It’s 2023 and the world has moved on. While many people still work in a 9 to 5 job with a steady monthly salary, it’s probably not enough these days.
- What Are High Income Skills?
- What Is An Online Business Funnel?
- How I Learnt High Income Skills
- LaunchYou.com Review
- How Launch You Helps?
- Examples of people who have learnt high income skills with Launch You
- What Is The Cost of Launch You?
- What’s In The LaunchPad Program & Rating?
- Launch You Alternatives
- Overview
The cost of living has increased and people are struggling to make ends meet.
For example, I met a friend who works in corporate finance. His net income after tax is £5k.
Each month,
- £2k goes to mortgage
- £2k goes to his children school fees
- £1k goes towards credit card bills, loans, car, etc
- £500 towards groceries, phone
The above doesn’t even include ad-hoc expenses. He has no savings.
Just goes to show the importance of having other streams of income.
Whether that’s property income, online business income, investment income, etc
One of the best ways to ensure you’re not living pay-check to pay-check is to build other income streams. I firmly believe that if you can learn these powerful high income skills in 2023 you can become in control of your own income. The possibilities are endless.
My name is Anand, and I help working professionals start an online income from scratch – alongside your job. I also provide tips, tools and resources so that you can build and scale an online income without making mistakes like I did!
What’s more, those high income skills listed below are primarily online business skills. You see, these days building an online business is something you should be doing. Here’s why:
- Google averages 40,000 searches every second, which equates to 1.2 trillion searches worldwide per year.
- 64% of small businesses have their own website
- It’s estimated that by the year 2040, 95% of purchases will be through eCommerce
- 73% of people prefer to do business with brands that personalize the shopping experience.
- 55% of people will search online for reviews and recommendations before making a purchase, with 47% visiting the company website, 26% checking out the physical store, and 23% of people talking with friends and family.
(wpforms.com)
The point is that most people shop online, or search online when they want a solution. So become the provider of goods and services online. Become an online business owner.
But to do this – we have to learn high income skills.
What Are High Income Skills?
High income skills are skills that are in demand. They’re in demand because people value them. High income skills are:
– Content creation
– Video editing
– Copywriting
– Email marketing
– Website/Landing page design
– SEO
– Paid ads
– E-commerce store
They are considered high income because not everyone can do these things. You have to understand that many people do not have digital skills, beyond typing and browsing a website.
When you can learn, hone and master one of the above skills – you have a skill that is valued. All of a sudden, you’re in demand.
People will rely upon you to build them a sleek website.
People will pay you well to produce content for their brand.
People will pay you well to produce an email marketing campaign.
People will pay you well so that you can rank their site higher using SEO techniques.
People will pay you well to shoot a video for their new product.
Remember, not everyone knows how to do these things.
What Is An Online Business Funnel?
Before we go through those high income skills in detail, let’s talk about the structure of an online business funnel. Then you can see how where those skills fit in (in blue).
Typically this is what an online business funnel looks like:
A funnel is used to ‘funnel’ people from interested in your content through to becoming a potential customer. This is achieved by producing valuable content which helps to build trust and credibility in a certain niche. Over time, prospects look at you as being an authority in a particular niche/sub-niche. By setting up systems (the funnel) and improving the funnel – you bring interested prospects through to eventually buying your product or service.
Let’s look at those high income skills that are required in an online business funnel.
High Income Skill #1 – Email Marketing
Email marketing is where you promote your brand, product or service by email. Many companies use email marketing, and for good reason! As per Hubspot (The Ultimate List of Email Marketing Stats for 2023 (hubspot.com), the return on investment from emails is $36 for every $1 spent on email!
Everyone uses email – and the number of email users across the world is increasing annually:
This is down to the availability of smart phones and much better internet connections.
One of the best digital assets you can own is an email list. This is a group of people who have subscribed to your newsletter, or signed up on your website to receive free content. The reason why an email list is so valuable?
It’s your list.
It’s not social media visitors who ‘liked’ your content and moved on.
You own this list of people (and their email addresses) who were interested in what you had to offer. It’s your asset.
