Conclusion and Summary

So there you have it: eight very effective internet marketing business models (and a few others mentioned) you can start using right away to generate an income from the comfort of your home. Many of these models are passive, meaning that you can generate money while you’re sleeping; others have the potential to scale to full sized businesses – anything is possible!

We’ve gone over an awful lot over the course of this book and have discussed a diverse range of different options. For some readers, selling a product via eBay is going to be most appealing, while others might prefer the idea of becoming an affiliate.

Either way, the very core of every business model is the same. Your job is to provide value to a specific target audience and to make sure that you’re able to communicate directly with that audience in order to promote the product. At the same time, you need to ensure it costs you less to do this than you earn from the sales – which normally means that you have to somehow add your own value.

How to Proceed

At this point you may be suffering with a little overwhelm. With so many options and so many strategies, how do you know where to start?

And some of these models involve building up a highly successful blog – so you may find that off putting.

The trick then is to make sure you start with just one model first and to start small. The key early on is to start seeing results as soon as possible. As soon as you start generating any income, you’ll understand how the process works and you’ll open up new opportunities.

In other words, you’re not going to become a huge success overnight with a SaaS model – it’s just too much work. But making a few bucks from selling some items on eBay? That’s super easy and highly doable. The same goes for generating some money from selling an affiliate product.

Don’t set out to change the world. In fact, don’t even set out to get rich! If you do, you’ll likely only be disappointed which more often than not leads to quitting. Instead, set out to just earn some money in a quick, safe and low-risk manner. Then set out to build on that success and to replicate the business model or add another string to your bow. Take one step at a time and do what you need to do every day to eventually reach your goals!

Look at it this way: even if you only make $30 of sales a week for the rest of your life, that’s still $120 a month – or $1,440 a year! How much better would life be with that extra money? You could go on holiday guilt free!

Another tip? Always emulate the success stories. Over the course of this eBook we’ve looked at many cases of people who have been successful with these various business models whether it’s as an affiliate marketer or a blogger. Look at what they’ve done, study them carefully and repeat their model. Success always leaves clues and you can follow those clues to repeat the business model.

Likewise, don’t overcomplicate matters. If you do find a business model out there that works then there’s nothing wrong with copying it! Don’t make things harder than they already are because your pride gets in the way. Don’t choose to build your own PHP CMS when you could just use WordPress.

Some affiliate products that are selling very well will even give you the marketing materials that the creator used to generate their sales. This is the perfect ‘copy and paste’ business model because you’re literally taking what worked for them and doing the exact same thing within your sphere of influence. That’s great – it’s not breaking the mold but it’s easy and it works. Look for those easy wins!

There’s Much More!

Of course we’ve only really scratched the surface here as well in terms of what’s possible. There are countless more ways to earn money online as a marketer and there’s nothing to stop you from inventing your own methods either as you get more confident.

For instance, we barely touched on the option of selling your own services. If you’re a web designer, a writer, a life coach or a personal trainer then creating a website and marketing it is a great way to promote those skills. Or how about promoting the services of others? You can even get into online arbitrage – in other words, selling a service and then outsourcing the process to someone else for a lower fee.

We haven’t even touched on the use of ‘in-app purchases’ as another way to monetize a piece of software. And what about making money from video as a popular vlogger?

There are countless opportunities. So start with something simple to learn the ropes, then let your creative juices flow!

Your Action Plan

With all these different models available, it’s impossible to lay out one plan that will appeal to everyone. Generally though, these are the steps you should take…

1. Think over the different business models we’ve discussed. Assess your current situation, your contacts and any marketing you’ve done in the past and identify what will work best for you.
2. Choose products and a niche that you already know about and that you’re happy to work with.
3. At the same time, start as small as possible. Minimize the investment and the risk involved and focus on creating one small, easy business model that has been tried and tested.
4. This will normally involve finding an audience and providing value. That means finding your target market, finding a way to reach them and showing them the product.
5. Reinvest some of your profits into growing your business. That may mean investing in more marketing for your affiliate products, or it may mean investing in more inventory.
6. Build a website and grow it in order to generate your own audience. Eventually, this will become an excellent asset to you because it will provide you with your own, effective route to market.
7. Either repeat the business model that has worked for you (selling one affiliate product? Time to sell two!), or branch out into the next area.
8. Keep refining and perfecting your business model and keep on growing!

So what are you waiting for? You’ve seen how easy it is – now go out there and start earning from one of these models!

