability. When selecting your WordPress theme, strive for simplicity.
Choose a mobile responsive WordPress theme across different screen sizes and devices, browser compatible, supports all popular plugins, multi-lingual ready (use WordPress Multi-Language plugin), and search engine optimisation friendly.
Check ratings and reviews for the WordPress theme. Review Elegant Themes, StudioPress, Themify, and Themes for WordPress themes.
Verify your WordPress themes. It’s a quick service that lets you verify WordPress themes for security and code quality. This service is free and compatible with Joomla templates.
Install plugins for WordPress. A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that extend the functionality or add new features to your WordPress website. There are different categories of plugins: security, backup, performance, marketing, analytics, monetisation, styling/design, comments, social media, contact, get found/ search engine optimisation, landing page, etc. Questions to ask before installing a plugin: (1) Is the developer a well-known contributor? Do they have other popular plugins? (2) Is the plugin updated often? (3) Has the plugin been downloaded/installed enough times by other people? (4) Has anyone said they had a drop in performance when installing and using this plugin?
Install and setup Google Analytics to your WordPress website by signing up for your free Google account. The best way to know your audience is through your Internet traffic stats and Google Analytics provides the information for free.
Setup a professional email address for your business. A professional email is one that has your business name in it (e.g., [email protected]). [email protected] does not look professional.
Content is king. Without high-quality content on your website, no one is going to visit or recommend your site. Good and fresh content will rank highly in Google search results.

Free tools to get you started

Some free tools that you could use to get your website started.

Email marketing: MailChimp (useful for capturing the contact details of your leads and send good-looking emails to your leads, turning leads into customers)
Social media management: Buffer (useful for schedule posts across multiple social channels)
Business development: Streak CRM (useful for scaling your outreach and cold emailing)
Design: Canva (free design templates) and Pixlr (free Photoshop alternative)

Writing for a blog

Find your topic ideas – Search for the right keywords. See what posts are already out there and determine what’s missing. Visit websites like Buzzsumo.
Define your target audience – Define whom do you want to reach out and what benefits will your post-offer to your visitors and readers.
Write an outline – Your posts must go deep into a single subject and should be well-organised and broken into clear, logical sections.
Write your post – Expand on your outline. Edit, rewrite and edit some more. Take time to write an excellent post than to churn out a substandard post every day.
Add internal and external links – Your post should include outbound links for reference and internal links to related content on your website.
Make sure that your post is search engine optimisation (SEO) compliant – your post should be at least 1800 words, contain good subheadings, logical, grammatically correct, and easy to and read or skim.
Publish and share post – Share your new post on social media and with people on your email list. You may want to have a special download to go with your post that is only available to your email list.
Find influences that will promote or share your post.
Offer to write a guest post on similar blogs as yours.
Continually improve and update your post and website content.

Sell physical products online

Launching an eCommerce business

If you have a business idea for your own product, start your own online store or use an existing platform or marketplaces like Amazon, eBay or Etsy. These existing online marketplaces are ideal for people wanting to take their first foray into the retail market without the risk and cost.

Products you sell online must be:

Unique – One of a kind product tend to have higher profits. Beware of copycats.
Attractively priced – Since your product will be listed alongside a bunch of others on existing marketplaces, if you offer the best price you’ll have a higher chance of completing the sale. Note that it’s not about the lowest price but the perceived value you give or offer. If it’s a unique product, you can go up much as the market is willing to pay. Do not undermine or short-change your value and always charge the fair price even if your product is expensive.
Well expressed in terms of value proposition and benefits – If you can clearly convey the value-add for and benefits of your product, it will sell well. Avoid conveying product or service features.
Presented with high-quality definition photos or pictures – The type and quality of photos you use on your website are absolutely crucial in attracting visitors to click on the buy button on your website. Visit websites like Gratisography, Kaboompics, Pexels, PicJumbo, Pixabay, Splitshire, ThinkStock, and Unsplash for your photos.

An online eCommerce store isn’t very passive. Once you’ve made a sale to your customer, you have to pack and ship the ordered and paid goods as soon as possible. You also need to keep your customers happy and manage any questions, non-delivery, returns, and payment fraud.

