If you are interested in starting an online business,
if you have started one recently,
if you've been doing online business for a while,
or if you're even generally interested in online business,
please spend the time to watch this short video,
as it should save you a lot of time,
frustration and money down the road.
Today's video is going to be broken up into three very
important parts.
The first section of the video is going to be three online
businesses that I do not recommend starting
if you're a beginner.
The second part of this video is going to be four of the
really common online business mistakes that I've seen people
making over the last few years that
I have been in online business.
And then the last section of this video is going to be
bringing everything together and showing you how I would
personally start an online business
if I were starting over from scratch.
Hi everyone and welcome back to another video.
If you're new here,
my name is Greg and I like to talk about online
entrepreneurship and share the helpful resources that I wish
I had along my journey.
So if you're interested in making money online,
feel free to look around the channel
and consider subscribing.
For those of you returning to the channel,
welcome back.
Thank you guys so much for all of the likes and comments and
sharing these videos.
I really do appreciate it because as you guys know,
these videos take quite some time to make.
But with that said, you guys do know the usual strategy
of getting straight into the video.
So let's skip all the fluff and get started on this one.
So, as I said earlier,
the first section of this video is very important and that
is going to be three online businesses that I do not
recommend starting if you are a beginner.
Now, all three of these online businesses
you're likely going to see heavily advertised,
and I will show you why from my experience,
I don't recommend you start them if you are a beginner.
The first online business model here,
you will see in a few different variations,
but it's pitched to you as making money on YouTube,
by reposting content or using automation tools to create
videos and then collect AdSense money
from people watching them.
As of the time that I'm making this video
I have actually seen a lot more advertisements
for this type of business model.
And once you follow these advertisements,
you end up going through a funnel which at the end brings
you to a pretty expensive course,
teaching you everything you need to know on how to do it.
Now, for those of you who know me
and what I talk about on this channel,
I'm not a big fan and I don't support you buying an
expensive course just to get started
with an online business.
Everything you need to know for no matter what business
you're going into,
you should be able to find on YouTube completely for free.
Now, staying on topic with this first business model
of making money on YouTube with these interesting ways
of reposting or using automation tools to make videos.
I really just don't recommend this for two main reasons.
One is it doesn't really follow YouTube's guidelines.
You're treading really close to where their guidelines say
it's okay, and where they don't.
So just know that if you do put hard work on this business
any day,
YouTube could shut down your account and completely ban you.
This is not the type of online business that you want to be
building for yourself.
And the second reason is it's really not
authentic or genuine.
You're really trying to use a shortcut to make money,
and that is never going to be a longterm solution.
Now, the second business model that
I do not recommend starting,
if you are a beginner,
is anything along the lines of Forex trading.
Now, I see this a lot in the comments,
people asking for videos about this,
and I don't want to spend a whole time making a video about
it because everything I have to say about this
business model I can sum up in the next 30 seconds here.
Forex trading is short for foreign exchange trading.
And essentially what you're doing is trading different
currencies, and as they go up and down in value,
you're trying to make a profit in the difference.
With that said foreign exchange trading
is a real thing.
However, most of the time
when you're being pitched on getting into Forex trading
it's for a program.
Something where you have to pay monthly to get notifications
on what to trade and when to trade it.
This is what I'm really not a big fan of.
I do know people who have success with this.
However, when you start asking questions
of where the actual money is made,
it's not made from trading.
It's made from signing other people up to the program,
And then when they sign people up,
you get a commission as well.
For those of you who may not know, this business model is
known as multilevel marketing or network marketing.
And I'm generally just not a fan because it's based on
referring people and not actually the product or the service
or the idea and lifestyle that is being pitched
to you to get you to sign up.
So with that being said,
next time someone tries to sell you on Forex trading or
you're doing research and looking into it as a viable
business model,
I just recommend that you look into where the actual money
is made and if you can get in contact with anyone
who has been doing the business model for a while now,
see where their money is made and ask if it's made more on
trading or if it's made more on referrals.
And the third business model that I don't recommend
starting, if you are a beginner is dropshipping.
Now I know you've probably seen a lot about dropshipping on
advertisements over the last few years,
and it is true that you can make good money
with drop shipping.
I just do not think that it's beginner friendly.
There are a few very big reasons why I say this starting
with the way that you make money with drop shipping,
you're going to need to know how to do advertising and this
isn't free advertising.
It's paid advertising.
So if you don't already have experience with paid Facebook
ads and Instagram ads,
you're probably not going to do well and turn a profit
when doing shipping.
Further, you're going to need a budget
to spend on testing and optimizing these ads.
And as you scale your business,
your ad spend has to go up as well.
And then the last thing is, as you grow this business,
you are going to need to bring on virtual assistants or
employees to your business.
Most of the time,
the first employee you're going to have to hire is
for customer service.
When you're doing this drop shipping business model,
you still have to take care of customer service.
You essentially are the point of contact for the person that
made the purchase,
even though you aren't the one actually making or
shipping the product.