As a result of a subscriber list, you can provide even more targeted content through emails. The emails you send to your list could be welcome emails, nurturing emails, social proof, testimonials for your product, platitudes, downloads, workshops, e-books – all related to your brand and your product.
A highly engaged list of email subscribers is more valuable than temporary social media or web traffic.
That is why knowing how to build a list, and then emailing the list with super relevant emails if an excellent skill.
Companies pay for this skill.
My story illustrating the power of email marketing:
In early 2019 I was building an online affiliate business alongside my 9-to-5. I started to see some results.
I was on holiday in Mauritius with my then gf, but I was so engrossed in my business and every moment I would be on my laptop. That annoyed her.
While relaxing on the beach, I had a brain wave. I wanted to promote my high-ticket offer and thought of the perfect email to write! I had around 800 email subscribers then.
Me: I don’t feel so good. I need to use the toilet.
Gf: Sure, go quick.
I went back to the room, opened my laptop and started typing fast…
The next morning, I woke up and checked my email.
There was a sale notification email – for $4000!
$4k for writing and sending one short email. Basically, an existing customer of mine purchased a high ticket coaching product. I smiled to myself.
Gf: What’s so funny?
Me: I made $4k overnight!
I told her we’d do a business class upgrade on the way home.
That just goes to show the importance of building your audience.
In fact, when I marketing affiliate offers on YouTube, I was making sales but not enough. You see, most of my campaigns cost more than they were generating in sales.
They were loss making.
For e,g one campaign had an ad spend of $8k, but with revenue of $6k.
I turned this campaign off.
Or at least I thought they were loss making.
You see, I was marketing affiliate products that had upgrades (related high ticket products).
What I did have was a large email subscriber list.
So, with my email nurturing and providing value – that subscriber base became paying customers of the high ticket affiliate products. I made sales for;
$1000, $2500, $4995, $8000.
Very quickly – the campaign stats looked like;
Ad spend = $11k
Revenue = $19k
Nearly double!
(Remember, ads were switched off)
Bottom line – building an audience is powerful.
Engage with your email list in the right way, provide value, gain trust – and they will buy more products from you.
High Income Skill #2 – Video creation and editing
Video content is in my opinion, the most engaging content. It combines visual and audio, and can explain things easier than any written article, instructions or picture would.
Also demand for video is increasing. Oberlo reports that 91% of consumers want to see more online video content from brands. YouTube, the video sharing platform, continues to grow annually.
In terms of marketing, video content would naturally grab your attention more than an image would.
In fact, my first ever sale online came from a YouTube video! Although it was quite basic in terms of editing quality – I was able to create a video that connected with my audience who were then engaged with the video.
That’s the best thing with platforms like YouTube. Your audience goes to YouTube and is ready to absorb and consume long videos – unlike Instagram, Facebook and Twitter where people are scrolling through very quickly.
See below Tweet on the importance of video editors:
The great thing with creating videos is it doesn’t have to be you on camera. You can use purely B-roll or provide instructions – with your voice or a voice artist in the background.
There are many different types of video and they all play a role.
If you prefer to be in the video, I applaud you.
It’s not easy – especially at the beginning to shoot a video and watch it back without cringing. I’ve shot over 200 videos and with time you become better. Both in terms of your delivery and your editing of the video.
In fact I found writing scripts, shooting and editing videos very enjoyable. It’s a type of artistry and if you can do it well then you will have people lining up to pay you.
There are many video editing applications, ranging from entry level (and cheaper) – Movavi and Kapwing, up to Adobe Premier Pro, which is the professionals choice of video editor. Adobe Premier Pro can be overwhelming for new video editors, but it has a superb range of features that are worth learning if you want to take video editing seriously.
High Income Skill #3 – Website and Landing Page Design
Landing Page
If you’re looking to start an online business, at the minimum you’re going to need a landing page.
A landing page is a one-page website that promises your reader a benefit or result. The layout will normally be a headline, sub-headline, opt-in fields, testamonials, social proof, etc. Opt-In fields are where people can enter their name and email address to receive a lead magnet, free download, newsletter or free training.