How to start an eCommerce website

Select your product niche after conducting a market search and evaluation. You can’t really start selling any product until you know what you want to sell. If you pick the wrong niche or the wrong set of products, you could be shooting yourself in the foot well before you even begin. In selecting your product niche, select a target market that is not completely saturated and super competitive. If you choose a very narrow niche and you are the best at selling these products, you can easily outsell larger branded shops. You should always focus on selling to a niche market rather than trying to satisfy everyone. Pick an area where you have expertise and interest, and can effectively position yourself as a specialist retailer or go-to person. It’s about product differentiation that meets customer’s requirements. If you offer everything, it’s impossible to compete with big online shops like Amazon and eBay. But in a small niche, you can differentiate yourself and really stand out.
Identify the product you want to sell. The product should be easy to pack and ship and not be fragile. It should not take up much physical space, is timeless and sells from $20 to $200. Understand the legal and custom requirements of online retail before you start to sell online. Some products cannot be sold online. Others have age and import restrictions, or tax and intellectual property implications.
Identify who are your customers who will buy your products. Knowing who your customers are and understanding their requirements and pain points will help you narrow down the appropriate product that will meet your customer’s requirements and needs.
Evaluate or assess the product demand by your potential customers. When you first start out, avoid common items like T-shirts or really strange and obscure product ideas. Use Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, Google Search Results, eBay/ Terapeak (eBay product research), Amazon/ Jungle Scout (Amazon product research), and comparison shopping engines like Amazon Product Ads, Google Shopping, Pricegrabber, Pronto, Shopping, and Shopzilla.
Once you know that there is a good and sustainable demand for your product, assess your competition. Do your competitors have quality websites? What Google ranking do they have? Do they offer a good shopping experience? What is their pricing? Find out what they do well and what they do poorly. Buy their products and figure out how you can improve upon them. Use tools like Semrush and SimilarSites to uncover information about your competitors.
Test and validate your product idea and its value proposition and benefits with your friends and potential customers. Get a feel for whether your product is a winner or has legs. You may also want to consider buying a small quantity to sample and try selling them on eBay to gauge customer demand. You are testing the market.
Source your product locally or overseas using wholesale pricing once you know that your product is a winner with the customers you want to sell to. If you source products overseas, there are customs and importation taxes and processes to deal with. When importing products, there are longer lead times, quality issues, relationship building, language barriers, time zone issues, contracting, payment terms and minimum orders to worry about and manage. Are you shipping your products by air or sea? Do you have a customs agent to help you with documentation, entry, duty, and bond? Visit websites like SaleHoo, a directory containing 2.5+ million of wholesale products from 8,000+ wholesale suppliers.
Determine whether you want to carry or hold inventory or just drop-ship. Drop-shipping is a type of online store where you are only responsible for taking orders and handling customer service. Once an order is placed on your website by your customers, your vendor will be automatically notified and handles the shipping and delivery of product to the customer. You should ensure that the ordered product is actually delivered to the customer within the agreed time frame and condition. Find drop ship vendors using websites like WorldWide Brands and Doba.
Are you buying wholesale or from a middle-person? Can you distinguish between the two?
Start your own online store completely from scratch using WordPress to build your own sales funnel or use existing eCommerce marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy that can potentially offer you instant sales. These marketplaces charge commissions on each sale. They have strict terms and conditions that are ever changing. Diversification is key – don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Start off with existing marketplaces to learn the ropes and gradually move your business and traffic to our own online website with a uniquely branded web address.
Your ultimate goal is to set up your own online store platform. The biggest mistake most people make is not choosing the right platform for their online eCommerce store. There are two types of eCommerce platforms: (i) BigCommerce, Magento, PrestaShop or Shopify are fully hosted eCommerce solutions where you just log in and immediately start selling where they can get expensive with fees and commissions; or (ii) WordPress + WooCommerce (free plugin) that offers flexibility but requires some setup.
To setup your WordPress + WooCommerce store, you need to have your own
After buying your domain name and web hosting, install the WordPress open source content management system and
Select and customise your own WordPress theme. Themes control how your WordPress website will look to the users when they visit it including how your products are displayed for sale. There are thousands of paid and free WordPress themes available for online stores.
Set up your WooCommerce store by downloading the free WooCommerce plugin. Before you can start selling, there are a few things like currency, payments, and shipping information you need to set up. WooCommerce needs Internet pages for cart, account, shop, and check out. WooCommerce can be used to sell both digital downloads and physical goods that need shipping. By default, WooCommerce comes with support for PayPal, PayPal Standard, and Stripe payment gateways.
Add products to your online store. Set up your ‘Product Categories’ first. This allows you and your customers to sort and browse products easily. Then add ‘Product Data’ information like description, pricing, inventory, shipping etc. Then add a main high quality, high-resolution product image, and a product gallery. Repeat the process to add more products as needed.
Enhance your online store with other WordPress plugins. There are over 46,000 WordPress plugins available. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin, a list of 24 must have WordPress plugins for business websites and another one with 20+ best free WooCommerce plugins.
Market and advertise your online store and drive traffic to it. You may also want to see these 19 actionable tips to drive traffic to your new WordPress site.

