Home Blog Posts How To Make Money Online Starting Today.

How To Make Money Online Starting Today.

One of the biggest excuses when trying to make online is saying “They don’t know where to start”. While we gave out all of the major markets in Efficiency, making it impossible to not know where to start, this will boil it down even further to prevent the incessant excuses. At the end of the day, while it’s best to have recurring revenue, it’s not a guarantee that you start with recurring revenue. Even people who become billionaires have typically worked some sort of hourly wage job at some point in their lives. This will start at ground zero so there is absolutely no way that you earn $0 online in 2019. 

Step 1 – Decide on the Service: That is right. Since we get a lot of complaints about how it is impossible to start a product from day one, instead we’re going to start a service. A service is a time for money exchange (not good long-term). But. It is also the easiest way to make money starting in month number one. Also. There is a 99% chance that you will go ahead and create a product after your first service experience. It makes logical sense as you’re going from service to product due to demand. So… What is your service? Your service is your current work. 

Remember. There is only one way that you’ll have a job long-term. It means that you’re producing more value relative to your cost. Would you hire someone who lost you money every week or month? No. So by definition you’re earning less than you are worth since the Company needs to generate a profit. It needs to generate a profit and if you lose them money, you’ll find yourself in a conference room quite soon. 

Step 2 – Pricing: So. We’ve already instantly killed the original part “what should i do”. You’re going to do whatever it is that you currently do but you’re going to offer it directly to the consumer. This means you’re going to offer the exact same service. Now all you have to do is come up with the pricing. What is the pricing? It is = to your (current income rate) * (1 + the margin line). If your current business unit makes a 20% profit, this means you should be able to charge your hourly rate + an additional 20% on top of it. Keeping it simple, if you make $100 an hour … that means $120. 

Why do you need to charge more? Well the answer is clear. First you need to prove to yourself that you are worth more than you are currently earning at this point in time. How else can someone complain about pay if they can’t get anything better? If you’re really worth more than you’re being paid then you should certainly charge more than you’re currently being paid. Simple. The second reason? You’ll work a ton harder knowing that you’re factually earning more for your time than you did in the past. If your current boss told you you’ll get paid 20% more if you do “well” on some new project, we can all agree that you’d work harder. 

Step 3 – Eliminating the Final Set of Excuses: If you work in a position that cannot be directly transferred online then we’re going to kill that argument as well. If you’re unable to take your current position and do the same thing (or similar) online then you’re going straight into the “looks” industry. What is the looks industry? It means anything that makes people look better. People are vain, insecure and always looking for an edge (pun intended). If you think the industry is saturated we’ve got news for you it absolutely isn’t. 

There is a trick here as well. The reason why we’d recommend the looks industry is that you’re forced to be in shape and look good if you’re trying to sell a service into this space. It can be anything. You could become a style coach, a fitness coach, a makeup expert, a hair expert, a grooming expert. There are so many choices here that it is factually impossible to be unable to learn one of them. Don’t worry. The market is so huge that there is room for another person. There are hundreds of people making money with “looks” based businesses that are not special on a relative basis. The difference is that they are actually trying and working hard to get clients. Oh and by the way. By doing this you’ll earn more money as good looking people out-earn average looking people particularly in sales (unattractive sales people are rare). 

Step 4 – The Boring Stuff: Don’t want to risk anything at all? Okay great. All you need is a website and the name of your service. “Name + service”. Just type in your last name followed by the service and that’s the basic domain. Really. That is it. If you don’t have the $150 to pay for the entire process which is simply website hosting and a clean wordpress domain… Then it is time to leave this website and never return. In fact, it’s smarter to do everything right which will cost closer to a few thousand dollars but the point of this post is to make money *now* and figure out the rest of the stuff as you move along. What do you need: 1) website, 2) hosting, 3) social media accounts. That’s really it. The first two items are at max $150 in a year and the last item is completely *free*. So nothing here that costs a penny. Cheap and free. 

Step 5 – The Quick Hustle: Now you have something to offer. Who knows what it is since that isn’t the point of this post (we give out the major ones we’d do in Efficiency). Now you need to get some attention/traffic to the website. All you need is “free” stuff. We are putting free in quotes since you’re going to “break the rules”. Create some flyers if it’s going to be a local service (say fitness trainer). It could be anything but if you’re doing it for work in your city it usually means (99% of the time) that people are looking for that type of work in the same city! Amazing how that works. You’ll go ahead and get the flyer ready and *gasps* print it out at your current place of work. Sure you’re using the color printer for a hundred prints of your flyer but we doubt anyone will notice. People print out their tax returns and other non-employee items at work all the time. So. Simply print them out and begin the distribution process. 

