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5 Online Business Models

For many of us, the idea of an online business sounds like a dream. The chance to earn income in your sleep, work you want and achieve freedom from your job. However, it can sound overwhelming especially if you’re not familiar with the business models out there. I want to break it down for you, and show that it’s not overly complex. I will distinguish between the models based on an investment of your time, resources and effort required.

Watch the video or read the transcript below 🙂

#1 – E-commerce

This is the type of business model where someone sells physical products on the internet. This may be shoes, electronics, bags, furniture, etc. The main platform that most people shop on for physical products is amazon and ebay, but there are still many specialised independant online ‘shops’. An ecommerce business model requires that you have a product that you know sells to A target market. It will usually require your own website (if not selling on amazon), suppliers and a warehouse to hold the stock. Of course, there are expenses that come with a warehouse or physical space – i.e. rent and insurance. Amazon offers an option where they can arrange fulfilment for you, i.e. sourcing from the supplier, storing the product, packaging and dispatching to the customer – all for a cost.

This model is good is you have a product you are passionate about, have a reliable supplier and a target market in mind. It will generally require an initial investment of resources to set your business up, marketing and of course regular purchasing of supplies.
With the power of the internet, this model can be automated – and so will not require a huge slice of your time once the business is running.

#2 – Freelancing

This is where you provide independant services for another individual or company. This may be as a photographer, website builder, digital marketer. An example of this model is ‘Fiverr.com’ – a platform that allows people around the world to make money by providing a digital service, i.e. photo editing or adding subtitles to your videos.

Essentially your customers will be paying you for your time, so as you can tell – this is a business model that is dependent on you and your time in order to earn money. It is difficult to automate as you need to be there. But if you are good at the service you provide, you can do very well!

#3 – Consulting

Consulting is a type of freelancing where you provide services for generally higher ticket fees. You are providing your knowledge as opposed to a physical product. To be a successful online consultant you need to pick a niche where you have real expertise. In this business model, you are exchanging your time for money, but as mentioned if you really know your stuff – then with the right marketing you can charge lucractive amounts per hour. Consider online marketer Neil Patel who reportedly charges $5,000 per hour for consulting.

#4 – E-Courses

If you have an expertise in a niche topic, and you know that thing is in demand – then creating a training course is one of the best things you can do on the internet. This business model can be lucrative because digital products, i.e. online training, can attract large prices – especially if it is a training course that many people are interested in and so there’s a demand for. Just imagine – you create your training course ONCE, and then with the right advertising, you will earn recurring fees. All you need to do is invest resources initially to create a professional looking training course and to market your training course on the right platforms to the right people.

This type of online business can earn you fantastic passive income – as you don’t have to do too much after you’ve set it up!

#5 – Affiliate Marketing

Many of the successful companies in the world, i.e. Facebook, Amazon, AirBnb, Uber are using the affiliate model. This is where you sell someone else’s products in return for a fee or commission. Take Amazon for example – the majority of the products on the Amazon website do not belong to Amazon. They simply provide a platform to bring sellers and buyers together…and take a commission. Similarly for AirBnb. They do not own the properties, but take a commission from people renting their properties to renters through their website. Affiliate marketing is the epitome of digital commerce. And you can do it too.

If there is a product or service you use and can vouch for, then affiliate marketing allows you to earn commissions from marketing and selling that product. For example there’s a health drink that I like and can happily promote in return for commissions. Amazon has its own affiliate model, where you can promote amazon ‘products’ on your website and if someone buys it – you can get a commission. However, Amazon product commissions are low.

In order to make a sustainable online business based on affiliate marketing – you should seek those products that offer high ticket commissions, i.e. digital products – courses, consulting etc. This means with each sale, you can stand to make hundreds or thousands in commission. Why? Because those companies that sell digital products have very little overhead cost. They know that if an affiliate marketer promotes and sells their products – they know they can give up to 50% of the revenue to the affiliate marketer knowing that they still stand to make very good profit from the sale. A sale that did not require the product owners time, and involves little overheads. From the product owners point of view, they would rather make some money – as opposed to no money – for the same level of effort!

So affiliate marketing is a great option to create an online income. It requires little time on your part, except at the beginning to set up your website and marketing costs.

When deciding between these business models, you’ll want to weigh up how much time you want to give, whether you currently have a product and additionally your knowledge of a particular area. For example, if you have a fantastic product and want to automate the selling and fulfilment, then ecommerce could be an option.

If you have an expertise in a niche topic, but don’t want to commit your time – then a eCourse could be your calling. Of course, to make any business successful online – you need to become excellent at influencing and marketing. If you want to learn how to market effectively and create any of these online business models, then the company I am part of educates people on digital skills.