Drop shipping

If you want an easier way to set up an eCommerce store without having to store and ship physical inventory yourself, you may want to drop ship your product where your supplier or third party fulfillment company does the warehousing and fulfillment for you.

You could use Amazon’s Fulfilled by Amazon service. Basically, you buy products in bulk and ship them directly to Amazon for them to a warehouse and fulfill on your behalf when an order is placed. When you sell the products on your web page, you notify Amazon. Amazon packs them up, ships them out and sends you the money (minus Amazon’s fees).

Online boutique for men and women

If you know what people want in terms of clothing and accessories, start on online boutique.

It entails the sale of clothes, shoes, and other fashion accessories.

Online health food and vitamin store

If you are passionate about helping people live healthily, you can start your own online health food and vitamin store.

You make money from selling health products and supplements to people.

People all over the world are becoming more health-conscious. They are trying to use vitamins to prevent illness as a much cheaper alternative to expensive prescription drugs and health care bills. This is why the demand for vitamin supplements is high, leaving huge opportunities for you to sell these products online.

Arbitrage

If you know how to source and buy products below their full value or price, you can sell them for a product on marketplaces like Amazon and eBay.

Once you find your product niche, you can set up a business system to arbitrage products (i.e., buy low and sell high).

The key is to find a particular product or niche that you can earn profits.

You could also source products offline in opportunity stores and garage sales and sell them online for a profit.

Reseller of hardware and software

If you can find a distributor who is willing to sell to you items at discounted prices and in bulk, list these items online for sale as a reseller.

Selling licensed products

If you are able to source licensed or branded products, you could sell them on your online store for a profit.

Every new video game, TV show, and anime has the potential to spark a brand new cult following.

You need to find and negotiate licensing deals and pricing.

Sell digital products you’ve made (or acquired)

There are two methods of creating the perfect product to sell online.

You can create your own product from scratch. This can be really expensive with a lot of hours of hard work. You need the talent and commitment to do so.
Use high-quality private label rights (PLR) products. This is a lot less expensive and you can set up killer products in days, not months or weeks. You could rebuild these products as you own and sell them for a profit.

If you have the skill and experience to create digital products (e.g., digital comics, films, software or even a Microsoft Excel template), you can sell these digital products on digital marketplaces like ClickBank, CJ Affiliate, EPCBoss, Gumroad, JV Zoo, Offervault, PayLoadz, Warrior Plus, and WeLoveAffiliates, or on your own online eCommerce store.

Physical online stores like eBay won’t be able to help you to sell digital products. These digital product marketplaces work just like eBay – except that there is no need to ship anything. Customers download the digital products immediately after their payment is processed and approved.

While you do have to invest time and effort to create or customised digital products up front after they are completed, your work is very minimal and you can enjoy the profits.

You could use your website as a promotion tool to get people to buy your digital products.

As long as you create legitimate digital products that are legally protected with a whole lot of value to solve your customers’ problems, you should be able to get some buyers. Like everything else involving the Internet, you’ll need traffic to get sales.