In addition to this basic set up you’re going to blast text message every single person in your cell phone about your new service. Don’t want to blast message people? Then we suggest giving up and leaving this blog again. If you send one message and the person gets so upset that they complain about it then you shouldn’t have them in your phone in the first place. They did you a favor by showing their cards. So simply do it once, remove the people who get upset, say “thank you!” to the ones who help out and say “no problem!” to the people who aren’t interested. The only ones you “lose” by doing this are the ones you wanted to lose in the first place (the very first group that flips out over a simple 1-3 sentence message). 

Step 6 – Get to 15 Hours a Week: That is the only objective here. Once you have 15 hours a week of consistent service by doing basic marketing tactics: flyers, social media and SEO on Google… You’re officially “in business”. No you’re not making a ton of money (probably nothing relative to the amount of work it took to start all this in the first place), But. You’re officially making money, cash flow positive and you haven’t lost a cent. There seems to be some obsession about “never losing money” which separates the eventual winners from losers (winners are willing to risk lots of money over time if the odds are good). That said. You’re making money and haven’t lost anything in the process. Congrats!

Step 7 – Product Ideas Begin: After you have consistent income coming in 15 hours a week, there is going to be a “tell”. This means that people will “tell” you what they want. This is essentially a fact. If someone is paying for your time, and they generate good results from your time, they will want a product from you. If you’re in the looks category for example, they will ask you for product recommendations. We are keeping this broad since “looks” makes it impossible to argue that there is no market. It could be products related to hair, skin, muscles, clothing, etc. When people keep asking you for a specific type of product write it down. You will then enter into product sales. 

Step 8 – Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate marketing is nothing more than recommending someone else’s product. That is it. If you recommend that a person buys a $100 item you receive a small commission for it. By way of example lets go with $5. Congrats. You were going to recommend the product anyway so why not get paid for the recommendation in addition to helping the person. It does not cost them money. People get really really really upset when you talk about making money online and it’s essentially unwarranted. You’re not charging them more, you’re not charging them less. They would have paid the exact same amount of money either way. The only difference is you get a small part of the revenue. Anyone who complains about this stuff is not someone you want to be friends with and is not someone you want to associate with. In fact, people will be thrilled that you get paid something for it. If you’re helping your clients solve a problem, they are going to be extremely happy that you’re making a few bucks when they buy a product that works. 

Step 9 – Product Creation: At this point your “online hobby” has evolved. You’re no longer selling just your time for money but you’re also selling products now. After selling a service and recommending products for a year to two years you’re going to realize that you could just sell your own product! Keeping it extremely basic, if people are always asking for moisturizing lotion for their skin… you can just create your own product. Why is this so easy? All you’d need to do is grab the ingredients of the product you’re currently selling for someone else and create the exact same thing with a few extra bells and whistles. This same concept applies to everything: 1) clothing, 2) grooming products, 3) protein powders…. The list goes on and on and on and on. Anything that you’re recommending can be recreated. 

Step 10 – Scale: After doing all this you’ll realize that selling a product is the best possible way to earn money. You’ll wake up with more money in your account (people buying products as you’re sleeping) and you’ll look for ways to make the cash flows more consistent. Essentially you are going from the absolute bottom: time for money exchange to product sale to stabilizing the sales. Stabilizing the sales will include recurring billing like your cell phone bill or the numerous products offered on Amazon for weekly or monthly refills. This helps create more predictable earnings as you’re no longer forced to make constant one time sales that do not repeat. A big win.

The End of Excuses: While Efficiency gives the exact markets we would target, this post now makes it possible for anyone to earn money online. Absolutely no excuses at this point in time. Everyone wants the “lowest risk” avenue and we’ve now given it out in 10 basic steps. Anyone who is currently employed can follow along and make money. It really is that simple. The funny part? No one is going to try. Well not no one but maybe 1% of people will even bother. We’ve already seen this after our product launch as we had roughly 10 people actually execute on the plan and earn multiple six-figures online. The remainder? Continuing with the same tired old excuse: “Where do I start”. 

38 COMMENTS

  1. Not sure how you do a time-for-money exchange service while in IB. Maybe driving traffic to affiliate offers via ads/landing pages if you have time to track campaigns and constantly chase the cheapest traffic source. Also pretty big jump to product creation from there – need manufacturer, 3PL, multiple credit lines, outsourced customer service, etc.

