Niall Doherty's Blog, page 149
June 24, 2022
eBiz Weekly #181
eBiz Weekly is a free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. We send it out every Friday to 24,264 legendary subscribers. We also post the content of each email here on the website.
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This week:
Designer Earns $520,366 In 1 YearEgyptian Rottweiler Guy Makes MillionsDeal of the Week: Squirrly SEOFreelancing Around The World$3000/Month SaaS in 9 MonthsGood Surfer on a Bad WaveBefore you buy a business bookIf you can’t pay the rent60+ Remote CompaniesLast Chance: $250 GiveawayDesigner Earns $520,366 In 1 YearRich Webster shares on Instagram that he earned a cool half mil as a designer in 2021 
He offers six tips that “matter more than design if you want to make money.”
One I hadn’t heard before…
Brand yourself as an agency.
The day you stop calling yourself a freelancer is the day you’ll double your rates. The term freelancer implies commodity pricing. Agencies can charge 2-5x rates of freelancers for the same work.
The only difference? Positioning.
Related: why clients don’t take you seriously
Egyptian Rottweiler Guy Makes MillionsI first heard about Ahmed Sobhy via this short profile.
He’s a guy from Egypt 
who started a Facebook page about the Rottweiler dog breed back in 2012 (first post).
Apparently the page gained 200,000 followers in the first few weeks, and Ahmed has gone on to grow…
An Instagram account to 603K followersA TikTok to 448k followersA website to 100k monthly visitsA YouTube channel to 1.14M subscribersThat last one is probably the big money-maker for Ahmed. Social Blade estimates the channel’s annual earnings between $145,200 and $2.3 million 
Crazy that someone can make millions mainly by sharing memes and videos of the 8th most popular dog breed.
Related: 43 more weird / creative ways people make money online
Deal of the Week: Squirrly SEO
Squirrly SEO is an AI-powered, all-in-one SEO suite that takes the guesswork out of search engine optimization.
One reviewer writes…
“I’ve been using Squirrly SEO for about 2 weeks now and I can honestly say that it blows anything else I have been using for SEO out of the water!”
Right now you can get lifetime access to Squirrly SEO for only $69, even though it usually costs $30/month or more 
Check out this interview and income report with freelance writer Alice Lemée.
Alice started freelancing about 1.5 years ago and last month earned $5,766.
Doesn’t sound like a ton, but she’s earned that while only spending $1600/month and living/traveling in places like Mexico 
and Colombia 
A lot of Alice’s clients have apparently come via Twitter, where she’s racked up 17K followers in a couple of years…
I tweet once a day, but sometimes it literally takes me 90 minutes to come up with one tweet.
It sounds like a waste of time, but that is a scale that you can translate into copywriting with actual clients who will pay you a good sum of money. Never see it as like zero-sum game.
A thread from Alice 
That’s HelpKit, a product that helps you build a knowledge base on top of Notion 
Founder Dominik Sobe launched last September and has been chipping away at the business while still in school (“I need to finish my thesis asap”).
Dominik is a self-taught coder, but he says that coding a product like HelpKit might be the easy part…
The other, arguably more important part is marketing. Getting initial traction is tough and there is no magic formula for it. What helped me the most is building in public on Twitter. Constantly sharing my progress on HelpKit gained initial interest and slowly the Notion community picked it up and started sharing it as well.
Related: 9 common traits that create successful products
Good Surfer on a Bad WaveA framework from Justin Jackson of Transistor.fm ($1m+ in ARR) 
The founder is the surfer. The product is the surfboard. The market is the wave. The wave matters most. A good surfer on a bad wave is screwed. Hence it makes a ton of sense to focus on finding a great wave.
That’s via a recent article by Jakob Greenfeld.
A few sites to help you find the next wave…
Exploding TopicsGlimpseGoogle TrendsSubreddit StatsAlso from Jakob, a poll on Twitter with a clear winner
Try this hack: search your podcast app for interviews with the author 
One good interview will often give you the best takeaways from the book, without having to buy or read it.
For example, here are solid interviews from the top 3 picks on my list of best business books for online entrepreneurs…
The Value of Deep Work in the Age of Distraction (Art of Manliness)Revisiting The 4-Hour Workweek (The Tim Ferriss Show)The Millionaire Fastlane w/ MJ DeMarco (Millennial Investing)If you can’t pay the rentQuote from an (unusually expensive) book called The Prosperous Coach…
If you can’t pay the rent you don’t need a client, you need a job. Forget coaching. Find a way to create income immediately. You will never create high-end clients from a needy place. Once your basic expenses are covered and you no longer ‘need’ a client you are in a perfect position to start coaching again.
That’s good advice for all aspiring entrepreneurs, IMO.
There are great stories out there about entrepreneurs who succeeded because they were flat broke and had no choice but to make it happen. For every story like that, there are probably 1000 stories of people who fell on their face. But those stories rarely get told 
Safety Wing has a list of them here, along with benefits offered and links to see what roles they’re currently hiring for.
Related: 7 ways get a remote job
Last Chance: $250 GiveawayA final reminder about the $250 Giveaway we’re doing at eBiz Facts this month.
Check the list of online business courses on this page… have you done any of them?
If so, submit your rating and review – takes 3-5 minutes – and once published you’ll be entered into a draw to win $250 
If you’ve done multiple courses, you can leave multiple reviews and thereby have a better chance of winning.
Deadline is midnight Thursday, June 30th.
(Want to review a course that’s not listed? Tell me about it here.)
Sign up for more tips and insights to build your online business 🚀You've been reading the web version of our free weekly newsletter, eBiz Weekly. Enter your email below to join 24,264 subscribers and get the next one delivered direct to your inbox.
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In case you missed em, here are the last three editions of eBiz Weekly:
#180 – 65 Business Courses For $49#179 – $18,375/Month White Noise Podcast#178 – $38,202/Month ArseblogFull archiveUntil next week, rock on with your legendary self 
—
Niall Doherty – Tbilisi, Georgia
eBiz Facts
By the way...
Rate and Review an Online Course
Have you ever taken a course that promised to help you make money online? Share your experience with that course and we’ll donate $5 on your behalf to educate a girl in rural Africa.
How To Make Money Online
A deep article laying out all the possibilities for making money online, based on the 6 levels and 19 types of online business.
Recommended Resources
Check out our collection of the best tools and resources for building an online business. Web hosting, email marketing, productivity, top-rated courses, etc.
Free Courses
A massive list of FREE Udemy courses to help build your online business. We only list top-rated courses – minimum 50 ratings – and update every 24 hours.
Find A Remote Job
See our list of the best ways to find a remote job, based on 100+ hours of research and testing.
Start Earning Online
A free crash course to help you build an online business, consists of 11 videos shot in Spain, Russia and Montenegro.
Facebook + Twitter
If you enjoyed the above, come follow eBiz Facts on the socials. We share this kind of content regularly on Facebook and Twitter.
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June 16, 2022
eBiz Weekly #180
eBiz Weekly is a free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. We send it out every Friday to 23,782 legendary subscribers. We also post the content of each email here on the website.
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This week:
Blogging to $1.4 Million a Year$48K/Year Newsletter Ads System65 Business Courses For $493 Questions To Get UnstuckSelf-Taught Coder 5-Figure SaaS Sale$50,000 Profit From A Side ProjectHe Lost $700,000 In Crypto Crash$420K/Year Anonymous NewsletterLatest MomentosWhat Lies Clearly At HandBlogging to $1.4 Million a YearSteve Chou tweets about how he blogged his way to $1.4 million a year and beyond 
Steve started blogging at My Wife Quit Her Job back in 2008. He broke 6 figures in blog earnings in 2012, and in 2017 pulled in $1.4 million.
And that isn’t Steve’s only 7-figure business. He launched this handkerchief ecommerce store in 2007 and it apparently generated $100,00+ profit in the first year 
Steve says his ecom business earned more revenue for years, “but the blog is almost pure profit because there are no overheads for inventory or office space.”
Blogging is a powerful business model. But it does take time.
Don’t start it if you need money quick, but if you’re willing to work at it for a few years then you can make life-changing money within a couple of years.
(If you do need money quick, start with freelancing or a remote job.)
$48K/Year Newsletter Ads SystemJosh Spector writes how he has monetized his 18,000-subscriber newsletter to the tune of $4000/month 
It’s all via ad sales.
Here’s a recent edition of his For The Interested newsletter. Josh lays it out with links to 5 interesting articles/resources, followed by a bulleted list of sources and sponsors, followed by some closing words.
Josh sends out one newsletter like that on Sundays, and supplements with smaller daily emails to his list, each featuring one article/resource and one sponsor.
More info on Josh’s ad sales system via the video at the bottom of this page.
And check out his newsletter. It’s aimed at creative entrepreneurs, lots of great stuff in there about growing your audience and business.
65 Business Courses For $49That’s the latest BC Stack, available until this Sunday, June 19th.
I bought it myself a few days ago, just too good a deal to pass up.
Check out all the courses included in the stack 
No matter what business you’re trying to build online, you’ll find something valuable in there. Plus you get access to 30 days of expert Q&As.
3 Questions To Get UnstuckFrom million dollar YouTuber Ali Abdaal…
1. “What’s the difference between what I want, and what I am doing?”
2. Is there anything I can do now to change the situation?
3. Am I waiting for motivation, or am I practicing discipline?
Related to that last point, one of my favorite articles of all time 
Reporty is “a Shopify x Slack bot” created by self-taught programmer Chris Tung.