If you want to build a sustainable eCommerce business, stop worrying so much about what you get. Instead, worry about what you’re giving to your customers. The reason why income streams do dry up is that people eventually realised that they were taking more money than they were creating value for their customers. Focus on value creation for your customers first and money will subsequently flow.

Audiobooks (and podcast)

If your greatest passion in life is speaking and communication, you could produce digital audio files for downloading from a computer or mobile device.

ACX is a leading audiobook recording and distribution platform with easy access to Amazon’s Kindle and Audible markets.

To increase awareness and sales of your digital audio book, include discount vouchers at the back of your eBooks or in your emails.

Courses – educational, self-help

If you have great skill and knowledge in areas such as search engine optimisation, social media marketing or web development, build an e-course teaching that to others and sell these courses online for a much higher price point than eBooks. You can even charge a premium for your expertise if there are a market and demand for it.

Online educational and self-help market is growing at an exponential rate.

If you can help people get off an addiction (e.g., porn, smoking, eating), it would be a great product or service to sell.

You’ll need to create lessons for your course including supporting materials such as slides, tools, worksheets, checklists, and templates.

You can offer personalised support for your course. For example, you could offer a basic version without the support and a premium version with email support.

You can use a learning management system (LMS) WordPress plugin like LearnDash or MemberPress to deliver courses online to your audience.

Alternatively, you could use learning platforms or marketplaces like SkillShare, Teachable or Udemy to sell courses to others.

eBooks

If your greatest passion in life is writing, you could write eBooks for downloading to a computer or mobile device.

eBooks will sell best on Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s Itunes Connect. They make up the largest digital book markets and are perfect places to put up your work. Start off with low prices. Test the market. Once you have built a reputation for yourself and an audience, you can start increasing your asking price.

There are many social media pages and dedicated websites like Kindle Nation Daily, GoodReads, and Pixel of Ink for eBook reviews. A glowing review on one of those websites can seriously increase your chances of making money.

Design the cover using a tool like Canva and create a PDF of your eBook.

For digital downloads, you could use the Easy Digital Downloads WordPress plugin to sell them on your website. It’s relatively easy to use and includes all the features you need to create your own online eCommerce store. You can integrate your store with the PayPal payment gateway with ease.

eCards

If you have the skills to write and design digital greeting cards or can hire people with the creative skills you need, you can build a business around selling eCards.

How-to videos

If you have step-by-step information and knowledge to tell people, you can make and sell how-to instructional videos as digital products.

These how-to videos give your customers the opportunity to walk through specific steps that are hard to figure out without a visual.

Music, movies, computer games, and apps download center

If you love music, movies, games, and apps, open a marketplace where people can pay you to download these items.

All you need to do is to drive free or paid traffic to your website and convert them into paying customers.

Ringtones

If you are able to re-purpose songs and any other playful or beautiful sounds into creative ring-tones suited for various ages, you’re able to make money off of them.

Software products – own and others

If you have an idea and skills to create and develop a new software product, this could be a great option for your new business.

You could write scripts, browser extensions, plugins or mobile apps for iOS and Android or sell source code of your software on BinPress, Chupa Mobile, and Code Canyon.

You could also sell other software products through affiliate links or partnerships with software companies and affiliates.

Resource: A Step-by-Step Guide To Building Your First Mobile App

Video log (vlog)

If you don’t like blogging but love making videos, you could create a series of videos and make money off the contents.

Types of video content include how-to, memes, walkthroughs, life hack videos, interviews, tutorial, videos of presentations, product demos and reviews, video testimonials, recordings of live streams, and video ads.

You can upload your videos to websites like YouTube, Daily Motion, and Vimeo where you take advantage of their monetisation policy.

Webinars

If you prefer doing live events, webinars or seminars conducted over the Internet are great ways to build your audience, share your experience, and grow your business. They are similar to online courses.

Webinar providers include Adobe Connect, AnyMeeting, Google Hangouts, GoToWebinar, StealthSeminar, WebinarJam, WebinarsOnAir, or WebEx.

Workout videos

If you can lead a physical workout (or hire someone who does), you can sell workout videos on your website or offer monthly subscriptions for people to access these videos online.