IMPORTANT: To help you further take action, print out a copy of the Checklist and Mindmap I provided. You’ll also find a Resource Cheat Sheet with valuable sites, posts and articles that I recommend you go through.

IM Business Types – Checklist

Have you dreamed of becoming a successful online marketer and earning your living via the web?

Well good news – here’s nothing stopping you! We’ve gone over all the most lucrative business models in the full eBook but now it’s time to recap with a simple checklist that will help you to take action and to start earning. Let’s go.
Blogging

To make money as a blogger:

• Build a blog in WordPress
• Find a hosting provider and URL
• Fill it with high quality content
• Promote that content via social media
• Build a large audience and gain their trust
• Monetize via your own products or by adding adverts

A blog will turn out to be a highly useful tool that you can use to help succeed with many of the other models on this list. Regardless of your ultimate plan, you should build one!

Selling Digital Products

An information product is something like an eBook or a course. It will have zero overheads and will have zero overheads.

Common examples include:

• eBooks
• Online courses
• Email courses
• Video series
• Seminars

To sell this, you’ll want to create a persuasive sales page.

Selling Affiliate Products

Alternatively, you can sell an affiliate product. This means promoting someone else’s product and getting the commission – up to 100%.

• First join an affiliate network such as:
• ClickBank
• Commission Junction
• JVZoo
• Warrior Special Offers
• Next, find the product and get the URL. You can then place this on your site/sales page.

Affiliate products have the advantage of costing nothing to start selling and of being ‘tried and tested’ because they’re already being sold.

CPA

• A CPA network is a Cost Per Action network.
• You place these ads on your site and get paid when someone takes action by buying a product or signing a mailing list.
• They pay more than PPC ads but are easier to manage than affiliate products.
• Get started by joining some CPA networks:
  • MaxBounty
  • PeerFly
  • Nerblue
  • Clickbooth

Membership Model

You can use a simple subscription plugin on WordPress to put some of your content behind a pay wall and thus create a subscription site. This has several advantages:

• You earn recurring income
• You don’t need to create anything new
• You can build a lot of loyalty within your community

Software

Compared with eBooks, software is a type of digital product that has several advantages:

• Unlike an eBook, people canít find the same information elsewhere online for free
• Software has clear value
• Software can be turned into a subscription business too (Software As A Service)

Creating software though means learning to code or outsourcing the coding process ñ both options are unfortunately wrought with difficulties. The solution is to start with something very simple and easy and then to eventually build up to a more ambitious creation. Starting with an app often makes sense. This also gives you different monetization options:

• Paid downloads
• In-app purchases
• Advertising

eBay

eBay makes it very easy to sell any product which you can develop into a full business. One option is to sell your own arts and crafts! Popular options include:

• Jewelry
• Artwork
• Furniture
• Sculptures
• Ornaments

Alternatively, you can also buy and sell products. To do this, you need to buy items wholesale and then sell them off individually at a profit. The model is simple:

• Make an initial small investment within your budget
• Buy wholesale goods
• Sell those items at 100% mark-up (called keystone pricing)
• Take some of the profit for your pay and reinvest the rest into a bigger order of inventory
• Eventually create a website and promote your products that way

Drop Shipping

Finally, you can also use ëdrop shippingí. This means that you sell a product on behalf of a manufacturer or wholesaler. You simply pass on the details to them so thereís no need to worry about fulfilment or storage.

To sell more items you an also create your own eCommerce store using:

• WooCommerce
• Shopify
• Magento

So there you go: simply steps you can take to set up 8 different internet marketing business models! Some final tips:

• Learn SEO and use this to promote your platforms
• Build a mailing list
• Start with something small and easy and add more businesses as you gather momentum
• If you have a successful business model ñ repeat it and milk it for all its worth!

IM Business Types – Resources

Ready to start earning money online and to become a successful internet marketer?

This resource cheat sheet gathers all the most useful and important tips into one place, along with all the different tools and resources you’ll need. It’s conveniently split into 8 sections for you too, which correspond to 8 different simple business models.

Building Your Blog

A blog will be useful no matter what type of business model you eventually decide on – but stick adverts on it and it can also be a money maker in its own right.

To create your blog, you’ll need two main resources:

WordPress (www.wordpress.com)

And a hosting platform like BlueHost (www.bluehost.com).

Use WordPress to create a simple website quickly and easily and then start adding content to it.