So as you start selling these products,
you can expect to get emails for people
checking in on their order.
They want to do a return.
They want to see where their order is,
and what the status is.
These are just general customer service questions,
but you have to be prepared on how to take care of it.
And the last thing that I think you should really know for
drop shipping is that the profit margins are generally low.
Most of the time with drop shipping, and yes,
there are exceptions to this,
but the margin that you're generally going to make is
somewhere around 15%.
So with that said when you see someone
showing you their Shopify account,
and it shows revenue for the month, for example,
if that says $50,000 for the month at 15% margin,
that's really only $7,500 that they made that month.
Once they pay tax on that, they're looking at maybe $5,000.
So just be wary when someone shows you
these really big numbers on Shopify,
that is the revenue.
They only get their profit margin from that.
And once they pay tax on that, that's their take home.
All right. So that is the first section of the video.
And with that out of the way,
now I'd like to move into four online business mistakes that
I see people make time and time again.
I've been in this online business space
for over five years now,
and I've learned a lot along the way.
And I keep seeing patterns of people
making these same mistakes.
So with that said,
I have four big mistakes I'd like to share with you and
let's get started with them now.
The first mistake that I see people make is one of the
biggest ones and it applies to any online business.
This one is that the business model that
they're choosing cannot scale.
When looking at your business in the starting
phases, don't just look at how quickly you can make money.
Look at the longterm.
Look five or 10 years down the road if you can.
I know 10 years is a stretch,
but see if you keep doing this business model
and growing it,
can it scale and continue to make money over that course of
five to 10 years.
Now, to give you a perfect example of this,
if you come back to drop shipping as a beginner,
you know that you're going to have a hard time scaling
because as you scale, your ad budget needs to increase.
Do you have money that you can spend on this to test and
optimize ads.
As you scale,
you're going to need to bring people on to handle that
customer service.
Are you able to hire a virtual assistant or an employee?
And also as you scale,
you're going to have to fulfill all of these orders.
Do you have a virtual assistant or an employee to go through
and fulfill all the orders and
make sure there's no errors?
That's just an example for drop shipping.
But as you go through looking at an online business to
start, look at what it looks like as you start to
scale that business.
Is it something that you can continue to do by yourself?
Is it going to require you to be more hands on as it starts
to scale and what could potentially be holding you back in
that business model if you were to scale it?
Now later on in this video,
I'm going to share two of my favorite business models that
you can scale to the moon all by yourself.
But wait, we'll get to that in a couple minutes.
The second online business mistake that I see people make is
that they go into this business that has too harsh of a
learning curve.
When you're starting an online business,
you need to make sure that you understand enough of that
business to start turning a profit so that you can continue
learning and grow it even bigger.
What I continue to see people do is they go into a really
complicated business model that I would not recommend for
anyone as a beginner,
but it looks like that's the best one because it's marketed
the best at the time.
The third mistake I see people make in online business is
they start a business model that requires upfront capital.
There are definitely online business models that you can
start for free or extremely low cost.
I'm going to talk about some of these a little later
in this video,
but just know as you're looking at an online business,
if it requires you to buy an expensive course,
if it requires you to have a big budget to run Facebook ads,
if it requires you to have money to invest
in the stock market.
These are all going to be really tough because you need to
have the money to invest and the knowledge on how to use it
in order to turn a profit.
And the fourth big online business mistake that I see people
make is that as the business grows,
it becomes way too hands on.
In the beginning,
it's very easy to look at what business is going to make you
money the fastest.
However,
I really advise you to look a little bit down the road as
that business starts making money and growing.
What does that look like for your lifestyle
as the business owner?
Is it going to require your lifestyle to change and become
very active in the business as it starts to grow?
Or is it going to be just as passive on day one as it is,
as the business is growing?
All right, those are the four common mistakes.
And I just want to throw in a quick bonus one.
Just make sure that whatever business model you're going
into follows all the guidelines and the rules on whatever
platforms they are and whatever laws there are out there.
Don't try to find any shortcuts,
make sure that whatever you're doing is all by the rules and
it is longterm and sustainable.
All right, now that we've covered
the first two sections of the video
now I'd like to tell you how I would personally start over
from scratch if I were starting an online business.
So if I were starting over from scratch,
I would start with two online business models.
These are actually the two online business models that I
currently do to date.
They are the main parts of my business that I've been doing
for the last five years.
I've tried a ton of different business models over the last
five years, and it's basically boiled down to these two.
Now, just know with both of these things,
they met all of the criteria that I have looked for
and I have learned to look for over the years.
And just with these two,
you can make as much money as you need to.
Don't think that you need to add in a third type of business
model to make more money.
Both of these can scale extremely well and stay
extremely passive.
Now, with that all said,
the first business model is print on demand
and the second business model is affiliate marketing.
Now we'll take about one minute for each of these and
explain what they are and why I use them.
So we'll start with print on demand.