People need to stay fit at home and going to the gym often takes too much time.

Monetise your website

When you think of how to make money online, advertising is often the first thing that comes to mind. There are other ways you can monetise your website.

Make money with affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards affiliates for each customer who made a purchase or sale due to the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. Affiliates only get paid when there are sales made.

You can review and recommend a product or service for sale to your own audience or readers using unique affiliate marketing tracking links. You get a referral commission for every time someone buys after they click on your special link.

It’s the easiest way to make money because you can promote a wide-variety of products and services without creating them. The trick is to promote high-value products that pay a high commission for each sale made.

If you’re interested in getting started with affiliate marketing, you can start by thinking about the products and services you already use that your readers may be interested to buy. Then you can see if they have an affiliate program that you can sign up for.

You can find a huge list of products and services to promote from Affpaying, Amazon, ClickBank, CJ Affiliate, Gumroad, JV Zoo, Max Bounty, Offervault, PayLoadz, Peer Fly, Warrior Plus, and WeLoveAffiliates.

Once you have selected the products and services to promote, you can use a WordPress plugin like Adsanity, Constant Contact, OptinMonster, or ThirstyAffiliates to manage all affiliate links on your website.

Display advertisements on your website

Networks like Google Adsense and Media.net are good ways to start earning money online from your website when you are starting out. All you need to do is add a script or code from these intermediaries to your website and start displaying ads.

You will get paid for every time a user clicks on an advertisement displayed on your website. These are called cost-per-click (CPC) advertisements.

Use a WordPress advertising plugin to sell advertisements directly

If you are able to reach out directly to potential advertisers, you could directly sell advertisement space on your website.

You do not need to rely on an intermediary who takes a cut of the money. You negotiate the price and terms, come up with the agreement, and take care of administrative work like invoicing.

Use the BuySellAds WordPress plugin to insert advertisements on your website.

Sell sponsored posts

You may want to monetise your website through sponsorships. The sponsor pays you to represent their product, talk about it, and promote it to your readers.

To get started, it’s a good idea to put together a one-page media or promotion kit that details your traffic stats, social media following, audience demographics, and any other data that will make your site more appealing to advertisers. You then approach companies to negotiate a sponsorship deal.

When publishing sponsored posts, it’s crucial to know about the local laws about disclosure. For example, in the United States, a blogger who publishes a sponsored post must comply with FTC’s Endorsement Guide.

Get paid to write reviews on your website

Similar to sponsored posts, you can also make money by writing paid reviews on your website. You get to try out products and services related to your niche for free and even get paid for writing a review.

The process for doing this can be similar to getting sponsored posts. You’ll want to review products and services that are relevant to your niche where your audience or readers would be interested in.

You can approach businesses on your own to ask about doing paid reviews or visit websites like Sponsored Reviews that connect you with businesses who may be interested.

Earn money online by flipping (buy and sell) websites

If you know how to build a website, you’re way ahead of most people.

Sometimes people like to buy established websites that they can use for their own businesses or investment portfolio.

This requires knowing the type of websites that are in demand, and how to conduct due diligence on the website you are planning to buy.

Marketplaces for buying and selling websites include Flippa and Website Broker.

URL shortening services

If you are constantly shortening URLs on your website, you could make money with URL shortening services.

Visit websites like Adf.ly. Get paid for every person who visits your URLs.

Sell services online

If you’re looking for easy ways to make money online, selling services is the fastest way to get started. There’s no upfront investment of creating a product or investing in inventory.

Selling your services can be considered as freelancing where you are trading time for money. You are not earning passive income from a business system (e.g., your blog).

Over time, you want to move from offering your labor to owning a business system that will truly generate passive income for you. This will give you a sustainable stream of passive income into the future.

You could create a ‘hire me’ page on your website and start looking for your first customer.

Offer freelance services from your website

As a blogger, you’re already an expert in your niche. You can start earning an income by offering your skills and expertise as a service provider or freelancer.

Freelancing is a popular way to make money online because it doesn’t necessarily require a substantial upfront investment of time or money.

Once you start freelancing, you’ll need a way to invoice and collect payments from your customers. Use FreshBooks or other invoicing WordPress plugins.