Click here to learn more.

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Using Chatbots For Your Marketing

There was a time when you could visit a website, use the live chat button and have you wait ages for a reply. During those times, most firms used actual personnel. You had to wait until a member of the support team went online, read your message, and give you an appropriate response. There were times when you got the response the next day because the personnel were not around. To resolve this problem, organizations have adopted the use of chatbots.

What are Chatbots?

A chatbot is basically an artificial intelligence program that automatically replies to your queries immediately. It can either type the reponse or read it out loud. Chatbots are used to automate the customer car service experience and also other important business processes that take longer under the hands of a human agent. The chatbots rarely depend on any human support to give you a response. This is why you can get a response from a live chat feed at any time of the day.

Statistically, 67% of consumers depend on chatbots for support all over the world. Future projections already show that the number is likely to reach as high as 85%.

Chatbots are the future of e-commerce interaction

How Companies Use AI For Their Sales And Marketing

Artificial intelligence has made it easier for most people and firms to do business. Every business wants to make more sales and market their brand as much as possible. The use of AI today has made it easier for firms to send useful notifications to website visitors and long-time customers that are subscribers of the company. 

If you are familiar with customer interactions, you know that a majority don’t like to be bothered by business reminders and alerts every time. They love their peace of mind. Chatbots are basically programmed to record and analyze data over a period of time. As such they slowly get to learn consumer preferences. This lets them send information that is useful and relevant to every customer. The AI has perfect timing and rarely finds the customer off guard or unwilling to read the reminder. 

Examples of Chatbot Applications

A company like Bold360.com uses a conversational chatbot to engage their customers. The artificial intelligence adapts to the customer’s way of speaking. That way, the replies seem more natural and not forced. 

Baidu has a chatbot that collects patient information. The bot asks you questions about your medical condition, then it compiles that data and provides it to the nearest physician. That makes it easier for the doctor to make a diagnosis. 

Google has a chatbot that helps you do a variety of online actions. You can use Google assistant bot to make an appointment at your favorite restaurant. You can also use it to send emails and create calendar appointments. 

How to Promote Products and Services using Chatbots

As a business owner, you may have tried to put in so much effort in trying to make your product and services sell much faster. As a result, you may have turned to SEO marketing, which is still part of digitization. You may have never thought about chatbots because you assume they are only for live support. However, they can do more than that. 

A very good example is programming a chatbot such that your viewers or webpage visitors can search for specific products and services using an emoji.

Chatbots can also help you collect relevant customer information based on their searches. This will give you leverage and allow you to send relevant offers and news based on what interests each and every customer. In addition, you can also use the chatbots to share links to your blogs and other content, attracting more visitors to your website.  

Steps On How You Can Use A Chatbot for your Marketing

The effort put into marketing by human agents can be hectic and strenuous to some extent. All the same, many companies are guilty of being too rigid with their marketing approach. Most of them will use the same tactic on every prospective customer. Chatbots, on the other hand, will automate the whole process and use a more personalized approach. Below are some of the ways that you can use chatbots for marketing: 

# Make your brand proactive

Marketing success can only come as a result of implementing relevant as well as aggressive measures during the process. The good thing about using chatbots is that they will automatically take the initiative to send a welcome message to visitors on your website or social media page. This will make the customer aware of the support, which gives an outward impression that your brand is proactive. 

# A Guideline through the Sales Funnel

Nurturing useful leads through the sales funnel is an important step for each and every business. However, it can also be very time-consuming. Every buyer hates having to go through a long buying process that may lead to a delayed customer care experience. The best part about chatbots is that they can gather the much-needed information and create personalized messages for customers within a shorter time. 

# Improved Social Media Presence

If you give your customer care employees the responsibility to tackle and answer all customer related queries on social media, the process can be both time-consuming and expensive. You may have to pay someone to be always online all the time so that they can respond to social media messages. On the other hand, if you use a chatbot, the process becomes automatic. Your customers will always get responses on social media. 

# Giving customers a more Personal Experience

Earlier we had talked about how chatbots can make communication more personalized. But how do they do this? The chatbot is usually linked to the social media profile of every customer that they interact with. This means that the bot learns everything about the customer. As such, they are more likely to suggest something that the client might like. Your customers will feel more appreciated because you took the time to know them on a much deeper level. 

# Increase your Presence

Another way that chatbots can be used for marketing is by expanding your market. Your chatbot is an artificial intelligence program hooked to various social media profiles. This means that the bot can send a marketing message to anyone that’s more likely to be interested in your brand. The reach of chatbots is limitless. 