To promote your site you’ll use:

• SEO – Which means using keywords through about 1-2% of your content and then building external ‘backlinks’
• Social Media Marketing
• Influencer Marketing
• Content Marketing

Creating a Digital Product

This means selling something like an eBook or a course. You can do this by writing them yourself or by outsourcing their creation via a site like:

UpWork (www.upwork.com)

or Elance (www.elance.com)

You can also find writers through webmaster forums.

Once you’ve done this, you should create a sales page for your website and add persuasive copy to encourage people to buy. You can build a sales page very easily with the excellent OptimizePress (www.optimizepress.com) theme for WordPress. This is the reason we used WordPress – it keeps everything simple.

Affiliate Marketing

This means selling someone else’s information product and keeping commission. Often up to 100% of the full price!

To start doing this you need to join an affiliate network and find a product you want to promote. Popular affiliate networks include:

JVZoo (www.jvzoo.com), Commission Junction (www.cj.com, ClickBank (www.clickbank.com), WSOPro (www.warriorforum.com/warrior-special-offers/).

From here, you then get an affiliate link which will send people to the checkout and leave a cookie on their computer showing that you sent them.

Now you can add that link to your posts, your sales page or even to physical flyers and generate income! Choose wisely though when selecting a product!

Note that you can also sell physical products as an affiliate and the best way to do that is through the Amazon Associates Program (https://affiliate-program.amazon.co.uk/). 

CPA

CPA stands for ‘Cost Per Action’ and is a system that works very similarly to affiliate products. Basically, you publish adverts on your website and those adverts pay out when someone clicks on them and then goes on to ‘take action’ by buying a product or signing up to a mailing list.

Once again, you need to join up to a CPA network to get started. The popular choices this time include:

Max Bounty (www.maxbounty.com), PeerFly (www.peerfly.com), or Clickbooth (www.clickbooth.com).

The hardest part here is going to be getting accepted by the network. To do this, just make sure you have a professional looking website.

Software

Instead of selling a book, you can also sell software. This is more difficult to develop but is more inherently able to offer value.

One way to do this is to create an app. Keeping this simple is a great way of ensuring maximum success. Making an Android App is easiest. Visit Android Developers (http://developer.android.com/index.html) to get started.

Alternatively, you may want to create a SaaS business model – Software As A Service.

Examples of companies that have done this well include: Match.com (www.match.com), Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) and Evernote (www.evernote.com). This is a big undertaking however.

Membership Site

What’s easier is to create a membership site. Here, you will earn money by putting some of your best content behind a paywall and getting people to sign up.

You can do this by simply installing WordPress plugins. Good ones are:

AMember (www.amember.com)

And MembershipMouse (www.membershipmouse.com).

Membership sites provide recurring and predictable income and help you to make more money for the lifetime of a customer. However, you also don’t need to worry about developing complex web apps – win-win!

Good examples include Longecity (www.longecity.org) and Lynda (www.lynda.com).

You can also create paid content for YouTube (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3249127?hl=en-GB) which nicely handles all the complex parts for you!

eBay

You can make money simply by selling products on eBay (www.ebay.com) and one way to do this is by selling things you make if you have any skills in DIY. You can sell anything from jewelry, to woodwork, to stuffed toys. A site particularly geared to this that is similar to eBay is Etsy (www.etsy.com).

Another option is to buy products in bulk from wholesalers and then to increase the price as you sell them off individually!

Drop Shipping

Finally, drop shipping allows you to sell physical products without having to stock them or deliver them.

You don’t have to let your customers know this is what you’re doing, so you seem like other online store. Meanwhile, you can sell anything you like with none of the usual challenges involved!

To do this, you’ll need to find a wholesale directory. Two good examples are:

Alibaba (www.alibaba.com)

And Worldwide Brands (www.worldwidebrands.com)

Choose Alibaba for preference as that one is free!

Another tip is to create an ecommerce store. This is a digital shop that you can use to list your items, show your stock and automate sales.

One good example is WooCommerce (www.woothemes.com/woocommerce/) which has the advantage of being a WordPress plugin, thereby enabling fast and easy installation (we told you WordPress was useful!).

Another option is Magento (www.magento.com)which you need to create as a separate standalone site. The advantage of Magento though is that it’s capable of stocking more items – up to 50,000 to be precise!

Finally, you can also pick Shopify (www.shopify.com) which is hosted – meaning you set up an account and then just link to that from your website.

And there you have it! This list will have walked you through all the resources and steps needed to set up eight different, highly lucrative business models. What are you waiting for?