Chris writes that he created the app to solve a problem he ran into at his day job…
over the Christmas period in 2018, I decided to spend a few days making the Shopify x Slack app I wish existed.
This was the first app I built entirely on my own, and when it was ready, I shared Reporty on Reddit and got 1 user.
Eventually he was able to grow it to $3000 in annual revenue, and then sold the business for $10,000+ via MicroAcquire.
Great example of learning while earning 
Top two resources Chris used to learn coding:
Ruby on Rails Tutorial by Michael HartlStephen Grider’s Udemy courses$50,000 Profit From A Side ProjectPawel Urbanek also writes about his experience building a Slack app.
It’s called Abot, and it allows team members to anonymously post feedback and polls.
Pawel started building the app about 5 years ago and says it has mostly been running on autopilot the last 2 years 
It’s now earning him about $4000/month with very little expense or time to maintain…
Abot is sitting on AWS, and the monthly cost of EC2, RDS, and Cloudflare are ~$50. Required time involvement for occasional demo calls, invoicing, security updates, and housekeeping is around 5 hours a month.
Pawel’s write-up is well worth reading as he’s brutally honest about the ups and downs of being a self-employed solo developer…
I’ve released a dozen commercial side projects. Most of them suck up hundreds of hours, made a few dollars and died out. But every $ they made has always felt different than my 9-5 salary. Abot is the only one that kind of made it. 50k profit might seem like a lot. But if you divide it by the nolife after work hours I’ve spent to generate this “passive” income, you’d hardly get a junior dev hourly rate. But it’s fun.
Also, I’m guessing all that experience building his own apps is a big reason why he can charge $10,000+ for consulting projects
(Pawel also seems to have gotten a lot out of Y Combinator’s free Startup School, which is now open for registration.)
He Lost $700,000 In Crypto CrashThat’s Shaan Puri from the My First Million podcast 
Listen to the recent episode where Shaan explains how he’s staying sane despite the losses.
Co-host Sam Parr recently tweeted a sentiment I strongly agree with…
Instead of freaking out about the stock market, I’d rather just focus on making more $ through business building.
Related: best business podcasts for online entrepreneurs
$420K/Year Anonymous NewsletterAs the world grows more privacy-conscious, I love finding examples of people earning big money online anonymously.
That’s the case with the founder of the Alpha Letter newsletter.
He recently shared his journey on Starter Story, detailing how he went from pretty much $0 a couple of years ago to $35,000/month today 
TL;DR – he capitalized on the WallStreetBets fiasco in 2020 to quickly gain 150,000 followers on Twitter, then leveraged that into 20,000 newsletter subscribers.
The newsletter is monetized in two primary ways…
I write a free newsletter at least once or twice per week, depending on if I can sell ads, and then write a paid version for paying subscribers 2-4x per month.
He charges $1200 to 2000 per ad placement in the free newsletter that goes out to 80,000+ subscribers. And then the 1400+ paying subscribers are charged $20/month.
Latest MomentosMy latest batch of personal ramblings is here if you fancy a look 
Wrapping it up today with words from a 19th century Scotsman 
“The task of a man is not to see what lies dimly in the distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.” – Thomas Carlyle
In other words, break your big projects and goals down into small, manageable tasks. Then get to work 
You've been reading the web version of our free weekly newsletter, eBiz Weekly. Enter your email below to join 23,782 subscribers and get the next one delivered direct to your inbox.
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In case you missed em, here are the last three editions of eBiz Weekly:
#179 – $18,375/Month White Noise Podcast#178 – $38,202/Month Arseblog#177 – From “Dumb Blog” to $70K Profit/MonthFull archiveUntil next week, rock on with your legendary self 
—
Niall Doherty – Tbilisi, Georgia
eBiz Facts
By the way...
Rate and Review an Online Course
Have you ever taken a course that promised to help you make money online? Share your experience with that course and we’ll donate $5 on your behalf to educate a girl in rural Africa.
How To Make Money Online
A deep article laying out all the possibilities for making money online, based on the 6 levels and 19 types of online business.
Recommended Resources
Check out our collection of the best tools and resources for building an online business. Web hosting, email marketing, productivity, top-rated courses, etc.
Free Courses
A massive list of FREE Udemy courses to help build your online business. We only list top-rated courses – minimum 50 ratings – and update every 24 hours.
Find A Remote Job
See our list of the best ways to find a remote job, based on 100+ hours of research and testing.
Start Earning Online
A free crash course to help you build an online business, consists of 11 videos shot in Spain, Russia and Montenegro.
Facebook + Twitter
If you enjoyed the above, come follow eBiz Facts on the socials. We share this kind of content regularly on Facebook and Twitter.
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June 9, 2022
eBiz Weekly #179
eBiz Weekly is a free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. We send it out every Friday to 23,617 legendary subscribers. We also post the content of each email here on the website.
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This week:
$18,375/Month White Noise PodcastFast-Growing Travel Deals Newsletter$1 Million Niche Newsletter6 Figures in 6 Months Freelance Writing2 Hours Per Day Content Machine$1M ARR Open-Source SaaSJapan’s Anti-Procrastination Cafe$4000/Month Writing About FootballMay Finance Report$250 Giveaway$18,375/Month White Noise PodcastCheck out this podcast: Tmsoft’s White Noise Sleep Sounds 
Recent episodes include:
Easter Island Waves 9 HoursBox Fan Sleep Sounds 9 HoursRain on Tent Sound 9 HoursBloomberg has the scoop on the podcast creator, Todd Moore…
Moore says that his white noise show now gets around 50,000 listens per day… Because Moore doesn’t want to interrupt the calming aura of his show, he opts to include only pre-roll ads. Anchor manages the commercial load and pays Moore $12.25 per thousand listens, which adds up to about $612.50 per day, or around $18,375 per month.
Another white noise podcast – 12 Hour Sound Machines – apparently gets 2x the listens per day 
The Bloomberg article makes it sound like the success of these types of podcasts is mostly luck, with the Spotify algorithm mysteriously promoting some ahead of others.
I guess the takeaway is you never know what will be a hit. You just have to keep taking shots.
Fast-Growing Travel Deals NewsletterRory’s Travel Club is a newsletter that tracks and shares travel deals for people in Ireland 
The free version gets you 1-2 deals per week. The paid version costs €10 a year and gets you 10-20 deals per week.
The site says they have 10,000+ members – and Rory’s LinkedIn says they have 22,000 – but I’m assuming those are free subscribers.
Looks like Rory – a 29-year-old chap from Northern Ireland – only started the newsletter last June, so it’s growing fast
And yeah, it’s basically a rip-off of Scott’s Cheap Flights – which was already doing $3 million in annual revenue back in 2017 – but niched down to a smaller country.
I’d bet this could be done successfully for many countries. If there isn’t already a good travel deals newsletter for countries like Portugal, Austria and the Netherlands, the opportunity is sitting there waiting for someone to capitalize.
$1 Million Niche NewsletterThe Daily Lodging Report is an unassuming newsletter for the hospitality industry.
It was sold recently for an undisclosed amount, but was apparently earning about $1 million a year at the time of sale – $295 to $450 annual subscription paid by 2,600 subscribers
So while Rory went broad and cheap with his travel deals newsletter, this one took the opposite approach: super niche + premium pricing.
6 Figures in 6 Months Freelance WritingCheck out this interview with Elna Cain.
Back in 2014, she started freelance writing as a stay-at-home mom of twins and was able to quickly earn $100,000+
She’s since gone on to make money via affiliate marketing and online courses.
A few things that helped Elna succeed as a freelancer so quickly…
She writes about trending topics (eg. B2B SaaS, cryptocurrency, Web3).She spent quite a bit of time building her network.She would only pitch companies that had a high revenue, knowing they’d be more likely to pay her a high rate.Elna also echoes a point I try to make here regularly…
What’s nice about freelancing is that it acts like a springboard to other things. You learn the ropes, you learn how to offer a service. And now you can apply those skills, right?
Freelancing isn’t the sexiest type of online business. But in my experience it is the most reliable way to start earning online. And it’s a great bridge into more advanced online business models.
2 Hours Per Day Content MachineDan Koe tweets…
How I turn 1 piece of content per week into a $45,275 a month creative income and 340,000 followers in ~2 hours a day
He goes on to break down his process, which is basically to create one quality piece of content each week and then repurpose it to share on multiple channels.
A few places he gets inspiration for validated content ideas…
– The most popular YouTube videos of my favorite channels
– Medium article headlines
– Previous tweets that have done well.
That’s a fairly reliable hack no matter what business or niche you’re in: find the most popular articles/videos/posts that similar businesses or competitors have put out there, and create your own version.
Related: a free tool to see what’s popular on any Subreddit
$1M ARR Open-Source SaaS$1 million in annual recurring revenue is the latest milestone for Plausible Analytics, an open-source alternative to Google Analytics.
Their journey so far:
$0 to $400 MRR in 12 months$400 to $10k MRR in 9 months$10k to $41.6k MRR in 10 months$41.6k to $83.3k MRR in 8 monthsThey are a team of four, now hiring a remote product engineer.
Amazing to me that they are doing so well when they have a giant and well-known competitor that people can use for free.