In most cases, the landing page is an opportunity to collect email addresses and build a list. It is also used as a place for someone to book a call or raise an enquiry.
As the purpose of a landing page is to influence your customer to take action, this is where learning the skill of designing converting landing pages is so valuable.
Different businesses have different types of landing page, but the aim is to convert the reader to a ‘lead’. A lead could potentially buy your product/service and become a customer.
As mentioned above there are different components of a landing page. A skilled landing page designer will have an understanding of copywriting, colour scheme, layout and what has worked well in the past.
Here are some examples of landing page designs:
Example 1 – Free trial
Example 2 – Live Webinar
Example 3 – Free trial
In each of the examples above, note the following:
- Clear and easy to locate call-to-action (CTA)
- Benefit statement
- Powerful imagery
Websites
Most brands will have an authority site – or main website. The website will showcase your products, services, reviews and give the reader a chance to learn more about the business.
The problem is most websites are clunky, disorganized, slow or do not showcase the brand’s colours well enough.
Some businesses, particular traditional high street businesses, don’t even have a website! And they can’t afford not to have one.
This is where it pays to have good knowledge and experience of designing websites. You don’t have to do any coding either!
Most web-builders are easy to use, and have pre-loaded templates that enable drag-and-dropping of elements. The skill comes from understanding the business brand, i.e. what do they stand for, and building a relevant website for that brand.
High Income Skill #4 – Ads
You might have an amazing product or service that you want to show off online. But if you’re not attracting the right people, it’s like selling water in a desert. You’ll have no customers.
This is where using online adverts (‘ads’) is so useful. Ads help you target focussed, quality traffic/customers for your specific product.
Here’s how an ad fits into your funnel:
What’s more, ad platforms like Google and Facebook are now using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve their targeting. Google, for example, collects thousands of data points about you. It’s AI will use those data points to form a profile of what type of person you are – so that it can place the right ads in front of you.
But that doesn’t mean that you just put up an ad to get customers and sales.
Learning how to master the major ad platforms, i.e. Google and Facebook, can take time, money and patience. You might find that you’re spending money on ads, which results in views and clicks – but you get no conversions (leads or sales).
But when you can truly master a particular ad platform, you can earn multiples in revenue. I have generated 4X my ad costs in revenue. I know other people who have generated 9X ad costs in revenue. That means for every £1000 they spent on ads, they earned £9000 in sales.
The best thing about ads is they offer leverage. That means they can be scaled.
For example, the person whose ad campaign is generating 9X ad costs in revenue can decide to increase his daily ad spend, say, to £1000 per day. That means £30,000 spend per month and earning £210,000 in revenue per month.
Of course, not everybody can generate results like this straight away. It takes time and money spent to truly learn your ad platform intimately.
Here are the key things to know about running ads:
- Choice of bidding strategy
- Targeting
- Understanding ad metrics
- Optimizing ad campaigns
Choice of bidding strategy
Select the right Ads bidding type strategy for adjusting bids is important for driving your ad costs down. If you’re not careful you can end up wasting your entire budget on just a few clicks. But when you make the right moves, you can take your campaign performance to a new level.
You can ask the platform to spend money based on clicks, views and impressions. You can set budgets based on these metrics, or to spend all of your daily budget with a focus on ensuring you get maximum conversions. There are scenarios where different ad strategies are required.
Targeting
Once you have defined your customer avatar, i.e. your ideal customer, then you can get to work selecting targeting options. The goal is to put the ad in front of your target customer.
Targeting options include location (where to show ads), demographics (male, female, age, income group), interests, affinities, keywords, website visits, custom segments, etc.
Within the major ad platforms there are ever evolving targeting options given the increasing sophistication of the AI.
But, it can be hard to know what is the right targeting option. There are multiple permutations or combinations of targeting options!
Ideally, you’d want to test different targeting options to see which produces the best results, i.e. most conversions for best cost per conversion.
Understanding ad metrics
It’s so important to know what the ad platform data is presenting.
Why? Because once you understand the data you will know what parts of your funnel require improvement.
For example, getting impressions but no clicks? Your ad is the problem.
Getting clicks but no conversions? Your landing page is the problem.
