After retrospective analysis of my past results (success and failures) and studying lots of successful and struggling netpreneurs, I came up with some principles for success in online business esp information marketing business.
If you learn the laws and apply them whenever and wherever appropriate, you are “virtually guaranteed to enjoy success in your online business”.
There are laws and principles that if you apply to your online business, success is inevitable. I have been in this business since 2009, I have had my own fair share of failures and success.
After retrospective analysis of my past results (success and failures) and studying lots of successful and struggling netpreneurs, I came up with some principles for success in online business esp information marketing business.
If you learn the laws and apply them whenever and wherever appropriate, you are “virtually guaranteed to enjoy success in your online business”.
As a way of introduction, let me start with an overview of what it actually takes to make money online.
Out of every 100 people who delve into marketing and internet business, only about 5 of them succeed. The other 95 people fail miserably. Making money online is not rocket science.
To make money whether online or offline, you need to exchange value for money. Money cannot be created from the thin air. To make money someone has to give it you. For this to happen, there must be an exchange of value. You must create a value… you must sell/offer something that people are willing to pay you for.
Value = Money
You need an offer, a system that drives the offer and a target audience for that offer. This is what I call the the core triangle of online wealth creation. I did a comprehensive guide about this wealth triangle. Click here to watch the tutorial.
Online, you have to offer value. You need to sell something. Basically, online you could either sell traffic or sell products.
This first method is making money from traffic.
This is how google, facebook, linda Ikeji blog, etc makes their money. Its involves having contents and/or funtions on a website or system that will attract huge visitor/traffic to the website. They make their money from advertising (their offers, affiliate offers and ad networks).
The second method involves selling products & services
Services: You can make money by online promotion of services you provide offline (like web design, make up, etc) and services you provide online like fulfilling gigs on fiverr.
Products: Product sales could be physical product sales (like Jumia is doing) or information product which is the ideal product I recommend for anyone who wants to make money online esp beginners.
Why Information Products?
Information Marketing Business Is A $150 Billion Dollars Per Year Industry.
Example of successful info marketers include:
Eben Pagan
One of my mentors. he is one of the best info marketers in the world with a $100 million per year information marketing business empire. Some of his products include Guru Blueprint, Wake up productive and Double Your Dating products which he released with the name David Angelo.
People pay as high as $20,000 (N3 Million) to attend his seminars and workshops.
Pastor Chris Oyakilome
Yes Pastor Chris is one of the biggest info marketers in the world with over 300 info products on his online store. (Mostly ‘How tos’ like: How to pray effectively, etc).
He has one of the most expensive newsletters in the world – Rhapsody. He has complete funnels with optin, followup, upsell, downsells, etc.
And lots of other marketers like Mike Filsamine, Sam Bakker etc
My Case Study
Personally, I have sold thousands of copies of my web consulting course. I also have over 50 courses selling across different platforms like my elearning platform.
Recently I made more than $19,418 within 40 days from just 1 of my info products. (WEBx). Its a combo info product that teaches even a complete newbie to build websites. I sell a copy of the kit for $27 – $47. 550 copies = $22,711 (minus about 1 $2,000 in expenses)
Its not magic. Its the beauty of this business. To make $1,000 for instance, all you need to do is sell 22 copies of a $47 product or 38 copies of a $27 product. With the right system in place, getting just 38 people to buy a product that will impact on them at the price of $27 is very easy. All you need is a converting sales copy and a good sales funnel.
The advise especially for newbies: If you want to make money online, sell information products! sell information products!! sell information products!!! No matter your business model or dream internet business model, I advise you start out by selling information products.
I know you want to build the next facebook or the next JVzoo,
but you need to pay your rents and other bills first.
Information marketing is a business you can start getting your returns from the very first day you launch.
The good thing about the information marketing business is:
- You create a product once and sell it for life
- Sart up cost can be as low as zero
- Profit margin can be close to 100%
- The Entire system can be automated to work even while you sleep
- This is the best business in the world.
In world, more than 100 million people have tried selling info products online. The truth is that 99.8% of them fail miserably. A lot of infopreneurs get stuck in the very beginning of the process. They got stuck in the process of creating their own products.
They didn’t know to how create,
They didn’t know what to write – or worse,
they completed a product that No One Wants to buy!
Product creation is not a day’s job.
A lot of work is involved in product creation. Especially if the product is a premium product like my Web Consulting Course (WEBx Kit). It took me more than 4 months of work to finally complete the WEBx product line.