Co-founder Marko Saric wrote a while back that “one blog post changed the traction for my startup”
The post: Why you should stop using Google Analytics on your website
So they basically identified Google Analytics as their enemy and stirred up some controversy. In some circles, this is known as beef marketing.
Could this work well for your business? 
Related: analysis of 23.2k subscription and SaaS companies
Japan’s Anti-Procrastination Cafe2-minute video about Tokyo’s Manuscript Writing Cafe 
It’s kinda genius…
You set a goal when you go in.They don’t let you leave until your work is done.3 intensity levels of progress checks.You pay per hour and get unlimited tea or coffee.A skeptic would probably respond to this idea with one word: karoshi 
But Justin Jackson reckons there should be an online version:
$4000/Month Writing About Football
FaaS: “Force me to do shit; as a service”
I call you up, and you stay on the line and make sure that I do work that I’ve been procrastinating on (taxes, paperwork, cleaning my office, whatever).
Last week I told you about the Arsenal fan blog and podcast that pulls in $38,000 per month
The guy who started that slogged away for 10+ years before making much money from it, and he had the benefit of Arsenal having lots of fans all around the world.
But check out this Substack newsletter about the Kansas City Chiefs. That team surely has a much smaller following worldwide and Seth Keysor only launched it 2 years ago, but his newsletter is already earning him $4000/month.
What a time to be alive, when you can earn a living as a one-person operation writing about your favorite sports team 
My latest monthly finance report is here detailing everything I earned and spent in my business last month.
We’re doing another $250 Giveaway at eBiz Facts this month.
Check the list of online business courses on this page… have you done any of them?
If so, submit your rating and review – takes 3-5 minutes – and once published you’ll be entered into a draw to win up to $250
If you’ve done multiple courses, you can leave multiple reviews and thereby have a better chance of winning.
(Want to review a course that’s not listed? Tell me about it here.)
Sign up for more tips and insights to build your online business 🚀You've been reading the web version of our free weekly newsletter, eBiz Weekly. Enter your email below to join 23,617 subscribers and get the next one delivered direct to your inbox.
HP
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Know someone who might dig this newsletter?
Forward them this email, or share the online version: https://ebizfacts.com/ebiz-weekly-179/
In case you missed em, here are the last three editions of eBiz Weekly:
#178 – $38,202/Month Arseblog#177 – From “Dumb Blog” to $70K Profit/Month#176 – $114K/Year Listerine Mouthwash RoyaltiesFull archiveUntil next week, rock on with your legendary self
—
Niall Doherty – Tbilisi, Georgia
eBiz Facts
By the way...
Rate and Review an Online Course
Have you ever taken a course that promised to help you make money online? Share your experience with that course and we’ll donate $5 on your behalf to educate a girl in rural Africa.
How To Make Money Online
A deep article laying out all the possibilities for making money online, based on the 6 levels and 19 types of online business.
Recommended Resources
Check out our collection of the best tools and resources for building an online business. Web hosting, email marketing, productivity, top-rated courses, etc.
Free Courses
A massive list of FREE Udemy courses to help build your online business. We only list top-rated courses – minimum 50 ratings – and update every 24 hours.
Find A Remote Job
See our list of the best ways to find a remote job, based on 100+ hours of research and testing.
Start Earning Online
A free crash course to help you build an online business, consists of 11 videos shot in Spain, Russia and Montenegro.
Facebook + Twitter
If you enjoyed the above, come follow eBiz Facts on the socials. We share this kind of content regularly on Facebook and Twitter.
Sign up for more tips and insights to build your online business 🚀
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June 3, 2022
eBiz Weekly #178
eBiz Weekly is a free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. We send it out every Friday to 23,504 legendary subscribers. We also post the content of each email here on the website.
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This week:
$38,202/Month Arseblog$30K/Month Solo Travel Blogger5 Most Productive WordsLaunching a SaaS in 24 Hours$10K/Month Teaching 15 Hours/WeekBiggest Mistake Freelancers MakeAlways. Be. Pitching.353K Views in 11 Hours on RedditLatest MomentosDon’t Aim At Success$38,202/Month ArseblogArseblog.com is not a blog about arses, but a fan blog about Arsenal Football Club 
An Irish chap named Andrew Mangan started it way back in 2002 and it looks like he made little-to-no money from it for a long time, instead earning a living primarily as a freelance voiceover artist.
Best I can tell, Andrew launched a Patreon for the site in February 2018 and now has 6367 patrons paying $6/month = $38,202/month.
16 years blogging (and podcasting) about his favorite football club before he made much money from it = 
I reckon “follow your passion” is overrated advice, but no doubt finding work you’re passionate about can be a massive advantage in the long run.
(Thanks to Darragh for putting me on to this one!)
Related: 60 of the Biggest Earners on Patreon (And What They’re Selling)
$30K/Month Solo Travel BloggerBack in 2012, Kristin Addis was burnt out from her career in mergers and acquisitions. So she quit her job, bought a one-way ticket to Bangkok 
and started a blog called Be My Travel Muse.
Per a recent profile, it took Kristin about 2 years to earn “a liveable wage” from her blog, and within 6 years she was earning “mid-six-figures” in revenue.
Now her site earns about $15,000 on a slow month, and as much as $50,000 on a good month
My main income streams are ad revenue from Mediavine, tours that I brand and run myself, partnerships with brands and destinations, and in the past I was freelancing as well.
SEO is key for Kristin’s business, and HARO has been a good way for her to build backlinks to her site.
5 Most Productive WordsJust in the past month alone, I’ve been a source for both Oprah Magazine and Glamour UK.
Shane Melaugh shares advice from Seth Godin that helped him turn “a group of people into a highly capable marketing team.”
The 5 words:
Your job is to ship.
Sounds underwhelming, I know. But when your main focus is to constantly get projects out the door and into the real world, you will make fast progress. Much faster than someone who practices endlessly in private, feeling like they’re never quite ready to push publish 
Shane gives the example of someone practicing making videos in private vs actually publishing them on YouTube…
Once you’ve done 95% of the work you have to do the other 95% of the work to actually finish something.
For publishing on YouTube, that “other 95%” of the work is stuff like writing a title, creating a thumbnail, sharing the video, asking for and processing feedback, etc. Stuff you’d never get to practice if you didn’t ship 
So whatever kind of online business you’re trying to create, focus on shipping. If you’re a freelancer, that means taking on real client projects before you feel ready. If you’re building a SaaS, that means getting your MVP out there ASAP.
It’s scary to ship, but it’s the fastest way forward.
Launching a SaaS in 24 HoursA great example of shipping fast from Samuel Thompson
He gave himself 24 hours to launch an MVP of Creatify, “a discovery platform for brands to find UGC content creators & micro-influencers.”
The idea isn’t as important as the execution. Excellent combination of building fast and building in public…
My goal is to show you how ANYONE can turn an idea into a business quickly.
Level playing field:
24 hours time limit
ZERO coding
I promise you can do this too.
Creatify just launched and it may ultimately fail as a business, but it would be foolish to bet against someone who ships like this consistently.
Check out Samuel’s full thread to see how he got his product launched in 24 hours.
$10K/Month Teaching 15 Hours/WeekJade Weatherington was a teacher struggling to earn a good income teaching on platforms like Elevate K-12, VipKid, Chegg and Wyzant.
Then she stumbled across Outschool…
I applied and within three days had courses listed on their platform… Within the first three months of having my classes listed, I was earning triple what I made from all the side jobs… Within a year, I was earning six figures. I was making a five-figure a month income and only teaching 10-15 hours per/week.
(Outschool doesn’t require formal teaching credentials, but teachers must be residents of the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or the UK.)
Read more about Jade’s story here. She’s a great example of someone earning far more online than she could earn doing the same work offline
Wes Walker writes…
I’ve seen hundreds of sales pitches. The number one mistake freelancers make is telling potential clients what they (the freelancer) can do. Instead, tell your potential clients how you will help them.
For example, if you’re a web developer, don’t tell a client that you will redesign their website. Instead, say you will help them get more customers 
Either way, you’re building a website. But with the latter approach you’re speaking to the ultimate outcome the client wants.
Always. Be. Pitching.Tem Nugmanov shares how his agency went from landing $300,000 of client work to almost running out of money a few months later.
In short, they paused all marketing efforts for 18 months. That worked out fine for a while, and revenue even grew 7x in 2021.
But eventually the work started drying up and Tem was worried he might not make payroll for his team of 13 
Thankfully, they were able to right the ship by refocusing on marketing…
353K Views in 11 Hours on Redditwe relaunched the marketing department, came up with projects, and started relentlessly shipping. Since then we closed seven deals, revamped our website, and working on much more.
Mudiaga Ejenavi shares how he “got to the top of the r/internetIsBeautiful SubReddit with 353k post views and 6.6k Pageviews”
He was posting about his Javascript job board, JsJobbs.
Key points:
Mudiaga also posted in a couple of other subreddits and got little traction. So posting in multiple places worked well for him.He looked at what posts usually did well in each subreddit and titled his post similarly.The post was deleted by mods after about only 11 hours, probably for being too self-promotional. But by then the post was already a big success for Mudiaga.Well, it wasn’t a big success for him financially – he figures only 2 paying customers came via Reddit – but he did get a lot of brutally honest feedback, which he’s leveraging to improve his job board.
Related: 6 simple tips (w/examples) to promote on Reddit
MomentosMy latest batch of personal ramblings is here if you fancy a look
Wise words from Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning…
Sign up for more tips and insights to build your online business 🚀“Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue…as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.”