Print on demand is where you create a design,
you upload it to one of the websites.
There's many different websites with marketplaces to sell
these designs.
And essentially you choose which products that design should
be available on.
And then it creates a virtual listing on the site.
These websites then drive traffic of people
interested in those types of designs,
and they can see this design on a tee shirt or a coffee mug
or a sweatshirt.
And if they like it,
they can choose the exact size and the color,
and then they can purchase it.
Now, once the customer purchases your design
on this specific type of item
in the color and the size that they want,
the company with the marketplace that you uploaded it to,
they print that item,
they ship it out to the customer and they take care of all
the customer service.
As we look back to the beginning of this video,
this covers a lot of criteria.
As you start to scale this business and it grows and more
people are ordering, you don't have to do anything.
The companies with the marketplaces that you're
uploading to, they do all the printing,
they do all of the shipping and they do
all of the customer service.
You are never going to get an email asking for any
customer service help.
Additionally, one of the best parts here
is that print on demand is
completely free or extremely low cost to get started.
There are a few optional tools that I use for designing to
do a little bit of research,
but even if you use all of the three paid tools that I
currently use, that's only $20.69 per month.
That is the most you will be paying.
That is extremely low when compared to
other business models.
So I know I left the description of print on demand at
a very high level.
If you want more of a detailed overview on how I do print on
demand or the strategies,
I'll link a video up top,
I'll put it down in the description
and I'll link it at the end of this video as well.
Just so you guys know before we
move into affiliate marketing,
both for print on demand and affiliate marketing,
I have a ton of tutorials completely for free
on my YouTube channel
For those of you who know me,
you know that I don't try to sell you an expensive course.
Everything you need to know to make money in these
business models is completely free on my YouTube channel.
And trust me the content there is course level.
All right,
with that said, let's move into affiliate marketing.
This is the second online business model that I highly
recommend for anyone getting started.
Now, the order that I started these
and I would recommend the same for you is doing
print on demand first,
because you can start that and you can scale it
pretty quickly.
And then moving into affiliate marketing.
Essentially what affiliate marketing is, is first thing,
it is not multilevel marketing and it is not
network marketing.
I know they have similar names,
but it is the farthest thing from it.
Affiliate marketing is basically where you get a custom link
from some of the big companies out there.
Amazon does this.
Best Buy does this.
Victoria's Secret, you name it.
All of the big companies. They all have affiliate programs.
Now, if you're curious, if a company does have it,
you can go to their homepage website, scroll to the bottom,
and you'll typically see a little button that says
affiliates, and that'll give you details
on how their program works.
All of these companies have different specifications for
their programs,
but essentially you are going to get a custom link that says
that it was you who referred the customer.
And you share that with people
and when they buy anything from the websites,
you get a commission.
So essentially the way this business model works is you
create content around the products or the services that have
affiliate programs.
And then essentially when a potential customer comes across
your content on the internet and they see that, yes,
this is the product that I want, they use your link.
And then when they make their purchase,
the company that they purchased it from,
will give you the commission for referring that person to
make that purchase.
To give you a perfect example,
Amazon has one of the largest affiliate programs.
And if you share your link to a product on Amazon and
someone clicks it and they buy anything on Amazon's website
within 24 hours of clicking your link,
you will get the commission.
Amazon's commissions range from
anywhere from one to 10%,
depending on what the category of the item was.
But the really cool thing that goes for Amazon and a lot of
these other affiliate programs is that even if you were
linking them to a specific product on Amazon,
and ended up not buying that product,
but they bought something different,
you still get the commission on whatever they purchased
because you were the one that brought them to the website.
So again, affiliate marketing
hits the criteria of being completely free
or extremely low cost to get started.
There's two real options you have here.
You can either make and put out content for free,
or you can put together your own custom website,
which will be about $5 per month up to about $18 per month.
So with those options, again,
it's going to be extremely low cost
And the last thing to say about both of these
business models,
that's print on demand and affiliate marketing, is you use
no paid advertising. (bell ringing)
Yes, technically you could use paid advertising
to get more sales
and make more money quickly.
However, you're going to need to have experience to do that.
You need to test,
you need to optimize your ads until you're making a positive
return on investment.
So I don't recommend that to anyone getting started with
print on demand or affiliate marketing.
You don't need to spend a single dollar on paid advertising.
I have a main strategy for print on demand on how I get
sales organically for free.
And then also for affiliate marketing,
you won't need to spend any money on ads.
Everything you need for both of these to get started
and to scale these businesses,
you'll find free videos over on my YouTube channel.
And like I said,
I'll link up a video for both print on demand and affiliate
marketing at the end here and down in the description.
I hope this video has been extremely helpful for you.
If you enjoyed it, feel free to leave a thumbs up.
You can share it with someone.
You can leave a comment to let me know that you liked it.
And if you have any questions at all about this video,
let me know down in the comments and
I'd be happy to help you.
All right, guys, with that said,
I will see you all in the next video. Take care.
I'll see you next time.