Its a tedious and herculean task, but its worth it. When its ready, you know you have a goldmine. A goldmine you can always tap from.
Most people will never put in the work required because they refuse to see online business the same way the see their offline business. They #1 reason why most people fail in their online business is because they see it as a get rich quick without work scheme.
The feel it is something they can just jump in and make money without lifting a finger. Like a ‘come, eat and clean mouth’ business venture.
Don’t be deceived, there is work involved. You need to create value…. something that you can exchange for money. Value in terms of traffic or products and ideally, information product (its fast, guaranteed and easy).
You can either work hard or work smart.
Working hard would in terms of product creation will entail you doing it yourself, while working smart would be partnering with someone or paying someone to do the work for you or getting the resell rights or Private Label Rights (PLR) for an existing product. With PLR (aka ownership rights) you can brand your name, sell as yours and keep 100% of the profit without any link back to the original product creator.
According to Tracy, success is predictable. There are universal laws that have always existed in business and will always exist. If you violate the laws, even unknowingly, you will fail. But if you learn the laws and apply them whenever and wherever appropriate, you are “virtually guaranteed to enjoy success and prosperity in your business activities.”
The 6 Principles That Made Me Money
1. Sell What People Want
This cannot be over emphasized… sell what people want to buy. Sell what is in demand. In the words of Akin Alabi,
“You will not just make money, but lots of money if you sell what PEOPLE want to buy”.
The #1 mistake most marketers make is the develop products focused on solving their personal problems. They create the products they would love to buy and not the product most people will want.
Personally, I don’t re invent the wheel. I sell what is already selling. The rule is to go where the money is. I don’t have the time or money to re invent the wheel. This is advisable especially for beginners. When you start making lots of money, you can now invest time and money in research or consider creating demand.
Imagine spending time, energy and money to develop a product… only to discover that no one wants to buy it. Its very frustrating. It can even make you quit information marketing business. So i always advise launch with an innovative product in a market that is already selling.
2. Build A List
This is info marketing 101. Always build a list. Don’t send traffic directly to your sales page. Instead send them to your squeeze page first. The aim of the squeeze page is to get their contact information for follow ups.
You can use what is called a lead magnet to entice your prospect to enter their contact info. E.g of a lead magnate is free ebook, a mini version of your course, trial version of a software, more information, pseudo registrations, etc.
This allows you to send follow up emails to engage with your prospect and get them to buy. I have been in this business since 2009 and I can rightly say that more than 80% of my sales comes after follow up. Most people will not buy until the 7th follow up message.
Some people need a little more convincing, most of those convinced will procrastinate and then forget, others – their money is not yet available, etc… If you don’t follow up your clients, you are loosing more than 70% of the sales. Some may not need that particular product, but may buy another product you will promote to them in future.
An Example: Over the years, I have built a list of more than 10,000 subscribers for different products. There was a day I did a promo for subscribers in my country and slashed my WEBx kit by 75%. That day, I made more than 390 sales. Thats about N1.4 million in less than 24 hours (That was almost $10,000 then). I made a video proof on youtube -click here to watch (That was when I used to make video to show my earnings and inspire others. I dont do that anymore).
Thats the power of a list. Although 390 sales for a 10k list is not an epic conversion, but $10k in a less than 24 hours is not a bad one. (Anyway, that was 2 years ago).
3. Have Back Ends
The difference between successful and struggling marketers is a secret which lies in a FACT:
People are far more likely to make another purchase when their wallet, purse, credit card, etc. is already on the table than at any other time in the purchase cycle.
Thats is why successful marketers are the ones that have both front end and back end products. That is Offering your customer a chance to upgrade (upsell). Upsells can double or even triple the amount of revenue.
E.g If you buy a computer you are “upsold” on things like the memory, hard drive space, monitor size, etc. If you want to make serious money irrespective of what you are selling, you need to have upsells.
The 3 Cardinal Rules:
- Always have something of value to offer.
- Upsell any time a customer makes a purchase from you.
- Upsell products that fit and flow with your offer.
Personally, nearly all of my profits come from upselling and back-end products. On initial sales, 70% of our profit comes from the upsell. You should never consider launching a product without an upsell except you want to leave 70% of your money laying on the table.
The Cross-sell means to Sell related products to your current customers either at the point of sale or at a later time.
Example: Purchase a video camera and you cross-sell a tripod. Cross-selling is used to sell products that may be related to the original product, instead of upgrades, add-ons, or more expensive versions like up-selling consists of.