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#177 – From “Dumb Blog” to $70K Profit/Month#176 – $114K/Year Listerine Mouthwash Royalties#175 – $601,530 PowerPoint TemplateFull archiveUntil next week, rock on with your legendary self
—
Niall Doherty – Tbilisi, Georgia
eBiz Facts
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Rate and Review an Online Course
Have you ever taken a course that promised to help you make money online? Share your experience with that course and we’ll donate $5 on your behalf to educate a girl in rural Africa.
How To Make Money Online
A deep article laying out all the possibilities for making money online, based on the 6 levels and 19 types of online business.
Recommended Resources
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Free Courses
A massive list of FREE Udemy courses to help build your online business. We only list top-rated courses – minimum 50 ratings – and update every 24 hours.
Find A Remote Job
See our list of the best ways to find a remote job, based on 100+ hours of research and testing.
Start Earning Online
A free crash course to help you build an online business, consists of 11 videos shot in Spain, Russia and Montenegro.
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May 27, 2022
eBiz Weekly #177
eBiz Weekly is a free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. We send it out every Friday to 23,324 legendary subscribers. We also post the content of each email here on the website.
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This week:
From “Dumb Blog” to $70K Profit/Month$20K/Month Online Business EvolutionDeal of the Week: Podcast EditionNo Money Hack: Triangulation Deals$1.3 Million Company at 21 Years OldFree Digital Marketing Courses$218 MRR SaaS Sold For $10KSimple Spreadsheet to $823K/YearLast Chance: $250 GiveawayIf You’re Always Putting Out Fires…From “Dumb Blog” to $70K Profit/MonthAlex Goldberg shares how he co-founded a “dumb blog” – Fin vs Fin – that became a portfolio of sites that profit $70,000 per month
It’s a great example of how important it is to just get started, because Alex and his co-founder didn’t have much of a plan initially. But once they were rolling, they were able to see what worked vs what didn’t, and adjust course as needed.
Alex also speaks to the benefit of building a business with a partner instead of going it alone…
Both of us wrote content and kept up this balancing act while still maintaining demanding full-time day jobs. One of the hardest parts of side hustling is maintaining enough motivation to consistently hop back on your computer after a full day’s work…
But having a business partner helps. It was fun having someone to share the small wins with and help keep each other accountable.
If you’re struggling to build a business on your own, try teaming up with someone and see if that works better for you.
Related: 37 affiliate marketing website examples + how much money they make
$20K/Month Online Business EvolutionMatt Bochnak started a website and YouTube channel about motorcycle repair 
way back in 2012.
According to Side Hustle Nation, by 2016 Matt was earning only $1000/month, mainly selling how-to videos. By 2019 he was earning $5000/month from “a combination of digital product sales, YouTube ad income, affiliate commissions, Patreon, and sponsored content.”
And now in 2022 he’s up to $20,000/month
His main income streams include…
Premium repair videos and courses sold via Gumroad: $4200/monthPhysical products: $125K revenue to date ($75K profit)YouTube ad revenue: $2000/monthPatreon: $378 per YouTube videoAffiliate income: $400/monthCheck out one of Matt’s first videos from 2012. His newer videos aren’t much different: simple show and tell.
I’m sure there are much bigger motorcycle-themed YouTube channels out there, but I love how Matt has kept things simple over the years. He cranked out videos consistently and experimented with lots of monetization methods along the way 
Is there a topic you’d enjoy creating content about for 10+ years? If so, you may not earn much from your efforts early on. But given enough time it could earn you a very good living.
Deal of the Week: Podcast EditionThinking to start a podcast?
Then definitely check out this collection of discounted tools for recording, editing, launching, and analyzing a successful podcast.
See all deals this weekNo Money Hack: Triangulation DealsJames Schramko has apparently “built a $100,000+/month business while working just 25 hours a week.”
On episode 577 of the Smart Passive Income podcast, James talks about a way to get started in business when you have no money. He calls it a Triangulation Deal 
Paraphrasing James explaining how he used this to learn marketing and gain valuable experience…
I went to a car repair shop and I told them, “I can help you grow your business and I’m going to need some materials for it. So if you could buy me these resources, I will go through them and then I’ll apply them to your business.”
I bought several hundred dollars worth of Dan Kennedy books at the time. And then I wrote up a plan and I did the marketing… which was ultimately worth millions of dollars to the repair shop.
Is there a course or resource you’d love to access but can’t afford?
Who might be willing to “sponsor” your access in return for you applying what you learn to their business?
That’s Joe Binder, as profiled here
Joe’s company “helps CEOs and founders build their personal brands on social media.”
He started off freelance and now has an agency with 16 employees.
When I see stories like this, I’m always curious to hear how they landed their first client.
Here’s how it happened for Joe…
to get my first client, I offered to run a free campaign. I would produce content for them for a month for free on the condition that if they were happy with it, they would give me a testimonial that I could use publicly.
Joe did the work, got a glowing testimonial, leveraged that into more free campaigns + testimonials, then eventually his first paying client
Check out the SEMrush Academy for a bunch of high-quality free courses related to marketing and SEO.
A few that caught my eye
Joe Masilotti writes about his experience taking a SaaS from idea to sold in only 14 months.
The SaaS is Mugshot Bot, which automatically creates slick preview images for links shared on social.
Joe started building it to scratch his own itch, and forced himself to launch the product within one month. He got it to about 30 paying customers and $218 monthly recurring revenue (MRR), then decided to sell so he could spend more time on other projects.
Here’s the kicker: looks like he sold it for about $10,000
My favorite takeaway from Joe is how he goes from zero to launch in one month. He dives deeper on his process for doing that here.
That approach gives him lots of at-bats, thereby increasing his chances of hitting a home run.
Simple Spreadsheet to $823K/YearNomad List is another project that was launched quickly
It’s a site for digital nomads and remote workers to compare cities around the world.
According to a recent profile, Pieter Levels started the project as a simple spreadsheet back in 2014…
It ended up becoming viral and Pieter was able to build a first version of Nomad List from all the data he crowdsourced and launch a proper MVP in less than a month.
Nomad List was one of 8 projects Pieter launched that year, in an effort he likened to “a tiny personal hyperfast incubator.”
It’s now earning $823,000 per year.
Another project Pieter launched that year – a remote job board called Remote OK – has done even better, currently pulling in $2.1 million per year
A fitting quote from Daniel Vassallo to sum up this rapid-fire approach to online business…
Last Chance: $250 GiveawayTreat projects like cattle, not like pets.
A final reminder about the $250 Giveaway we’re doing at eBiz Facts this month.
Check the list of online business courses on this page… have you done any of them?
If so, submit your rating and review – takes 3-5 minutes – and once published you’ll be entered into a draw to win $250
If you’ve done multiple courses, you can leave multiple reviews and thereby have a better chance of winning.
Deadline is midnight Tuesday, May 31st.
If You’re Always Putting Out Fires…Leaving you this week with a quote from James Schramko on that aforementioned SPI podcast…
Sign up for more tips and insights to build your online business 🚀If you’re always putting out fires, then you are the arsonist
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#176 – $114K/Year Listerine Mouthwash Royalties#175 – $601,530 PowerPoint Template#174 – Dropshipping Is Like Being PregnantFull archiveUntil next week, rock on with your legendary self
—
Niall Doherty – Tbilisi, Georgia
eBiz Facts
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Rate and Review an Online Course
Have you ever taken a course that promised to help you make money online? Share your experience with that course and we’ll donate $5 on your behalf to educate a girl in rural Africa.
How To Make Money Online
A deep article laying out all the possibilities for making money online, based on the 6 levels and 19 types of online business.
Recommended Resources
Check out our collection of the best tools and resources for building an online business. Web hosting, email marketing, productivity, top-rated courses, etc.
Free Courses
A massive list of FREE Udemy courses to help build your online business. We only list top-rated courses – minimum 50 ratings – and update every 24 hours.
Find A Remote Job
See our list of the best ways to find a remote job, based on 100+ hours of research and testing.
Start Earning Online
A free crash course to help you build an online business, consists of 11 videos shot in Spain, Russia and Montenegro.
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May 20, 2022
eBiz Weekly #176
eBiz Weekly is a free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. We send it out every Friday to 23,166 legendary subscribers. We also post the content of each email here on the website.
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This week:
$100K Selling Google Sheet TutorialsDinosaur Podcast = Full-Time Income$114K/Year Listerine Mouthwash RoyaltiesDeal of the Week: DeepWord$100K in 1 Month Selling Notion TemplatesDifficult and Boring = $$$$6M in 18 Months LinkedIn Outreach SaaS30 Minute Call = 2.5 HoursLatest MomentosTwo Reminders$100K Selling Google Sheet TutorialsAndrew Kamphey breaks down how he’s built BetterSheets.co – tag line: kind of like Netflix for Google Sheets – to $100,000 in revenue in 2 years…
Yep, I generated $100k in revenue In 24 months selling Google Sheets tutorials, Google Sheets templates, Google Scripts, Google Sheets “software”, and Info Products on Google Sheets.
Love that he’s transparent about how much of that $100K has been profit: about half. Though it looks like he doubled revenue from Year 1 to Year 2, and it apparently costs him less than $50/month to run the business
96% of Andrew’s revenue has come from offering a lifetime deal on AppSumo.
Essentially the business is Andrew teaching people what he knows about software that millions of people use every day.