Start your own consulting business

If you’ve developed valuable skills or certifications, consider putting your skills to use by offering consulting services especially to local business owners. There’s likely a local business owner who’s capable and willing to pay you to help them solve an issue or problem with their organisation.

As with freelancing, there’s very little start-up investment. You can start offering consulting services on your existing blog. All you need is to create a page with a contact form for users to request more information description of your service and testimonials of your satisfied customers.

Become a coach

If ‘consultant’ doesn’t feel like the right title for you, you can consider becoming a coach instead.

A life coach offers advice, guidance, and accountability for setting goals and improving people’s life. There are also other kinds of coaches such as blog coaches, writing coaches, etc.

Whatever your area of expertise is, you can provide one-on-one coaching sessions to make money.

To save time and make things convenient for your customers, you can set up a booking form that your customers can schedule coaching sessions with you right from your WordPress blog. WordPress appointment and booking plugins include Appointment Calendar, BirchPress, Booking Calendar, and WP Simple Booking Calendar.

Create a paid membership website

If you’re not interested in selling advertisements or sponsored posts, there are other ways you can earn money online.

Membership sites can be a big time investment since you must continually create content for your paying members. They can be very lucrative because they are generating recurring revenue from monthly subscriptions.

Create restricted members-only content

Your readers may be willing to pay to read more of your work. Create a members-only area for them to share or get more in-depth posts, downloads, videos, and audio content.

Use WordPress plugins like LearnDash, MemberPress, Restrict Content Pro, or S2Member to create your membership site.

Subscribe with Amazon is a marketplace where people can shop for digital subscriptions like newspapers, magazines, and online classes and how-to content.

Create a private forum

Forums are a great way for your readers to get one-on-one advice from you and other readers or members. Other members of your community can also interact and help each other out.

While moderating a forum can be a lot of work, a paid forum is a great way to earn recurring monthly revenue from your WordPress site.

Use WordPress plugins like bbPress, BuddyPress, CM Answers, DW Question Answers or WP Symposium Pro to create your private forum.

Create a directory website

Create a directory or listing website and you can charge visitors to advertise their listings on your website.

Create a paid business directory

Web directories allow users to browse through catalogs of links and contacts that are divided into topics, categories, and interest areas.

Whilst generic web directories like Yellow Pages are no longer necessary, create useful local or niche directories. These niche directories might gather reviews of local businesses or communities, share the best podcasts on a given topic, or list the best products in a certain niche.

Use WordPress plugins like Business Directory to create a directory on your blog.

Create a job board with paid submissions

Businesses who want to advertise an open job position to your readers can pay you to submit a job listing or your website. This works great for an established website in a narrow niche. For example, ProBlogger is now famous for their job board for professional bloggers.

Use WordPress plugins like WP Job Manager to create a job board on your blog.

Create an events calendar with paid submissions

If you already have an established audience and businesses are willing to pay and reach your readers, you could create an events calendar where you charge people to advertise their events on your website.

A paid event calendar is a good monetisation method for local or industry-specific websites. You might choose to advertise events in your local city, conferences in a certain industry, or even webinars or live streaming events.

Use WordPress plugins like All in One Event Calendar, Booking Calendar, My Calendar, or The Events Calendar to create an events calendar on your website.

Become a WordPress designer or developer

If you’re more technically inclined, you can become a WordPress developer or designer in order to make money online.

It’s not too hard to get started with many resources available on the Internet, especially YouTube.

Develop WordPress plugins

Plugins are what makes WordPress so flexible and powerful. They work like apps that allow you to extend and modify any feature of a website.

As a plugin developer, there are many ways you can distribute your plugins. Anyone can submit a free plugin to the WordPress.org plugin directory as long as they follow the WordPress plugin guidelines. This is a great way to gain experience and build a reputation for yourself as a WordPress plugin developer.

Once you’re ready to start selling premium plugins, you could choose to sell them on websites like MOJO Marketplace or on your own WordPress site using the Easy Digital Downloads plugin.