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How A Marketer Can Set Up A Chatbot for their Website

The first thing that you have to do before you set up your chatbot is pick a service provider. If you have some coding knowledge, you can use Facebook’s chatbot set up. I personally use MobileMonkey – which is linked to your Facebook chat. Other providers include Chatchamp, Liveperson, Amazon Lex, IBM Watson, and Outbrain.

Next, you have to decide the type of automated messages that the bot will send to visitors. 

Then, include a call to action. You have to encourage people to send you texts through the chatbot.

After that, you can sit back and watch the chatbot do its work. You will have to analyze results occasionally and see how you can improve on the marketing and customer engagement. 

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Conclusion

Using chatbots is a good way to deal with your customers and bring about improved productivity and business efficiency. There’s a lot of buzz going around about artificial intelligence. Use the above ways to take advantage of chatbots in your marketing campaigns. 

Best

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“Why I Didn’t Start My Internet Business Sooner” – Common Excuses (And Solutions)

I wanted to share some familiar excuses for why people don’t take the plunge and start something new. In this case – an online business. I would know as most of these applied to me.

“No time”

The lack of time to commit to building a business is the most common excuse based on surveys and polls. Time is a precious commodity, and we generally try to fill the free time we do have with enjoyable, rather than productive things. The desire is definitely there among young people but time is often cited as the excuse.

Don’t forget, each day on earth represents a greater portion of our time left to live compared to the previous day. Scary right?
With that in mind, surely you’ll want to spend less time commuting and working unsatisfactory jobs and more time with family, passions and growth?

This is why having an online presence is the best thing you can do considering so much interaction and commerce is done through social media. It is astonishing that with people and networks at our finger tips, we’re not taking advantage as we can and should.

Solution

  1. Make time. if you want something badly enough you’ll find a way.
  2. No time at this present moment, and too many commitments? Then consider an affiliate business model where you promote and sell other peoples’ products/services for a commission. This requires less time and can help build a solid side income.

“No technical skills”

Three months ago i didn’t know how to build a website or set up email systems, write blogs or create custom graphics. There are so many resources and its so easy these days. Especially when it can be just a case of point and click, and drag and drop interfaces -which means no HTML code learning required!

Solution

  1. Digital Business Lounge (for integrated hosting, website building, email, landing page) – all in one place!
  2. Outsource all the technical parts to your business using Fiverr.
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“Don’t truly believe I can do it”

I am part of a community that consists of all types of people with varying skills and beliefs. From truck drivers through to big shot lawyers. They all have one thing in common – they want to change their life. Whether that’s more money, time, fulfilment. there is an underlying ‘why’, and that’s what you have to discover for yourself.

And yes, they all had initial doubts as I did, but the first step is always the hardest.

Solution

  1. Everyone starts somewhere, but to embark on an entrepreneurial journey, you need to sort out your mindset. Mindset, confidence and being clear on your ‘why’ is discussed on regular ‘WakeUp’ calls within the SFM (Six Figure Mentors) community. Check it out!
  2. Get inspired and learn from mentors through podcasts, books and motivational videos. I particular love listening to Jay Shetty’s and Satori Prime’s podcasts.
  3. Daily visualisation practice so that eventually your future successful self becomes ingrained in your sub-conscious.

“I don’t have a product or service to sell”

This is something I struggled with initially. I always loved the idea of an internet business but just didn’t have a product or service. What to do?

Solution

  1. AFFILIATE MARKETING – As mentioned above, affiliate marketing is a great online business model for people who are looking to dip their toes into online marketing and start making money. Affiliate marketing is essentially recommending other peoples’ products and services that are aligned to your content, and that you have used before. SFM is a platform that not only teach you how to become an effective affiliate marketer, but also allow you to earn high-ticket affiliate commissions ranging in the $000s.
  2. E-COMMERCE – Amazon is the e-commerce platform of choice for millions across the globe. If you don’t have your own product, no problem. It is so easy these days to find wholesalers that produce t-shirts, camera bags, bikes, etc, and have them redesigned and re-branded according to your taste. Additionally, you don’t even need to hold stock in your garage or bedroom. With Amazon drop-shipping, the product can be collected from the wholesaler’s factory and dropped directly to the customer. The SFM teaches individuals this Amazon drop-shipping process- step by step.
  3. YOU are the product. as you have so much to share that certain people will resonate with you. Give and share what you know/love about a particular topic, area or product and before you know it, you will realise rewards from the value you give your customers and readers/viewers.

“I want to see examples of people like me make it first”

People fear the unknown and that’s entirely natural. Therefore it is completely understandable that whenever starting something new, it helps us to see evidence of success in that area thus giving us something to model on.