Could you do that with some other popular software?
Two posts from Andrew’s blog you might want to check out:
You Can Launch A Business with a Google Sheet10 Ways to Promote Your Google SheetDinosaur Podcast = Full-Time IncomeCheck out this profile on Garret Kruger and Sabrina Ricci, the husband and wife team behind the world’s #1 dinosaur podcast: IKnowDino.com 
They launched it back in 2015 and it took six years before they were both able to go full-time on the business.
It’s unclear exactly how much money they’re earning but they monetize in several ways…
Patreon – probably ~$2000/monthPodcast ads and sponsorshipsMerchEbooksDonationsAds on their YouTube channel – $7 to $119 per monthDisplay ads on their websiteIt sounds like neither Garret nor Sabrina have any professional experience related to dinosaurs. But it’s a subject they are passionate about and they’ve found a way to earn a living from it online 
Seems you can make a living in almost any niche online if you stick with it long enough.
$114K/Year Listerine Mouthwash RoyaltiesCheck out RoyaltyExchange.com
It’s a marketplace where you can buy and sell royalty rights.
The highest listing on there right now is for Listerine Mouthwash Royalties. That pays out $114,253 per year, and the listed price is $1,795,000.
Buy it for that price, and you’d earn your investment back in about 16 years. After that, seems like it’d be $114K per year passive income
3 more listings on there that caught my eye…
Music In The Award-Winning “Shrek” Film Franchise: $78,190 last 12 months’ earnings, $925,000 list price.Cold Case + More – TV and Film Cues: $63,032 last 12 months, $746,795 list price.Bad Company Sound Recording Royalties: $33,352 last 12 months, $525,000 list price.Deal of the Week: DeepWordDeepWord is software for creating deepfake videos 
of people talking. Just type what you want them to say, or upload an audio file of what you want to hear.
Check out the demo videos on their homepage. You can sign up for free there and generate 2 minutes of deepfake video to try it out.
If you want more, AppSumo is currently running a lifetime deal starting at only $59.
As one reviewer writes…
Incredible potential. It needs work, but if they fix it up just a bit, this is an incredible deal. In fact, even with imperfect mouth movements, it’s still pretty good. It’s worth taking a chance on, and supporting it’s development.
Agreed. Before long we won’t be able to tell the difference between videos of a real person talking and videos produced by software like DeepWord.
That said, even now you could have a lot of fun with cheesy deepfake videos posted to social. Like this one of Elon Musk spitting Eminem rhymes 
Related: 200+ more AI-related lifetime deals on AppSumo
$100K in 1 Month Selling Notion TemplatesThomas Frank started this YouTube channel about Notion back in October 2020 (here’s his first video).
He built up his audience there, on Twitter, and via an email list with a steady dose of free tips, tutorials and templates that helped people make better use of Notion.
At the start of April he launched a premium product for organizing Notion, priced at $99.
A month later, he’d done $100,029.50 in revenue
Thomas breaks down how he did it here.
In short:
– Built an audience w/ tutorials and free templates
– Spent a LOT of time on the sales page
– Product bundles
– Upgraded the customer experience everywhere
At first glance, it looks like Thomas succeeded pretty fast, but there were 500+ days between starting his YouTube channel and launching that premium product.
That’s 500+ days of practicing his craft and building his audience
An excerpt from the book Unscripted by MJ DeMarco…
In this Amazon coaching course, they include a ranking chart on potential product strengths in terms of market, demand, and shipping viability. Products that my friend would avoid like the plague were ranked highly desirable. Namely, easy to sell, easy to import, and easy to ship.
His product? It was ranked poorly. The crowd was told to avoid his product. It’s freaking hilarious. And this guy lives a millionaire dream: travels half the year, owns his house clear, drives dream cars, and lives a life 99 percent of the world would love to have. You see, selling his product is difficult (and boring), which limits competitors; the products *they* recommended were easy. And while such ease might be profitable for a few weeks, they won’t be profitable long enough to change your life.
It’s so tempting to chase those sexy, get-rich-quick, no-experience-needed business opportunities.
But remember that it’s the difficult (and boring) opportunities that are far more likely to make you legit rich 
Expandi is software that helps automate LinkedIn outreach.
According to a recent profile, it grew from $0 to $6 million in revenue in only 18 months
Founder Stefan Smulders explains on Twitter how he came up with the idea that generated $337K/month within a year…
the software solved a problem I already had as an agency owner… The best way to make sure people will PAY for your software is to be the target market yourself. If you need the software, there’s a good chance someone else will also need it.
What problem do you run into regularly in your existing business?
Could you come up with a solution that could become a business in itself?
Stephen Wise shares what he’s learned from 4.5 years of freelancing.
I especially like his point about client calls…
MomentosA 30 minute call will take 150 minutes of your day.
60 minutes before the call (not wanting to start anything)
30 minutes on the call
60 minutes after the call (following up and regaining focus)
Calls are important, just use them sparingly.
My latest batch of personal ramblings are here if you fancy a look
First, our $250 giveaway is on-going.
Check the list of online business courses on this page… have you done any of them?
If so, submit your rating and review – takes 3-5 minutes – and once published you’ll be entered into a draw to win up to $250
Second, the price of Passive Income Geek will increase on May 23rd.
It’s one of our most highly-rated affiliate marketing courses. Check out our review of it here, including feedback from 11 students 
You've been reading the web version of our free weekly newsletter, eBiz Weekly. Enter your email below to join 23,166 subscribers and get the next one delivered direct to your inbox.
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In case you missed em, here are the last three editions of eBiz Weekly:
#175 – $601,530 PowerPoint Template#174 – Dropshipping Is Like Being Pregnant#173 – $300/Day Crypto Ponzi Scheme?Full archiveUntil next week, rock on with your legendary self
—
Niall Doherty – Tbilisi, Georgia
eBiz Facts
By the way...
Rate and Review an Online Course
Have you ever taken a course that promised to help you make money online? Share your experience with that course and we’ll donate $5 on your behalf to educate a girl in rural Africa.
How To Make Money Online
A deep article laying out all the possibilities for making money online, based on the 6 levels and 19 types of online business.
Recommended Resources
Check out our collection of the best tools and resources for building an online business. Web hosting, email marketing, productivity, top-rated courses, etc.
Free Courses
A massive list of FREE Udemy courses to help build your online business. We only list top-rated courses – minimum 50 ratings – and update every 24 hours.
Find A Remote Job
See our list of the best ways to find a remote job, based on 100+ hours of research and testing.
Start Earning Online
A free crash course to help you build an online business, consists of 11 videos shot in Spain, Russia and Montenegro.
Facebook + Twitter
If you enjoyed the above, come follow eBiz Facts on the socials. We share this kind of content regularly on Facebook and Twitter.
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May 13, 2022
eBiz Weekly #175
eBiz Weekly is a free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. We send it out every Friday to 23,079 legendary subscribers. We also post the content of each email here on the website.
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This week:
$601,530 PowerPoint Template3 More Marketplace Success StoriesThe Next LevelBest Budget Affiliate Marketing Course$20K/Month Freelance DeveloperEarn While You Learn$8000/Month After 3 Months$60,000 Debt to $4B ValuationApril Finance Report$250 Giveaway$601,530 PowerPoint TemplateGraphicRiver is a marketplace for buying and selling graphic assets, such as fonts, illustrations, business card designs, etc.
A few months back, Jakob Greenfeld crunched the numbers on the bestselling GraphicRiver products and shared his data
The #1 product was this PowerPoint template, which has now racked up more than $600,000 in sales since its release in 2015. Seems it’s still selling well despite being last updated in 2017.
GraphicRiver might take as much as a 33% cut of sales, so the template designer(s) would have earned about $400,000 from that one product so far. Or about $57,000 per year
While the product itself looks impressive, building it was likely the easy part. As with any marketplace, there’s surely a whole hidden optimization game to ensure your product gets lots of exposure.
3 More Marketplace Success StoriesIn response to Jakob’s tweet, Tim Shnaider highlighted a marketplace for Bootstrap templates where the best-selling template looks to have done almost $1.8 million in sales in 7 years
Vance Lucas shares how he’s earning $1,600 per month from a Google Sheets extension listed on the Google Workspace Marketplace…
Google has over 3 billion users and provides a built-in marketplace and distribution channel to funnel users straight to me without me having to lift a finger.
And Matthew Busel created a low-code Slack app that won him access to an accelerator program and a $20,000 investment
All the above are examples of selling digital products. That’s not the easiest thing to do if you’re just getting started working online. (I consider it a Level 4 online business).
But you know what’s even harder?
Building the marketplace that these types of products are bought and sold on. (That’s Level 5).
GraphicRiver is part of the Envato marketplace, which has been referred to as “the most profitable start-up you haven’t heard of.” Launched out of an Australian garage in 2006, by 2016 it had 6 million members, 180 staff, and $33 million in annual profits.
A more recent example is Lemon.io, “a marketplace of vetted offshore engineers” which has bootstrapped its way to $7 million in revenue in just one year
I think of these businesses as the equivalent of owning a professional sports team vs playing for one. The people creating and selling products on the marketplace are like pro athletes, while the marketplace owners are like the super-rich owners of pro sports teams.
Best Budget Affiliate Marketing CourseAccording to our rankings, that would be Passive Income Geek 
It’s currently priced at $299 for the first year, then $99 for every year after. But on May 23 the price is increasing to $399, and the yearly renewal fee will be $199.