    Plan above not realistic for individuals in 70+ hour week jobs if you want to remain anonymous and climb the ladder.

    Usually a fan, but this post misses the mark.

    1. If you work 70 hours a week then you would go straight to affiliate marketing since you physically cannot do time for money exchange.

      Anyone in IB that can’t make money in affiliate marketing will likely be awful in their career as well since it is the same job long-term – sales

      1. Affiliate marketing without having a service going on in the first place.. good luck with that unless you’re going the black hat route mentioned in the book. But that’s also time consuming. Maybe WSPs meant something else?

  2. Thanks for your insight. I’ve recently started the same thing of building a business around something I already do.

    Completely agree with 1% of people still not going to execute after reading this. Getting started is the hardest part. Just take things one at a time then eventually the ball will get rolling.

    No excuses.

  3. Not everyone is going to tell you there results so don’t assume only 10 people have succeeded.

    I’m talking to 2 different billionaires to get funding for an app and collaborating with them. I never thought they’d even give me the time of day but if your follow-up game is strong you can do it.

    Took me over 12 follow-ups just to get a short phone interview with some of these higher up people which opened one door and I extended my services to them which led to a business relationship.

  4. What do you mean by ‘it’s smarter to do everything right which will cost closer to a few thousand dollars’ in step 4?

  5. Notes from someone that failed to implement Efficiency:

    Long term (10+ year) employee in services/consulting. Recently started a biz in the same game with a biz partner (decade older, aint rich). Hindsight – poor decision, and partner with someone too old and too tied to the game and status/prestige of consulting (titles, qualifications, acronyms, big name clients )

    B2B sales for consulting services is a massive time suck. Can be a lot of unpaid time for sales and marketing of your services – easy to work 80+ hour weeks. Cash flow can kill when clients dont pay on time. You end up competing on price.
    Invariably also get drawn in to client office politics, power plays and other inefficiency. all you do really is just trade time for money anyway under the guise of your own business. It’s barely different to a job.

    On the pros: With consulting/services theres definitely a direct path to start making money now and especially if you are already in the industry, know clients, can sell and deliver.

    6 months in: Now reached a point after were the only next logical move is to quit and go to Step 9/10 and create a product. Consulting is no way to get rich. You have to grind for years, take on employees and make sure they grind all so you can make a percentage on their time

  6. >Well not no one but maybe 1% of people will even bother.

    I don’t know why this is true, but this is true.

    Maybe its that fundamentally people are too comfortable in their misery because life hasn’t got so bad they want to take even small risks.

    regardless, terrific evergreen article, defo did kill the most common question in this one.

  7. The funny thing about this post is you guys were extremely conservative in the timeline.

    I jumped straight into affiliate marketing in November. Just tweeting/ posting in FB groups –> link my email list at the end of posts –> daily emails with affiliate offers at the end (granted it’s info products so commissions are 50% usually)

    Haven’t made less than 2k/mo since December. It’s an amazing feeling having your rent paid every month without having to touch salary. 4 months of this and am working on releasing my own info-product next Month.

    Who would’ve thought a $10 book could unlock so my doors that I never knew were possible. Can’t thank you guys enough

    1. Great! Exactly the point and why it’s funny that people believe it isn’t possible. It’s almost impossible to not make money selling someone else’s product. The reality is that 99.9% of people don’t even bother to try.

    2. Stupid question but here goes anyways:

      Do you post under your own name on FB? If yes, do you have to deal with criticism from family/friends? If you wanted to make your posts visible only to you and your audience, there is a way to do that on FB, right?

      1. Create a stage name, it’s a lot more popular than you think. Charlie Sheen, Miley Cyrus, brad Pitt, Jamie Fox…. all stage names.

        Create new social media accounts for your personal brand account. I use my real picture but that’s it.

        Also helpful if you work a 9-5 like me so your employer doesn’t know you’re working on a side business or HR gets triggered at something you post

    3. I know there’s a tiny chance you will respond EE, but let’s give it a try. Apart from the Efficiency, are there any sources you can recommend to kick-off the route you’ve taken in Aff. Marketing?

      Any forum, YT channel, anything basically that you found helpful, with actionable advice, just like Efficiency does.

      Many thanks in advance,
      YB

  8. Personal trainer here; I’ve followed this site from day 1, and even though I’m not in finance or banking or making 500K a year, this advice is exactly what I started doing this year (year 4) of my business. I’ve condensed what I do with my clients into a book, and started manufacturing my own supplements. The difference is night and day. It took me 3+ years of daily grinding to see the benefits of recurring revenue, of which, I’d have easily disimissed before. Thank you as always, gentlemen!