4. Multiple Streams
Every successful info marketer has one thing in common – they have multiple products. Even within the same product line, they multiple verison and variation of the same product. They sell different different versions – ebook, video, software, event, one on one training, etc.
If you earn say N50k a month (thats me being very conversative) from one product. If you have 10 products, your earning power is multiplied by 10.
To be successful, you should be rapidly developing new products. This is why it is good to work smart when it comes to product creation. I strongly recommend using PLR packs to fasten the process of product creation.
With PLR you can get your product, sales copy, sales page, squeeze page, follow up emails, promo videos, marketing graphics etc all up and running in a matter of hours or days. I am giving 7 people PLR to the sept 2015 version of my WEBx kit. The same kit that made me N6M in 40 days.
5. Reinvest Earnings
Like I said earlier, another mistake you should not fall into is seeing this business as a ‘come, eat and clean mouth‘ venture. See it as a real business. It is a real business. The only difference is you don’t require huge capital to start, and you can run it from the comfort of your home and the returns is massive. Yes the return is massive…
Like every business, you should be scaling up and growing. Start small, dream big and grow fast. One of my students in a mastermind complained that all his online business are always a failure. I asked him about his last campaign.
He spent about $350 for product developemt, sales copy, hosting, domain, design, autoresponder etc. Another $75 to for ads . Total = $425.
Result: 120 subscribers, 14 sales at $15 each. Thats is a total of $210. He said the $75 campaign ended and he concluded that the business was a failure. I asked him. What happened to the $210. He answered he bought a fairly used iPhone to compensate himself for the efforts.
Thats where he got it wrong. You have to developed a system around a product. Initial ads got him 14 sales. That first money, 90 – 100% should have been reinvested back into the business. You postpone your needs until your business matures.
I did not rush to buy a car when I made my first $20k online. By the time I bought my first car, I had already created a system around my business.
Reinvest profits for more traffic, self development, more product creation, enhance your sales funnel, etc. Add more back ends and upsells. What happened to the 11 people that bought the product? get testimonials and success stories, etc. Every day, your business should be growing and better than it was yesterday. In this business, like every other business, always reinvest a large percentage of your profits.
6. Money Loves Speed
In this business, money loves speed. As ideas come in, write them down and pick the ones you want to execute and start execution immediately. Avoid procrastination and long development timelines.
I have a friend who was working on this product of his. He believed so much in the project and made it to be so so BIG. It had about 20 phases before launch. It took him about 11 months to build it. Within that 11 months, I launched more than 9 products (though only 3 did well. I dumped the other 6 and focused on the 3). Guess what, when he finally launched, it failed and he has dumped it.
Its not bad to develop a huge product, but try to segment it.
My WEBx kit: I segmented the implementation. I started with a joomla course, sold and made some millions. Did a WordPress course (sold), did a android app course (sold). I then did the other parts and combined everything into a Kit and am still selling. I did not wait until it was complete and perfect. I still have a lot of things I want to add (like iOS app dev)
It will never get perfect. Even today, the kit is not perfect. Product development is an ongoing process. The easiest way to fail to is pack all the features you have in mind before you launch.
My mentor told me “…Nkem the longer it will take to launch, the least likely for it to be launched” .
There is what is called project and idea fatigue. Every idea has a graph. After a time the enthusiasm dies and sometimes you may discover a new idea you think is better and abandon the old one.
Most times right in the middle of the project you begin to have doubts. You start thinking ‘what if it fails…” and before you know it, your subconscious mind starts giving you a thousand and one reasons why it will fail, and you abandon the project.
Check every struggling netpreneur, they have a lot of abandoned projects. You see them in Jan, the tell you about this BIG project that will change the world and make them billions. By the time you meet them in April, they are talking about another idea. What happened to the former one? It was not launched.
Apply speed at the initial stage, when you still believe your idea or product is what will change the world. When you still have faith in your project before project fatigue sets in. Of all your product ideas, you never can tell which one will bring the break you have been praying for. Most times, its not always the one we expect.
There is what is called MVP. MVP means Minimum Viable Product. As long as you have the minimum requirement for your products primary purpose. Launch. The extra gizmos will come later as upgrade and updates. When you launch your MVP, it is only then that you will know the real viability of your product.
In information marketing business money loves speed. Your aim should be rapid product development. This is another reason why PLR is good.
With PLR you can get your product, sales copy, sales page, squeeze page, follow up emails, promo videos, marketing graphics etc all up and running in a matter of hours or days. I am giving 7 people PLR to the a ready made info product you can start selling today. Check it out here.