Before I started my journey with the SFM, I was intrigued by claims that people like me – in respective jobs earning comfortable salaries, managed to replace their salary with impressive profits from their online business. Conversely, there were also individuals in the SFM community that had nothing like the academic education or training that I had yet were commanding huge respect from their successes.

Solution

Click here to read real testimonials from real people, get inspired and change your life!

Conclusion

I wanted to shine some insight into the excuses that most people (yourself included?) say to themselves to avoid starting an online business. And with forecasted online sales of $25 trillion by 2025, surely you’d want to build your internet business and claim a tiny chuck of that??

Best

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How You Got Here…Won’t Get You There! (Mindset Shifts Needed)

I’m going to be blunt. This is important, as it will make you self-aware and change your approach in life. But essentially, how you got here…won’t get you there.

What that means is that everything you have done in the past and decisions made to get to this point in your life….will not help you get to where you want to go.

So if you are not satisfied with your finances, your weight, your relationships, career or any aspect of your life – you have to review the approach you have taken so far. You have to review your daily attitude. You have to review your strategies, tactics and plans – if there are any at all, in order to set about changing things. Here are the key shifts required:

Set goals and know your why

When you set a goal, you are acknowledging to your conscious and sub-conscious that where you are, is not where you want to be. As a result, you feel dissatisfied. That’s when you have real power and motivation to achieve the goals, because pressure and tension drive human behavior.

Set goals explicitly, and also be clear why you want them. How will they make you feel? This is important because the purpose of the goal is much stronger than the outcome. The purpose of goals is what they will make of you as a person. Because at the end of your life, what’s important is who you are as a person.

So enjoy the process, and don’t get too hung up on the outcome…it’s more sustainable that way.

Also ask yourself how would you feel and what would it cost you if you didn’t achieve the goals? Tony Robbins suggests setting goals twice a year, review the goals monthly and review your top goals daily.

Mentors

To get to where you want to be, you need to surround yourself with people who have been through a similar path and have been there and done it. Having a mentor is so important as you need role models and someone to pick you up if you stray. Surround yourself with books, attend courses, and listen to podcasts that are aligned with your goals.

In fact, it has been proven that listening to someone speak through audio, i.e. a recording or podcast, has the same effect as if that person was sitting next to you. You want to immerse yourself into powerful podcasts! Ex-monk Jay Shetty and life-coaches Satori Prime have awesome, inspiring podcasts I highly recommend.

Momentum

Daily tasks and routine leads to consistency, which leads to momentum.


“When you experience positive momentum, you’ll never want it to stop.” — Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach

You will notice that successful people keep progressing and conquering goal after goal. They’ve worked hard to develop their momentum and know what it feels like to not have momentum. Being without momentum is rough. It’s how most people live their lives. And without momentum, results are minimal, even with lots of effort.

This is why consistency is key to developing momentum. By putting intentional effort toward a singular goal or vision, and eventually, the compound effect takes over, and you find that your reward is beyond what you expected.

So the key shift you need to make is setting aside time daily to work towards your goal. This time needs to be pre-scheduled and allows for your full focus and determination. Continuous work and practice at anything will eventually allow you to master whatever it is. Author Malcolm Gladwell’s research based on review of successful people, states that 10,000 hours of repetitive effort is required to become an expert at anything.

Think bigger!

This is an important shift, because we don’t always allow ourselves to dream. Remember there is no boundary to what is possible. Instead of seeking to earn £100k a year, why not aim for £1m a year. There’s no rule out there or judgement of you that says you’re not allowed to achieve that target. The universe can deliver whatever you want. Instead of setting a time horizon of 2 years, why not achieving it in 6 months?

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By thinking big, your brain automatically starts to think about the steps and tactics to take so you are positioned to achieve those big goals. And a huge part of this, is to reconfigure your reticular activating system (RAS) using visualization.

In any case, by setting larger goals you will find that you will surpass your initial, smaller goal at a much swifter pace. Consider that….

When I started my online venture, I realized that I had to make some shifts in my daily habit, take action and and changes my mindset. Some examples include;

  • Scheduling time in the morning, afternoon and late evening to work and acquire skills
  • Visualization and meditation
  • Getting a new laptop
  • Buying a camera tripod
  • Going beyond my comfort zone
  • Using downtime to mastermind and research
  • Ensure my fitness goals weren’t being sacrificed.
man sitting on cliff feeling free

Remember, where you are in your life at this moment is down to the decisions and choices you made. All it takes is a mindset shift and your path can easily change to one of freedom, choice and fulfillment.

Click here to learn about an Entrepreneurial mindset and valuable online marketing skills to start your own profitable digital business.

Best wishes

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