10 Easy Ways to Immediately Profit From Your Online Business

How to Make Money Right Away By Selling on Your Website

If you’ve just launched your website, whether it’s intended to sell your services, products or art you might worry about how you’re going to make any money.

There are multiple ways you can monetize your website right away. Your first product might not necessarily be the end-all mission to your business but it’s a good thing to get revenue-positive as soon as you can.

So, to help you out I’ve compiled a list of 10 things that have worked for me in the past, and I’ll speak about the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of each one as we go through the list.

Disclaimer before we begin: If you website has zero traffic and no audience then you don’t have anybody to sell to. You must spend time cultivating an audience, giving them value, gaining their trust and establishing yourself as an expert before you make any sales.

1. eBooks

Selling my knowledge through eBooks was my first successful product launch online. I’ve since written a few more eBooks and they’ve all sold in some way, making each product a valuable part of my income strategy.

eBooks can be intimidating if you’ve never written one before but it’s really not that hard. Write a thorough outline and give yourself limitations on your topic so you don’t overexert yourself. Then write a really ugly first draft where words on page matter more than a coherent thought. Then put your editing hat on and create your final draft. At that point, I like reading the book aloud to make sure it makes sense.

Find some stock photos on Pixabay, hire a designer on Fiverr to make you a nice interior and a cover design and you’re done!

First product ready to go.

2. Video Presentations

If you’re more comfortable talking to a camera or are working in a niche where it’s easier to “show” than “tell” then creating a video presentation is easy.

Use Screenflow for Mac or Camtasia for Windows (or any other video software you’re comfortable with) to teach your particular subject.

Then just go through your subject and teach the hypothetical viewer how you do what you do. If you mess up or stutter over your words (I’ve been there many times) then just start again and keep going. You can always edit it out later.

An hour of quality material that teaches one subject, or multiple 5–10 minute segments that break down a complicated subject is a great way to start doing video presentations.

An example of a successful video presentation I’ve done is my Quick Mixing video, or my 70 Ways to Monetize Your Music Career presentation. One is a walkthrough of mixing a song from start to end, the other is a Keynote presentation where I walk through 70 different ideas musicians can use to increase their income.

3. In-Depth Courses

This is basically the same idea as video presentations, just more in-depth. This requires more planning and is designed to be longer.

An example is my Mixing With 5 Plug-ins course, a 5-week course with 40–60-minute videos each week, a Facebook community and study materials to follow along with the videos.

If you have a particularly complex subject to teach, do a “Crash-Course” as a low-priced video presentation and then an in-depth Masterclass as a higher ticket item.

4. Consultation and Coaching

This is probably the easiest thing to start with if you are an in-demand expert. You don’t really have to create a product or prepare any materials. You just have to coach and give advice to the people who ask for it.

I offer this in a couple different ways. I offer Mix Feedback for my subscribers and I offer Success Strategy coaching on my personal website.

What are you an expert in that you can offer as a consulting service?

5. Services

This is similar to consulting and coaching but it requires you to do more work. Usually, your services are tied to some sort of deliverable, like a website if you’re a web developer, an article if you’re a writer or a logo if you’re a designer.

My deliverable is usually a mix and master of a song or some piece of produced audio. In my case, I offer music production and recording services, both through my website at Icelandic Embassy Studios as well as stand-alone mixing services through Audio Issues.

What can you make that people will buy from you? You can start by offering a few samples for free to get your portfolio up and running, then set a base rate and increase your fees as the demand for your services increases.

6. Ads

This is the ugliest way you can monetize your website. However, you shouldn’t dismiss it entirely if you can make it fit.

I don’t put a lot of ads up but Audio Issues has decent enough traffic (100,000+ pageviews/month) so that my targeted Amazon ads make enough money for it to be worth it.

You can also sell direct advertising but I’ve always been too lazy to seek out and work with businesses to make it worth my while. I’d rather write more content and create more products.

7. Sponsored Posts

This is something I don’t have particular experience with but I do know it works.

Instead of running ads for a particular business you can write value-driven posts about a particular subject your audience is familiar with. This post would then be sponsored by a particular company with a sales pitch or an ad for their product somewhere in the post.

This works well if you have an audience already. They’ll be inclined to listen to you if you have a track record of offering value. Some might think it’s a sleazy way to pitch your audience a third-party product but if you deliver enough great information in your content then your audience shouldn’t be too angry about a sales pitch.

The trick is to have the right combination of value and sales-pitch.

9. Interviews With Experts

Although you can probably find all the experts you need in all the millions of podcasts available to everyone it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the sheer amount of options out there.

If you interview a few experts about your subject and package it as a “Virtual Mastermind Group” you can sell it as an audio series. All you need to do is interview the experts, edit the audio, package the mp3s and sell it.

I haven’t done this exactly but I often add interviews with experts as “free bonuses” to my products.

10. Physical Products

Any of the virtual products above can be repackaged as physical products. Sell courses as DVDs, eBooks as paperbacks, interviews as CDs. I wouldn’t recommend it because the manufacturing and shipping eat into your profits.

I’d rather have a zero marginal cost product than a product that has 30% overhead.

However, if you make innovative physical products yourself then selling them through your website (along with Amazon and Ebay) is a no-brainer. Private labeling makes it easy to come up with branded products for your niche, Etsy makes it easy to sell custom designs and sites like Alibaba make manufacturing a breeze.

Conclusion

Those are the 10 ideas off the top of my head. I’m sure there are a lot of other ways you can make money through your website, and I’d love to hear about any ideas you might have.

Cheers,

Björgvin

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