7. Think Long Term
Think Long term and grow. While you are making money from information marketing, you should be thinking long term. Your aim should be to develop non info products like softwares, platforms, etc. This what will make you billions.
Akin Alabi make millions from info marketing. But he did not stop there. He thought long term and founded nairabet. Today nairabet is making him billions.
Even within info marketing, you can structure your system to be bigger and make you more money in the long run. You can aim to have an empire like Lynda.com or udemy.com.
In the offline world, Warren Buffet started by organizing seminars and workshops. Jimoh Ibrahim started with info marketing – training LGAs on how to increase their internally generated revenue (IGR). This same method works offline especially when you starting from nothing.
Start Small, Dream BIG and Grow Fast!
Worthy of Mention:
- Your marketing should have a personality – Don’t hide behind your computer or brand names. Unlike physical products, people prefer to buy information products from people they like and trust. In this business, ‘I’ sells better than ‘we’.
- have a story line for your offer, company or you. nothing sells like stories.Click here to read my comprehensive guide on how to use stories effectively in your marketing. It could be how you started, why you started, your process, behind the scenes, success stories, anything… just have a story (or stories) people can relate to.
- Showcase testimonials, case studies and success stories – flaunt people and company your product has helped. This will boost the confidence of your prospects and eliminate their fears.
- Offer 100% Money Back Guarantee (MBG) and honor it – This will reduce your prospect’s fear of loss (loss of their money and time) which is usually higher than the desire for whatever gain that your product offers.
- Use scarcity to encourage your prospect to take action. There are different ways you can achieve this. You can use limited copies or limited time offer or price increment with time or loss of bonus/features with time.
- Provide bonuses – related bonuses
- Provide Timely Delivery & Support – This will increase your back end sales rate. The money is in repeat business. (back end sales)
- Explain and communicate the value of your offer well – its not about the value of your offer, but the perceived value. You need to be able to explain and convey the value of your offer in your sales copy. The more you tell, the more you sell. Focus on the benefits and the value your product will add to your prospects life. Don’t be scared of long sales pages. Just make sure you keep your prospects engaged.
Recap
1. Sell what people want to buy
2. Build a list of subscribers
3. Focus on your back end sales
4. Have multiple streams of products
5. Reploy profits
6. Money loves speed
7. Think long term
In summary, to make money online you have to exchange value for money. The best and easiest way to do this online is to sell information products. Its something you can start today. Remeber the rules… go for what is already selling. There are lots of niches that are selling. PLR allows you get a premium product without the niche’s technical requirement or much time, energy and money.
With PLR you can get your product, sales copy, sales page, squeeze page, follow up emails, promo videos, marketing graphics etc all up and running in a matter of hours or days.
I am giving 7 people PLR to the a ready made info product you can start selling today. Check it out here. To create a premium product like my this, here is a summary of the time and cost investment required:
- Market Survey and niche selection
- Scripting (11 hours of work x 14 modules = 159 hours)
- Buy the necessary tools/exercise files
- Video recording (10 hours of work x 14 modules = 140 hours)
- Audio recording and noise removal (10 hours of work in a studio = 140 hours)
- Mixing Audio and Video (synchronize) – 11 hours x 14 modules = 159 hours
- Video Editing (30 hours of skilled work by a pro or pay a Pro N200k)
- Video Production and Post Production (31 hours by a Professional)
- eCover Design and other graphics (4 hours by a Pro)
- Infographics design (6 hours each x 20 infographics = 120 hours)
- Copy Writing (19 hours of work or pay a pro N100k minimum)
- Int Standard Sales and Squeeze Page Design (19 hours of work or pay a pro N70k)
- Promotional Video – hand writing style (9 hours of work or pay a pro $1000)
But with this PLR, you bypass these steps and start selling immediatelt.
Conclusion:
There is no ROCKET SCIENCE involved in building a profitable business online. To make money online you need to sell something. I recommend you sell information products (its the easiest and its guaranteed if you follow the principles above). Money loves speed… to be successful in this business you need rapid product development and thats why I recommend starting out with PLR products from a niche that is already selling.
I am giving 7 people PLR to the a ready made info product you can start selling today. Check it out here. If you are among them, you will get the products, sales copy, follow up emails, squeeze and sales page, promotional videos, mock up graphics, etc.
We will provide support for your customers and give you a marketing blueprint… Everything you need to set up an information marketing business empire that you can scale and make up to N1 Million per month.
Money loves speed. If want to make money online, then you have to create value online starting from today.
If you have any question, drop a comment and also share your personal experience.
Cheers!