If you’re using your existing WordPress website to sell plugins, you’ll want to make sure that the plugin you create directly fulfills the requirement of your audience. You can survey them to see what problems they need you to solve. Then you create a plugin that solves that problem for your readers.

Sell WordPress themes

If you enjoy web design and development, create your own WordPress themes and sell them for a profit.

This requires design and technical skills. You have to know how to create good-looking designs and themes.

Using a WordPress theme framework such as Genesis can give you a head start to design and code a beautiful child theme.

Check your WordPress theme for coding errors on Theme Check.

Sell graphics

If you like designing more than coding, design and sell high quality and good looking graphics on your website.

You can create graphics such as stock images or logos. You can also join online marketplaces to sell your graphics as well.

The Internet and social media marketing

In essence, the internet marketing formula for making money is:

Create big list of members + sell stuff to them = make lots of money

Identify a series of digital products

Identify a niche in which you have a rich experience and knowledge. Besides making money, you must have fun and enjoy what you will be doing.

Search for digital products to promote on your website and sell them to your customers. Use the following criteria when selecting a digital product to sell – sales history, popularity, amount of commission paid, and percentage of refunds and disputes.

It’s important to acquire a copy of digital products for testing and review before promoting and selling them. You can get the copy from the advertiser, either by asking or buying a copy. After reviewing the product or service, you may ask for a refund within the 30 or 60-day money back guarantee period if you decide against advertising it.

Free opt-in offer to get email addresses in return

When trying to make money online, do remember this: the money is in the list.

This refers to the database of names, e-mail addresses, and other information you collect from your visitors. The more information you request, the fewer subscribers you will get. People don’t like to give information online. Aside from email addresses, decide what other information is crucial for your business.

Building a list of leads or potential customers who may buy from you is the core principle behind Internet marketing. All other things being equal, the bigger your list, the more money you can potentially make especially when you have developed relationships with people in your contacts list through regular emails and interactions.

Having a list is the best way to deepen relationships with your readers. The list is only a means to an end. It’s when you share your story, your purpose, and your insight that you can turn visitors and leads to paying customers.

The trick to building a large contact list is to draw attention to your website benefits and what’s in it for your visitors including how you can solve their problems.

When people land on your web page, you must quickly build trust by drawing their attention to your website’s benefits (not features) and offer them something valuable for free in exchange for their email addresses. You could create and give away a quality eBook, industry report, ultimate guides, cheat-sheet, checklist, etc. relevant to your niche in order to prepare a path for the promotion of your products or services in the future.

Build a squeeze page to promote the free offer

A squeeze page is a special type of landing page responsible for collecting opt-in email addresses from your visitors. People visiting this page are required to fill in their email address in order to receive a free opt-in offer.

It’s easy and quick to create your squeeze page using WordPress.

Advertise and send traffic to the squeeze page

There are paid and free traffic sources that you can tap into and generate traffic to your website.

No traffic is free. You are either going to pay for it with money or time.

You can get Internet traffic without paying any money for it from a number of sources. Free traffic is mostly generated through social media, search engine optimisation, video marketing, and guest posting.

It does take time to get free traffic.

You generate organic traffic through optimising your blog, content or website for Internet search engines through search engine optimisation strategies and methods.

The objective is to have your website listed on the first page of a search result based on specific keywords. If your website is not listed on the first page, people will be less likely to go on to the second and third page of the search results to find your website.

When your website is on the first page of the search results page, you can effectively direct traffic from Internet search engines to your website.

Free traffic can also be generated through social media by linking your website to social media platforms. The people visiting and interacting with you through your social media profiles can then visit your website for more details or make actual purchases.

Paid traffic, on the other hand, involves paying for traffic that is diverted to your website. By paying advertising money, you are reducing the time taken to get traffic to your website.

This includes strategies such as pay-per-click (PPC) where a platform like Google Adwords is paid to post your advertisement on other people’s websites. You only pay for each click on the advertisement that eventually generates traffic to your website by redirecting visitors.

Some social media platforms like Facebook and MySpace allow placement of paid advertisements on their website for a fee. Facebook allows you to boost a post that will only be shown to those users that match your predetermined criteria. YouTube is also another great platform for generating paid traffic to your website.