  9. Regarding the looks industry. Is it possible to work in this vertical without become a well known? I get told I’m handsome/gorgeous by random women. I think I could have an edge here but I love my privacy.

    1. Exactly my thoughts. It seems to me that most of the products in the online “looks industry” is based around a personal brand, which is something that I really don’t want to do because I value my privacy above all else. Would like to hear WSPs opinion on this, too.

      1. Please reply to these comments above.

        I’m a personal trainer (in-person) who has a decent physique and I absolutely know I could make more money online were I to offer my training services online and pay for advertisements, though I don’t wish to be famous, or an internet-celebrity, or to be personally branded as ‘that guy who does personal training online’ despite the chance for a major increase in income.

        Is there any way around this and to start selling my personal training services online? Or something else in the looks industry without exposing my name/face and gaining unwanted traction?

        Would genuinely appreciate if you guys left your comments on this.

  10. I have been at my first sales job for one year now and have achieved the top 3 percent in the company. I work at a cell phone provider. Just curious what would be next best step? Business channel? Also as far as a service what could I translate from selling phones to online? Only thing I can think is consulting of some sort.

  11. Great Ideas, Good work.

    Some sort of lifestyle(social) strategy post for Early-Mid twenties would be great.

    Seems like relating to anybody is a nightmare, bars are brutal and not fun for me, old high school friends are beginning to get extremely insecure, old college friends are locked down with average girls and blow their paychecks at the bars.

    In a world where 98% of millennial are normie social go happy monkeys with no savings, it’s tough to get along.

    Putting yourself in a 23 year old out of college, what would be your strategy?

  12. Affiliate marketing is all good and well, but wasn’t the heyday years ago? Kind of like you said in Efficiency? You say that we should go the cloaking route, which is completely illegitimate (not that I care). It’s just that this affiliate stuff seems very difficult to crack without cloaking tools.

      1. It’s not dead at all, but it’s exponentially harder. I’ve been doing FB+skin/diet/muscle for 8 years in many forms, the profits are far less than before, and extremely fragmented. I can still make six figures a year via a team of on and offshore employees, but reaching multiple million per year seems pretty out of reach now with the same methods. This is why we’ve been shifting towards ecommerce and creating products, using similar tactics as before, but much less aggressive. If anyone is going to get into advertising and sales, and you don’t want to ‘cloak’ or play the account game, my advice is go the “legit” route and sell a product via fulfillment centers or importing from china, and just to rip and revamp something you see working that appears to be successful and accessible. Maybe even shoot for a smaller easier dominated niche, just just jumping into health and beauty with the big fish. This way you can get by with far less accounts, and actually learn how to media buy and spend money efficiently, not spam clickbait horizontally across thousands of accounts. I’ve done xx million in affiliate revenue in the past few years and from my experience, this is the best direction.

  13. “unattractive sales people are rare”

    If one is not very good looking, should face-to-face sales be avoided? Real Estate Sales, Door to Door, Car Dealership, etc.

    Or does it just mean that you will earn LESS than those that are attractive?

    Thanks,

  14. Word of warning.

    Literally been following this path.

    Got addicted to Step 6.

    Any new lead that came my way, I was closing.

    The result? I’m working 40 hours in the job, 50 plus hours freelancing a week.

    Step 7 onwards are getting no attention.

    Simple fix, right?

    Drop some clients, work on the steps above. Psychology seems to be at play here though — it’s just hard turning away that money and the relationships you build with clients.

    I think the 15-hour rule is key. Once you hit that. No more. Any more work after that stage is for you.

    My fix? When a client leaves for whatever reason, that same ‘lot’ of time is going to be ‘my work time’ — and progress on to step 7.

  15. I have experience with both affiliate marketing and by creating my own products. I own a small blog and YouTube channel on one single football video game that’s been active for almost four years.

    Affiliate marketing is fine but I’ve made way more money by selling my ebooks, I have four of them now. It’s always fun waking up with a PayPal notification saying I made a sale.

    Although I haven’t made much money from any of it (the niche is extremely small and not too popular), I can attest to the fact that owning and selling your own products has no ceiling.

    This experience had tight me to keep creating my own products but to pick a niche that is simply more popular.

  16. Affiliate Marketing is dead bro! 😉

    That’s why I work on it 10 hrs a week (side biz) and make more than any job I’ve ever had.

    Not saying this to brag. When they say “dead” there’s usually money to be made