Check out our review of it here, including feedback from 11 students.
Related: 37 affiliate marketing website examples + earnings
$20K/Month Freelance DeveloperI always try to have something about freelancing in the newsletter because IMO it remains the simplest and most reliable way to start earning online.
Freelance developer Tyler Wanlass recently shared why he stopped charging by the hour and moved to a flat weekly rate…
Over the last several years or so I’ve completely moved away from hourly or project based pricing. Instead, I simply charge a flat weekly rate, usually in the range of 3-5K USD per week (I now have 15+ years experience).
He also shares in the comments 
how he found his first freelance clients…
Early on I found projects anywhere I could. One of the first sites I built was for a teacher at the time. I found then (and still do!) it helps a ton to let everyone around you know that you’re looking for projects or available for work. Essentially seed it and when a project comes up you’ll be top of mind.
If you’re offering any kind of freelance service, be sure to let everyone know about it. Mention it regularly to friends, talk about it on social, be active in local and online communities where prospective clients hang out.
Also, if you work from cafes or coworking spaces, you can use the back of your laptop screen as a billboard for your services (example)
Love this thread from Max Bernstein, who earned $10,119 while learning a new skill.
With extra time on his hands at the start of the pandemic, Max wanted to learn video editing. He got a $39 lifetime deal on some video editing software and then…
I created a Fiverr profile and listed my services for the smallest amount possible of $5 with unlimited revisions.
See Max’s Fiverr gig here.
His hourly rate was effectively peanuts 
but it accelerated his learning massively…
Fast forward a few weeks, and I had completed a handful of videos, acquired reviews on my profile, and, more importantly, built confidence.
A lot of people feel the need to practice practice practice before charging for their services, but Max’s approach is far better, IMO. Not only do you learn much faster this way, but you also earn some money, build a real portfolio, and gain valuable experience working with clients.
What new skill could you try this with?
$8000/Month After 3 MonthsHeleana Grace is someone who built upon her freelance video editing skills to co-found an agency that’s off to a fast start
Her company is videodeck.co, a productized service that “turns your written content into videos.”
Heleana reports that the service is already doing $8000 MRR three months after launch, with customers coming mostly via ProductHunt.
She writes…
$60,000 Debt to $4B ValuationI started as a freelancer producing videos for a Saas company. Since I was listed as a creator a lot of people wrote me about creating their videos. Since I couldn’t or didn’t want to handle all the post-production work by myself I put together a team and got two more co-founders to help me bring Videodeck to life.
Ever heard of Webflow?
It’s a website builder with an inspiring backstory.
According to a recent profile, the co-founders are brothers who moved to the US 
with their parents as refugees during the fall of the Soviet Union.
No surprise that their journey also began with freelancing…
They started freelancing in high school. And, later launched their own agency in college. So basically, Sergie would design websites for clients and Vlad would use the design to buildd a website using WordPress, Joomla, etc.
In 2004 they had the idea for Webflow, and tried and failed to launch it a few times over the years. In 2012 they went all-in on the idea…
At that time, Vlad was sitting on 3-months of cash, and with 2 kids (his daughter was severely ill and needed surgery) and no income. They were in desperate need of funding.
They went $60k into debt before turning things around.
Now the company apparently does $100M in annual revenue and is valued at $4 billion
Vlad sums up his journey in this epic tweet.
His tldr: keep trying!
April Finance ReportMy latest monthly finance report is here detailing everything I earned and spent in my business last month.
Quick reminder about the $250 Giveaway we’re doing at eBiz Facts this month.
Check the list of online business courses on this page… have you done any of them?
If so, submit your rating and review – takes 3-5 minutes – and once published you’ll be entered into a draw to win up to $250
If you’ve done multiple courses, you can leave multiple reviews and thereby have a better chance of winning.
(Want to review a course that’s not listed? Tell me about it here.)
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#174 – Dropshipping Is Like Being Pregnant#173 – $300/Day Crypto Ponzi Scheme?#172 – $3,771/Month Selling His SawdustFull archiveUntil next week, rock on with your legendary self
—
Niall Doherty – Tbilisi, Georgia
eBiz Facts
By the way...
Rate and Review an Online Course
Have you ever taken a course that promised to help you make money online? Share your experience with that course and we’ll donate $5 on your behalf to educate a girl in rural Africa.
How To Make Money Online
A deep article laying out all the possibilities for making money online, based on the 6 levels and 19 types of online business.
Recommended Resources
Check out our collection of the best tools and resources for building an online business. Web hosting, email marketing, productivity, top-rated courses, etc.
Free Courses
A massive list of FREE Udemy courses to help build your online business. We only list top-rated courses – minimum 50 ratings – and update every 24 hours.
Find A Remote Job
See our list of the best ways to find a remote job, based on 100+ hours of research and testing.
Start Earning Online
A free crash course to help you build an online business, consists of 11 videos shot in Spain, Russia and Montenegro.
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May 5, 2022
eBiz Weekly #174
eBiz Weekly is a free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. We send it out every Friday to 22,987 legendary subscribers. We also post the content of each email here on the website.
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This week:
$250 Giveaway This MonthNon-Expert Author: $160K Earnings$15,000/Month Generation EffectTake-Home Income: Less Than Expected$100,000 Selling
In A BoxAnswer Email in 17 Minutes a DayHow To Become A Master$13,000/Month BlogDropshipping Is Like Being PregnantLatest Momentos$250 Giveaway This MonthHave you done any of the online business courses listed on this page?
If so, submit your review – takes 3-5 minutes – and once published you’ll be entered into a draw to win up to $250 
If you’ve done multiple courses, you can leave multiple reviews and thereby have a better chance of winning the $250.
(Want to review a course that’s not listed? Tell me about it here.)
Non-Expert Author: $160K EarningsGreg Lim writes…
In about six years, I have sold over 40,000 books and earned over $160,000 (income) from selling non-fiction books on Amazon
That works out to an average of ~$2200 per month over the six years
Greg has achieved that despite holding down a full-time job in church ministry, being a father of three, and not considering himself an expert on the topics he writes about.
His most profitable book: Beginning Node.js, Express & MongoDB
before writing the book, I did not have experience in that… I did have previous experience with older server-side technologies, but not Node…. So I read the top three selling books on Node, went through the top few online courses on Node, and compiled all that content into my very own compact book (which makes me know more than 90% of people already).
And because I was learning as I was writing, I didn’t have to worry about sounding overly advanced with jargon as I wrote from a beginner’s perspective.
Unlike many other examples I’ve highlighted of successful authors, Greg doesn’t seem to have leveraged a big audience of his own to drive initial sales.
Instead, he identified trending topics to write about – more about this in his article – and apparently relied on Amazon customers finding his book via search 
If you love research and writing – and have plenty of patience – you could probably emulate Greg’s success in many other niches.
$15,000/Month Generation EffectAnne-Laure Le Cunff writes…
Do you feel like you can remember things better when you actively engage with the information and create your own version of it? That’s called the Generation Effect.
Anne-Laure has built a successful business out of this.
Per a recent profile, at 28 years old she went to graduate school to study neuroscience, a subject that had long fascinated her 
That’s where Anne-Laure learned about the Generation Effect, and she decided to put it into practice by starting a newsletter to teach what she was learning at school.
1.5 years later, the newsletter had thousands of subscribers and Anne-Laure had launched a paid community off the back of it. Between memberships and sponsorships, she was earning more than $10,000 per month.
Now with 2,500+ members in her community, I think it’s safe to say she’s earning at least $15,000 per month
This is another great example of how you don’t need to be an expert in a topic to teach it successfully – and profitably – online.
Find a topic you’d love to learn about anyway, and teach others as you learn. Even if you never make a successful business out of it, the Generation Effect will work in your favor and you’ll learn much more effectively.
Take-Home Income: Less Than ExpectedLenny Rachitsky generates more than $500,000 in annual revenue with his paid newsletter on Substack.
But deep in this thread from 2020 he writes…
After the Substack fees (10%), Stripe fees (2-4%), and taxes, you’re lucky to see half of what you think you will make (1,000 subs at $10 is closer to $5,000/month after fees and taxes).
Keep that in mind when you see revenue numbers for online businesses, including the numbers I share in this newsletter 
As the saying goes: it’s not how much money you make that counts, but how much you keep.
$100,000 Selling In A BoxThat’s ShitExpress.com, a service that lets you anonymously send different kinds of animal poop to “the people who annoy you the most.”
It launched in 2014 and got some early coverage by VICE, which reported that the business did more than $10,000 in sales the first month.
Crazy thing is, payment was only accepted in Bitcoin, which has gone up about 120x in value since 2014
3 years after launch, ShitExpress blogged: 2 Tonnes of Horse Shit, $100k in Revenue and 6,000 Happy Recipients
There’s also a blog post about starting the business, which contains lines like “Shit Explosion on My Vacation” and a commenter asking…
I’ve got 4 horses that produce 8-12 piles a day. Can I become a drop-ship distributor for you?
More recently, ShitExpress is trying to sell NFTs, and grow their TikTok with models singing and dancing about the service 
I dare you to watch this video from Tiago Forte and not find a handful of tips for improving your email game 
I thought I was on top of things already but found several great hacks in there.