Click-through-rate is too low? Your ad is not resonating with customers.
By reviewing your ad metrics regularly you will start to understand what their purpose is. You will also build a benchmark of what is considered a ‘good’ ad or campaign.
Optimizing ad campaigns
Getting sales from an ad campaign is only half the battle. You will want to ensure you are optimizing your ad and campaigns to get the most of your ad spend. This means reviewing your metrics and identifying where improvements are required to your ad, targeting, funnel, etc.
Of course, this will require making changes to your ad campaign settings but this shouldn’t be done so much that your ad campaign stops working.
Learning a high income skill such as running paid ads is super useful to getting targeted, focussed customers for a product or service. It is a form of leverage as the ad platform looks for customers that are appropriate/have a desire for your product. As such it saves time compared to an organic growth strategy.
See post from a beginner who ran their first ads and made sales online:
High Income Skill #5 – SEO (Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is all about optimizing a website to rank on search results, i.e. Google or Bing. The higher a website ranks, the more views it will get – and vice vera.
Of course, more views of a page can allow you to monetize a site by adding affiliate links or ads for your own product.
There are many factors that Google, for example, will assess to determine where websites should rank. Of course, Google (the world’s large search engine) highly values content that presents the answer/solution to a user’s search query. Those other factors include:
- Domain authority
- Number of backlinks
- Presence of search query keywords in the website/post
- Page load speed
- Structure and user friendliness of page
- Internal links
- Meta descriptions
- Optimization of pictures and graphics
Ideally, you’d want to rank as high as possible but this is hard to do. So having great SEO skills makes all the difference. A skilled SEO consultant will be able to identify those elements of the webpage that are suboptimal and require enhancement to start ranking higher. Of course, ranking higher is not an immediate thing. It can take pages months and even years to get the traffic and eyeballs before Google recognises it to be a value adding web-page/post.
But, knowing SEO skills and implementing them effectively is extremely useful. After all, who wouldn’t want free traffic to their webpage or post?!
Below is a process flow showing how SEO fits into an online business funnel. Essentially you can use SEO skills to create an article or post that ranks well on search results. That article or post will then promote a lead magnet by linking to a one-page website (landing page):
Those 5 high income skills form the foundation for any online business. If you have these skills in your arsenal, you’re in a position toy deliver a great product or service for your customers.
The key is to learn the skills properly.
How I Learnt High Income Skills
I learnt high income skills through trial and error. I tried lots of things and made mistakes, broke funnels and nearly got banned by Google! I wasted a lot of time and money.
One thing that helped to refine my existing amateur knowledge of these high-income skills was getting the right support.
I found an online business education company – Launch You that explained step-by-step how to start an online business for beginners and taught me those 5 high income skills listed above.
LaunchYou.com Review
Launch You is an online education company that teaches individuals how to build online businesses from scratch.
It’s for people in full-time jobs looking to start a side income that can one day replace their salaries.
Launch You an all-in-one platform for online education, tools and mentorship.
The dedicated training consists of:
- Pre-recorded lessons and modules
- Live and recorded webinars
- 1-1 Calls with coaches and consultants
- Facebook and Mentors Community Access
- External Coaches
Essentially all the basics you need to build an e-commerce or affiliate marketing business from scratch.
How Launch You Helps?
LaunchYou offers 3 types of product offering: 1. Do It Yourself (DIY), 2. Done With You (DWY), 3. Done For You
- Do It Yourself (DIY)
The Do-It-Yourself approach is designed for motivated individuals who have the work ethic to build their businesses and brand themselves. With the step-by-step LaunchPad program and framework, you’ll have all the tools you need to get started and grow your business on your own terms.
- Done With You (DWY)
The Done-With-You approach is perfect for those who need extra accountability and mentorship. The LaunchYou coaches and implementation partners will provide hands-on guidance and support to help you stay on track and build a six-figure online business and brand.
- Done For You (DFY)
The Done-For-You approach is ideal for those who have the resources to take a shortcut and want to save time. The Launch You team will guide you through the LaunchPad program and then build and launch your new website and brand for you, giving you more time to focus on growing your business.
