The Reality of Making Money Online
If you’ve not made any money with your online business yet you could be doing things RIGHT.
I am in this business for the money. You probably are too. Internet marketing is not charity work. We want to make money, so if you've been doing this for a while and have not made a profit, you might think you are doing something wrong. After all, money is how we measure success in this business.
But are you doing it wrong?
Not being paid yet could actually mean you're doing something very right. I will explain.
If you are not making any money, it could be because you're using a strategy I still use to great effect: putting out lots of free content. You won't get paid for it initially, but you will be moving your business forward.
How Free Content Builds Your Business
Getting Your Name Out There
Your readers will not know you aren't yet established. They'll start recognising your name, so when you do put out a paid product, they'll be more likely to buy.
Adding Subscribers to Your List
When I say give away free content, I mean in exchange for contact details. This could be a free PDF report in return for an email address, or getting people to subscribe to your free newsletter. You can then mail these people with offers on an ongoing basis, whether they are your own products or affiliate products.
Making Sales
Free content is never really free. You could be collecting email addresses for access, and you should also be putting lots of links into your free content. These links can be affiliate links, links to your blog, and links to any paid products you have created.
If your free content is good, it should get the reader excited about the topic, so they click the highly relevant links you've included. This should lead to sales for you.
Overcoming Fear and Self-Doubt
Creating free content should help you overcome fear. It will get you used to publishing your own content and, more importantly, it can stop the crippling self-doubt that prevents many newcomers from releasing their own products.
Why?
Because you don't worry as much about what people will say if it's a free product. Your free content should be just as good as your paid content. The decision to make it free or paid should be based on its purpose within your sales funnel, not on the level of quality.
I create products and then decide whether they are going to be free or paid, depending on what action I want my prospects to take. The quality remains the same. Not having to worry about whether something is worth the asking price is liberating and can help you start creating. It also gets you used to working in your chosen field.
Practice helps. Doing makes things happen. Getting involved is almost always a good thing. You'll make contacts and build a reputation too.
Just create good content and start offering it for free. You'll see things begin to happen and you'll know when it's time to start asking for money.