How To Become A MasterFrom Chet Holmes’ excellent book, The Ultimate Sales Machine, which I’m currently reading for the third time…
How do you become a master of anything? How do you help others become masters? The key lesson I’ve learned again and again, ever since I was a kid studying karate, is that mastery is not about being special or more gifted than anyone else. Mastery is a direct result of pigheaded discipline and determination.
In other words, mastery comes from practicing something for much longer than most people would consider reasonable.
I love this because it highlights that even if you’re lacking natural talent or ability, you can still out-perform most folks by developing strong discipline and determination
(Btw, if you’re interested in the book, you can read it for free with a 60-day trial of Scribd.)
$13,000/Month BlogAnil Agarwal is a good example of discipline and determination paying off.
He started learning about SEO in 2005 and started a site called BloggersPassion.com in 2010.
Anil struggled to make much money from his site for the first few years, but eventually was earning enough to quit his job in 2018, and in 2021 he pulled in $160,000
He revealed in a recent interview…
Our income sources include affiliate marketing, selling our own ebooks, brand collaborations, sponsorships, reviews, and more. But I’d say the majority of our blogging revenue comes from affiliate marketing.
His revenue breakdown for the past six years…
$1815 per month in 2016$5607 per month in 2017$8843 per month in 2018$10,667 per month in 2019$11,691 per month in 2020$13,403 per month in 2021Related: 37 Affiliate Marketing Website Examples + How Much Money They Make
Dropshipping Is Like Being PregnantKiril Kirilov with an analogy that could apply to any successful business…
Dropshipping is like being pregnant – Everybody says “congratulations”, but nobody knows how many times you got f—ed
That’s from an interview with Kiril about how he co-founded Rush, a Shopify order tracking app that is now doing $20,000 per month in revenue and recently raised €2.5 million in seed funding.
To achieve that level of success, Kiril has spent more than a decade working in ecommerce and experiencing the many highs and lows of the entrepreneur rollercoaster ride 
My latest batch of personal ramblings are here if you fancy a look
Lastly, a quick reminder about that $250 giveaway: you can enter by reviewing one of the online business courses listed on this page
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In case you missed em, here are the last three editions of eBiz Weekly:
#173 – $300/Day Crypto Ponzi Scheme?#172 – $3,771/Month Selling His Sawdust#171 – 350k words / 840 days / $100,000Full archiveUntil next week, rock on with your legendary self
—
Niall Doherty – Tbilisi, Georgia
eBiz Facts
By the way...
Rate and Review an Online Course
Have you ever taken a course that promised to help you make money online? Share your experience with that course and we’ll donate $5 on your behalf to educate a girl in rural Africa.
How To Make Money Online
A deep article laying out all the possibilities for making money online, based on the 6 levels and 19 types of online business.
Recommended Resources
Check out our collection of the best tools and resources for building an online business. Web hosting, email marketing, productivity, top-rated courses, etc.
Free Courses
A massive list of FREE Udemy courses to help build your online business. We only list top-rated courses – minimum 50 ratings – and update every 24 hours.
Find A Remote Job
See our list of the best ways to find a remote job, based on 100+ hours of research and testing.
Start Earning Online
A free crash course to help you build an online business, consists of 11 videos shot in Spain, Russia and Montenegro.
Facebook + Twitter
If you enjoyed the above, come follow eBiz Facts on the socials. We share this kind of content regularly on Facebook and Twitter.
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April 29, 2022
eBiz Weekly #173
eBiz Weekly is a free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. We send it out every Friday to 22,897 legendary subscribers. We also post the content of each email here on the website.
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This week:
$1 Million Per Year Invisible Man$300/Day Crypto Ponzi Scheme?Digital Is Only A Supplement$10K/Month Automated WebsiteSmall Podcast: $200K/YearThe $1 Million FreelancerBest Way To Find Winning Ideas?$1.2M/Year Digital AgencyTurn Bad Things Into Good Things$1 Million Per Year Invisible ManEver heard of Carrd?
It’s a one-page website builder launched back in 2016 that now does $1 million a year in revenue
IMO the most fascinating thing about it is that nobody knows the real identity of the founder, who goes by AJ on Twitter.
AJ is another of those years-in-the-making-overnight-success stories. He was already earning a living online back in 2008, selling simple website themes and templates. When that business started fading and AJ saw responsive design on the rise, he started a project that would help him gain experience with that.
Optimize for learning, not just earning
Nat Eliason writes about his experience using STEPN, a play-to-earn fitness app that “allows you to earn crypto from walking, jogging, and running.”
To start playing the game, Nat bought about $12,000 worth of STEPN’s virtual sneaker NFTs. After two weeks he reports earning $300-400 a day “just for going outside and spending time with my wife, kid, and dogs” 
You could start playing yourself for about $1100, but Nat issues a clear warning…
It’s not quite a pyramid scheme or ponzi, but it’s darn close. The only way everyone keeps making money is if other people keep putting more money into the system, which either requires more people or deeper pockets from existing people.
Chris Guillebeau has also been playing the game and writes…
I spent $15,000 on virtual sneakers, and now I’m earning $200-350 a day from them. Every day… Personally I figure I’m getting in at a good time (and you are too, at least if you’re reading this relatively soon after it goes up) and I should able to earn out my initial investment.
Chris is clear that he hasn’t earned his money back yet, and it sounds like Nat hasn’t either. And pretty much the only way they can get a positive ROI is if more people start playing the game. So take their enthusiasm for STEPN with a big grain of salt 
Chris was just as enthusiastic about a crypto game called DeFi Kingdoms a few weeks back, from which he was apparently earning $400/day. After reading about Chris’ experience, a friend put $1,607 into the same game and told me yesterday: “my account value is below $1k and it’s unlikely I’ll break even”
To be fair to Chris and Nat, they do emphasize the risk of investing big chunks of money in these games. I think of them as a fun way to spend money rather than a reliable way to make money (Level X).
At least with STEPN though, even if you do lose money, you might find solace in the game prompting you to live a more active lifestyle. Nat, for example, has more than doubled his steps per day since he started playing 
Though you could argue that apps like StepBet and HealthyWage offer a similar cost/benefit without the hype and volatility of crypto.
Digital Is Only A SupplementDaniel Vassallo – who once earned $24,802/month selling two info products – writes about how to avoid an unhappy existence 
His last word…
$10K/Month Automated WebsiteRealize that the physical world is sacred. We are built to roam the real world, to have physical ownership, to make physical objects, to meet people in person. This is the only real life, and there can never be a digital substitute. Digital is only a supplement.
I’m not going to link to the site because it’s pretty spammy, but it’s ForNoob.com.
Phil from 4 Day Week tweets…
This site generates ~$100k in traffic value / month. It’s entirely written by GPT-3.
A commenter on Phil’s thread estimates the site publishes hundreds of articles each day and probably earns +$10K through display ads
In case you’re not familiar, GPT-3 is artificial intelligence that can produce written content with very little prompting. You basically ask a question and the AI will come up with an answer that might not be accurate but reads like a human wrote it.
Well, to an extent. Most of the articles at ForNoob.com are probably better referred to as artificial stupidity 
Google is apparently trying to crack down on these types of sites, as they tend to be full of misleading info.
Small Podcast: $200K/YearSarah Peck has a fairly small audience, generating about 2000 downloads per episode of her Startup Parent podcast
She sells sponsorships for the podcast, but the big money comes from her paid mastermind program for working moms, most of whom are listeners of the podcast.
The price of enrollment in the program: $4,800 to $7,800.
As Simon Owens writes in his excellent breakdown of Sarah’s business…
sometimes it’s easier to sell a high-priced product to a small number of people than it is to sell thousands of low-priced subscriptions or ebooks.
Check that full breakdown to see the meandering route Sarah took to a six-figure business.
I especially like the part about how she secured $35,000 in sponsorships before even launching her podcast
Doug Shaw started freelancing on Upwork almost a decade ago and recently surpassed $1 million in total earnings.
Per a recent profile…
Doug has been working full time for Upwork clients as a Google Ads expert but also advises on funnel marketing and development using YouTube, TikTok and Linked-In.
Sounds like Doug taught himself Google Ads and was charging $14/hour for his first jobs. Now he charges up to $100/hour
One way Doug keeps the work flowing is via follow-ups with past clients…
Best Way To Find Winning Ideas?a few weeks after I have finished work for a client, I will message them to see how things are going and whether there is anything else I can help them with – and there often is!
Speaking of freelancing, it can be a great way to find ideas for more advanced types of online business
Three examples I came across recently…
$100K/Month Paid Memberships Plugin For WordPressStarted out doing freelance website consulting and development, built first version of the plugin when they heard from four different clients who wanted the functionality.
$216,000+ ARR Ecommerce SaaS Storemapper
Founder was a freelance developer for Shopify websites. He built a store mapping feature for a client, then turned that into its own product.
$55K MRR Software Tool For English Teachers
One of the co-founders of Feedback Panda was a freelance English teacher. “She knew the exact pain points of these teachers”
Related: 47 ways to come up with business ideas
$1.2M/Year Digital AgencySuccessful freelance businesses often evolve into agencies.
Dylan Ogline was a high-school dropout who was nearly $1 million in debt in his 20s before he sharpened the focus of his freelance business…
That ended up being digital marketing management… At the time, I had offered the service as a freelancer for a few clients and kept that mostly unchanged, very scrappy, and simple. I focused as much as I possibly could on that one thing and within just a few months I was at 6 figures. A year or two later and it was 7 figures.