I knew I wanted to start an income online alongside my 9-5 job, but I didn’t have a product idea of my own!
The Launch You training really helped me with this. It helped me understand what type of industry/niche area to focus on, finding products in that area, hone my offer and taught me how to market it properly.
I learnt affiliate marketing – which is a great model for beginners like me. See this article on affiliate marketing.
With Launch You I was able to market and sell my affiliate product using those high income skills I learnt, especially video creation, landing page design and paid ads.
I’ve since created hundreds of videos and sold several affiliate products online.
Examples of people who have learnt high income skills with Launch You
Christian (Ad Agency):
Christian was someone who didn’t know any English but had the drive to learn the skills to make money online. He started with Launch You learning paid ads to an expert level. He’s now one of the best YouTube ad specialists in the world. Christian has his own ad agency where he helps people and brands utilize the power of YouTube.
Landria (Video Creation):
An ex-Investment Banker, Landria was fed up with the corporate world. Yes, she was successful there but realized there was more to life than just work.
She also knew she was falling behind by not learning digital skills. With Launch You she sold her first product online as an affiliate, but she was really fascinated by video creation. On top of that Landria was into the law of attraction. By combining her love for law of attraction, helping people and video creation – she launched a YouTube channel, and has since become a major name in the spirituality space.
Michael (Web Design)
Michael learnt landing page and website design with Launch You, and realized that he loved it. The creative element of this work along with helping people get a presence online was appealing. He is now doing this as a freelancer.
What Is The Cost of Launch You?
Launch You has many programs that assist in different ways, as explained with the ‘do it yourself’, ‘done for you’ and ‘done with you’ models. The flagship product of Launch You is ‘LaunchPad’ which is $997 or $197 + $99/month.
There is an entry-level course too – ‘Modern wealthy’ which is priced at $37. Modern Wealthy will give you lots of insights into how to start earning an income on the internet. It’s run by the Launch You owner – Stuart Ross, who has built multiple online businesses since 2010.
Stuart will talk about:
- The different types of business models that’ll suit you personally depending on your time restraints
- How to partner with brands and businesses
- Lucrative niches that will suit things you’re passionate about
- Creating the right foundations that’ll allow you to scale to 6-7 figures a year.
What’s In The LaunchPad Program & Rating?
The flag-ship product of Launch You is ‘LaunchPad’.
LaunchPad is an in-depth self-study training course. It is hosted by Stuart Ross who teaches the elements needed for a successful online business. LaunchPad has 6 core modules:
- Module 1 – Foundations
- Module 2 – Business Models
- Module 3 – Niche and Avatar
- Module 4 – Your Brand and Website
- Module 5 – Attraction Marketing
- Module 6 – Traffic, Leads and Sales
Each module has sub-lessons that are all taught by video.
Here is a sneak peak of what is included in Module 1 – Foundations:
You can go through each lesson at your own pace, and resume the video when you next log in. Per above, you’ll see that most people are rate LauchPad favourably with an average rating of 4.9 or 5.
Launch You Alternatives
There are many other online business training providers out there. For me personally, Launch You’s values and teaching style were a good fit for me. They have been around for a long time, and their leadership team consists of people who have been successful in online business consistently. That was the type of person/group I wanted to learn from.
But despite that, what determines your success is you.
You can learn all the tips, techniques and latest strategy, but if you fail to implement what you learn or aren’t willing to reach out for help – then it’s tough to be successful.
Here are some alternatives to Launch You that offer online business training:
From my brief inspection of these sites, they don’t have the breadth and depth of the Launch You curriculum. Furthermore, they don’t seem to offer online business tools and ongoing support that Launch You has.
I would still recommend checking them out for yourself.
Overview
Learning high income skills was so valuable for me. If you want to get started with an online business, I would recommend learning just one high income skill. For me – Stuart Ross and his programs, i.e Launch You were an incredible decision to get started in the online space.
As I said, the best thing you can do is to be curious and learn, be consistent and focus on your ‘why’ and what you want to achieve at the end.
I was able to learn skills to earn an income online, and I want this for you as well.
After all more people should be self sufficient and earn for themselves.