You could also run a competition on Facebook and give the winner a $500 holiday if they win the draw.

Find a prize that you can giveaway. Know what your ideal audience will love as a prize.
Create an opt-in web page that has a picture of the prize with the headline “Enter Here To Win ________.” Have a big button with instructions for a chance to win the prize.
Visitors register their emails on your squeeze page after viewing the advertisement on Facebook during the competition period.
Conduct a Google search and make a list of all the giveaway and sweepstakes websites that allow you to “boost” or “promote” your offer. Most of them don’t charge more than $5 or $10. You potentially can have access to HUGE audiences. Submit your offer to these sweepstakes sites and wait for the traffic.

Nurture your leads

Once visitors get onto your mailing list, they become leads that may convert into paying customers in the future. You need to continuously nurture your leads so that they become warm or hot leads, ready to pay you when you do sell products or services to them.

Besides using a squeeze page to capture people’s email addresses, you need an efficient auto-responder and email management system to handle and host your website list. You may use Aweber, MailChimp or GetResponse as your email service provider.

Use autoresponders

Auto-responders are sets of emails which are automatically sent to subscribers of your contact list.

They are meant to:

Build a personal relationship with new subscribers on auto-pilot.
Continuously promote yourself, your brand, your products and services, and your website.
Recommend your services and products used to solve your customers’ problems.

Note that some auto-responder emails can be dumped straight into peoples’ junk mail folder. Having a sender name in your notification increases the probability that your auto-responder emails will not be interpreted as spam.

Having your email subscriber manually mark your emails as not spam will help you to ensure that they are not filtered out in the future.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money. To make money with affiliate marketing, you should consider creative ways to promote your affiliate links that also provide value to your readers. Create interesting and useful content that does the double job of helping your readers make smart purchasing decisions and helping you make more money from your affiliate marketing.

The key is to include affiliate links in a content where the products answer just what your readers are looking for. Readers get a ton of value and, as a result, are more likely to click through and take advantage of the deals you offer your readers.

Providing valuable information to readers is one of the best ways to gain their loyalty and steer them toward smart purchasing decisions. If your content is truly helpful, you’re likely to gain more profit from your affiliate marketing because of it.

Reviews

One of the easiest types of content you can use to promote affiliate products is reviews. Simply write up your opinion of a product based on your experience or research. You can describe how you used it and how it helped you.

Always keep your readers’ trust. Providing them with honest information on what makes buying the product useful to them.

Product comparisons

Answer questions that your readers are most likely to have when it comes to choosing what products to buy. Figure out what’s different about two competing products in order to determine which one is best for them.

Focus on providing all the information your readers could possibly need rather than pushing the sale.

Informational videos

A lot of people do prefer consuming content in video form rather than reading it. But it’s much easier to include a link within text than most other formats.

Create a video that explains the benefits of the product you’re helping promote (or do a video version of your review) and embed it within a post that provides similar information.

Include a number of links to the specific products you have bought or researched.

How to articles

Write articles that describe how to get the most out of a product or make use of certain features or point readers toward affiliate products.

Video tutorials

Like how-to articles, video tutorials give you an opportunity to show your readers how to make the best use of the product you’re recommending. A video that provides a visual walkthrough can be a lot more helpful to your readers than words that communicate the same thing.

These can particularly be useful if the affiliate products you promote on your website are complicated to use. It may have lots of features.

You could also include a written version of your tutorial in the same post.

Educational webinars

Consider what informational topics are relevant to the affiliate products you represent and craft an educational webinar around them. A webinar requires more of a time commitment than most of the other content types on this list, so you need to make sure you pack that time full of useful tips and information.

Gift guide

Publish a gift guide around holidays when everyone’s scrambling to find good gift ideas for loved ones.

Ultimate or long-form guides

These guides pack more useful information than shorter forms of content or blog post. The reader will get a huge amount of valuable information for free. That makes them more likely to click on it, share it, and potentially revisit it.

Seasonal content

There are a ton of seasonal trends that relate to the topics you cover on your website.

If you have a blog about healthy cooking, write about pumpkin recipes in October and healthy Christmas cookies in December.