Dylan now has a team of 12 working with 20+ clients and pulls in $100,000 per month in revenue
Funny that he started doing freelance work “to help pay the bills” while he was chasing sexier money-making opportunities.
But as is the case for many entrepreneurs, it’s the “boring” business ideas that turn out to be the golden ticket.
Turn Bad Things Into Good ThingsHere’s the story of MonetizeMore, an ad exchange business that has done $83 million in revenue in twelve years
Founder Kean Graham started the business after getting laid off during the 2008 recession and taking a break to travel around South America for a few months…
“I like to turn bad things into good things,” Kean says. “During that trip, I had the time of my life. I remember sitting at the top of Machu Picchu and thinking I didn’t want some corporate job. I wanted to continue this. I realized all I need is a laptop with an internet connection and I could earn an income while I continued to travel the world.”
That attitude of viewing apparent setbacks as opportunities =
What setbacks have you encountered that could actually be opportunities in disguise?
Sign up for more tips and insights to build your online business 🚀You've been reading the web version of our free weekly newsletter, eBiz Weekly. Enter your email below to join 22,897 subscribers and get the next one delivered direct to your inbox.
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In case you missed em, here are the last three editions of eBiz Weekly:
#172 – $3,771/Month Selling His Sawdust#171 – 350k words / 840 days / $100,000#170 – 1 Month Selling a Course = $53,000Full archiveUntil next week, rock on with your legendary self
—
Niall Doherty – Tbilisi, Georgia
eBiz Facts
By the way...
Rate and Review an Online Course
Have you ever taken a course that promised to help you make money online? Share your experience with that course and we’ll donate $5 on your behalf to educate a girl in rural Africa.
How To Make Money Online
A deep article laying out all the possibilities for making money online, based on the 6 levels and 19 types of online business.
Recommended Resources
Check out our collection of the best tools and resources for building an online business. Web hosting, email marketing, productivity, top-rated courses, etc.
Free Courses
A massive list of FREE Udemy courses to help build your online business. We only list top-rated courses – minimum 50 ratings – and update every 24 hours.
Find A Remote Job
See our list of the best ways to find a remote job, based on 100+ hours of research and testing.
Start Earning Online
A free crash course to help you build an online business, consists of 11 videos shot in Spain, Russia and Montenegro.
Facebook + Twitter
If you enjoyed the above, come follow eBiz Facts on the socials. We share this kind of content regularly on Facebook and Twitter.
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April 22, 2022
eBiz Weekly #172
eBiz Weekly is a free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. We send it out every Friday to 22,811 legendary subscribers. We also post the content of each email here on the website.
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This week:
$3,771/Month Selling His Sawdust$34K/Month Services ArbitrageHow To Become A Full-Time CreatorBe Ready When They Slip$16K/Month From 2 WebsitesHow To Find Clients On Twitter$400k+ With Marketplace FreelancingLatest MomentosHard Work Isn’t Enough$3,771/Month Selling His SawdustJustin Welsh – who has apparently earned $2 million in 2.5 years as a solopreneur – writes…
Think about the recurring tasks on your calendar that are related to your career, side hustle, or even hobbies. There’s income in there.
Do you write weekly?
Do you project manage weekly?
Do you create automation weekly?
Do you document processes weekly?
If the answer is “yes” to any of these questions (or many other examples) you can easily turn this into recurring revenue.
Justin was already creating templates for sharing his own content on social media, and figured he might be able to turn those templates into a product.
Now he’s earning $3,771/month with a subscription service that delivers “5 fill-in-the-blank templates that you can use every month.”
Daniel Vassallo calls this selling your sawdust 
What sawdust do you produce as you go about your regular work? Could you sell some of that?
$34K/Month Services ArbitrageYaro Starak recently announced that his InboxDone business is pulling in at least $34K/month in revenue…
In just 6 weeks we signed on new clients that add more than $17k in MRR. It took almost two years to get to the first $17k in MRR when the company was started.
InboxDone connects you with a virtual assistant to handle tasks like email management, customer support, social media, etc.
Yaro calls this a services arbitrage business. I’ve also heard it referred to as “drop-servicing.”
Basically, you act as a middle-man between the service buyer and service provider. The beauty of this is that you don’t need to be an expert at providing the service yourself; you simply help the experts get hired and take a cut of their earnings
Do you already know lots of good providers of a particular service? Could you help them find more clients?
You could also come at this from the other direction: do you know lots of people who are willing to pay for a particular service? Could you help them find good providers?
How To Become A Full-Time CreatorGergely Orosz left his job as an engineering manager at Uber in late 2020. He had no set plan, but knew he wanted to try working for himself.
He started out writing and publishing several books about tech, then launched a paid newsletter called The Pragmatic Engineer in September 2021.
Within a few months, Gergely had 2700+ subscribers paying him $15/month or $150/year = $400,000 annual recurring revenue
Recently Gergely wrote out his “controversial” advice for becoming a full-time creator. Lots of great stuff in there, including discussion and examples of the many different ways creators can earn a living.
Ultimately though, Gergely cautions against copying what you see working for others…
Be Ready When They Slip
The biggest surprise I had after leaving the corporate world is how little of a beaten path there is in succeeding as a one-person business…
Copying what works for others is a strategy, but I found more success by experimenting with new ideas, and doubling down on them when I feel they are doing well.
Jakob Greenfeld presents a framework inspired by Benjamin Greeley…
“You shouldn’t be afraid of competition. You never know when they’ll slip up, and their customers need a backup.”
Jakob gives several examples and opportunities to illustrate, including Gumroad, Nomad List and Google.
One example I’d add is Trustpilot.
That was once a fairly reliable site for gauging the reputation of a business, but IMO it has become very easy to manipulate their ratings 
For example, check out the reviews of an affiliate marketing course called Wealthy Affiliate on there. It has an average rating of 4.9 stars from hundreds of reviews, but read through a few and you’ll find that the majority of reviewers write about their high hopes for the training but fail to report any tangible results.
This is Trustpilot slipping up: they weigh every rating and review equally, regardless of source or substance.
We’re doing things differently at eBiz Facts, which is why Wealthy Affiliate only gets a 2.4-star overall rating on our site, with each reviewer’s contribution weighted by a purpose-built algorithm
I reckon there’s plenty more opportunity for Trustpilot competitors. Go look up some established businesses in your industry on there, see if you agree with their overall ratings. If not, perhaps that industry could also do with a more reliable review platform.
$16K/Month From 2 WebsitesHilary Erickson is a former nurse who started and runs two websites…
Pulling Curls, about pregnancy and home life.The Pregnancy Nurse, also about pregnancy.In a recent profile she reveals that she earned $193,000 combined from the sites last year
58% of the revenue comes from Hilary’s own courses and ebooks, most notably her Online Prenatal Class for Couples. 28% comes from display ads and 14% from affiliate marketing.
It’s taken many years for Hilary to build up that revenue. Back in 2015 she earned little more than $2000/month via her online business.
Her monetization strategy has evolved over time…
At first, I made a good amount with sponsored posts and, later affiliate and ad income. However, now the majority is made through courses.
That’s a common evolution for authority sites: start off monetizing with some combination of display ads and affiliate offers, with an eye to eventually creating and selling your own products.
Related: 11 things you should know about affiliate marketing
How To Find Clients On TwitterAndrew Davison writes about an automatic monitoring system he set up to help his agency find clients via Twitter.
Thanks to no-code tools – mainly Integromat (recently rebranded as Make) and Airtable – all Andrew has to do is check a spreadsheet each day to see a list of filtered tweets from people who may have need for his services.
Apparently this system is bringing in 1-2 leads per week for the business.
Combine this with Gary Vee’s $1.80 strategy and
Vasco Monteiro reports earning more than $400,000 from freelance marketplaces like Upwork and Fiverr, but he warns against looking for work on such popular sites now…
the single biggest thing that made me attain such a milestone was that… I was in early.
I joined in 2018 as a beta user of this new marketplace that had just come out.
Getting in early was such a HUGE advantage.
He lists a few reasons why, but it mainly boils down to less competition on newer marketplaces, making it easier to land your first clients and get that flywheel spinning
Vasco goes on to promote the marketplace he just launched for freelance marketers: Vettted.com.
The problem with Vasco’s approach however is that most freelance marketplaces don’t amount to much; you’re ultimately hoping that the one you bet on beats the odds and becomes the next Upwork, Fiverr, or niche equivalent.
That said, you could hedge your bets by creating a profile on every new freelance marketplace that seems promising. Get notified of new marketplaces via a no-code system like Andrew Davison’s above, and build out a template over time so you can set up a new profile in minutes
(Btw, I still consider marketplaces the 3rd-best way to find freelance clients.)
MomentosMy latest batch of personal ramblings are here if you fancy a look
Closing it out with words from Robert Ringer’s book, Winning Through Intimidation…
Sign up for more tips and insights to build your online business 🚀Have you not seen, with your own eyes, that working long, hard hours does not by itself assure a person of success? In this regard, I often think of my Uncle George… This kindly little gentleman owned a corner grocery store and worked fourteen- to sixteen-hour days all his life. He never succeeded in getting rich, but he did get old.
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#171 – 350k words / 840 days / $100,000#170 – 1 Month Selling a Course = $53,000#169 – $8 Million A Year Selling Slime?Full archiveUntil next week, rock on with your legendary self
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Niall Doherty – Tbilisi, Georgia
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