In today’s world, more and more individuals of all ages are pursing a job that will provide them with not only more flexibility and personal satisfaction, but also unlimited earnings. Tired of being mistreated by the demanding corporate world, men and women are turning to the Internet in a quest to build their own business in the virtual marketplace.
By becoming your own boss online, you’re not subject to the wages or rules that a boss decides. You set your own hours. You pursue your chosen business models and tasks. You get to decide what to charge or how many hours to work, and when.
It’s a career that is unrivaled in terms of delivering the perks most employees can only dream about. But it’s not something you can achieve without putting in the work. This is not a turnkey, push-button business – regardless of what some might say.
You can use the 30-day action plan below to learn about your choices and start your journey as an online entrepreneur. Put in the time and effort it takes to carefully make decisions and work on it, and you could build a six or even seven figure business that’s more rewarding than what any 9-5 job could provide.
Day 1: Set a Budget for Your Online Business
All businesses have to start with a budget. You may be able to launch a business on a shoestring budget, thanks to the Internet, but it will still require even the most basic tools, like a domain and hosting for under $15 a month total.
Some business models might require more of you financially, so it’s important that you determine how much you want to set aside to get started. You can use these funds any way you see fit.
Some will need more help than others, such as outsourcing to a tech person if you need help setting up a membership site for your info product. You may be able to do most, if not all steps yourself, which can save you money. You’re going to be tempted to spend money left and right as you immerse yourself into the world of online marketing and read the hyped up sales pages of savvy marketers who promise you shortcuts and quick riches if you buy their course or tools, but stay on the smart path and only invest in what you can afford.
Day 2: Pick a Niche That Resonates with You
Your niche topic is one of the most important decisions you can make – even more so than the business model. That’s because you will need to be able to display a passion or knowledge of it to your target audience.
This topic should be of interest to you so that your leadership comes across as genuine and your followers will be able to trust your recommendations. If you choose a niche just because some guru said there’s money in it, you’ll eventually abandon it – and all the time you spent trying to profit from it will be wasted.
To pick a niche, start with your most basic interests – whether you currently engage in them or not. Sometimes, the best leaders are those who show their own journey in something, so it’s okay to be a beginner.
Your niche can be homesteading, anti-aging, baking, weight loss, pets, or just about anything you can think of. If you love to golf, you don’t have to be a PGA pro – just start sharing what you know and learn with others, and you can guide the niche to their best round ever.
Day 3: Decide How You Want to Earn in Your Niche
Your business model is the next decision you need to make. Different niches are better suited for different business models. For example, if you’re in the toy niche, then you won’t be creating digital info products.
Instead, you’ll be acting as an affiliate marketer, making recommendations. Likewise, if you’re in the personal development niche, you won’t be recommending tangible items, but usually digital motivational downloads instead.
See if your niche allows for digital or tangible products or reviews. What about coaching or freelance service providing? You might be writing private label rights about your niche topic, too.
Day 4: Match Your Niche with a Profitable Business Model
Take each of the niche ideas you’ve brainstormed and match it with a possible business model. For example, with pets, you might do both – write info products and also make tangible product recommendations as an affiliate.
If you really want to be a coach, then think of niches where that’s in demand, such as career coaching, parent or relationship coaching, weight loss coaching and more. Choose a niche and business model that you feel secure with as a leader.
Day 5: Analyze What Kind of Help You’ll Need
Even though you’re a work at home entrepreneur, you don’t have to be on your own every step of the way. You can outsource certain steps or tasks to someone else if you find you struggle with it.
There are virtual assistants who can do some technical things for you, such as setting up your blog posts. There are freelancers who can create graphics for those who aren’t good at them, and ghostwriters who can be the voice you need to succeed.
Make a list of tasks where you feel you either don’t feel confident doing it yourself, or it’s one where you’d like to hand it off to someone else due to the amount of time it takes to complete it.
Day 6: Do Some Keyword Research for Your Niche
Conducting keyword research is a task that will serve you well in many ways. Not only will it help you with SEO (search engine optimization) to get your site ranked in the search engines, but will also allow you to tailor your social media content to those who are seeking info on those platforms.
You can choose a free keyword tool or use a paid one (remembering to only pay for what you can afford). Take time to create a list of broad keywords and phrases (such as diet or weight loss) as well as long-tail ones (such as diets for women over 40).
Day 7: Grab a Dot Com Domain
The domain you choose for your business is an important representation of your brand. You can use your name or relevant keywords. Make sure you get a dot com domain. The other extensions aren’t worth spending money on initially.
When consumers go looking for a domain they remember, they almost always instinctively type in .com rather than .net, even if that’s the proper domain extension. So play around with your options until you find an available dot com domain that works for your business needs.
Day 8: Get Your Hosting Account Set Up
Hosting should be purchased from somewhere other than where you bought your domain name. There are many great companies who are perfect for beginner marketers, such as Hostgator, who has plans ranging from one domain to unlimited domain hosting for under $10 a month.
Remember, you can level up with more hosting later if your business expands beyond what your current plan offers. So don’t pay for more than you need up front. You also don’t want to add on any extras during the checkout process.
Day 9: Find a Good Email Autoresponder System
In order to actively communicate with your target audience, you’ll want to invest in a good email autoresponder. This will allow you to capture the names and email addresses of your blog visitors and product buyers so you can market to them in the future.
Most people go with a reputable service like Aweber or GetResponse. You can also find many for those on a budget, like MailChimp. Be careful about investing in the autoresponder company who pops up in a marketplace promising the moon because many of these go under or stop supporting customers after their launch period is over.
Day 10: Get Your Blog Set Up for Business
Once you’ve made all of the preliminary decisions and purchases that will help you build your business, you’ll want to begin setting up the foundation for your site by installing a blog using WordPress.
Inside your cPanel, there’s a QuickInstall option that only takes seconds to automatically install a blog onto your domain. From there, you can log in and set it up to your liking, with a theme and look that suits your brand.
Day 11: Format the Forms for Your Email Lead Capturing
Once your blog is live, go ahead and log into your email autoresponder service and go through the steps needed to create a form. You’ll want forms for your sidebar, for below each blog post, and for your lead magnet offer page.
You can tailor the size, color and wording of the form before you install it on your site. Once it’s installed, sign up to your own list. It’s always good to check that everything is working and also to get a copy of your emails that go out so you can be aware of any errors and rectify them immediately.
Day 12: Come Up with an Opt In Freebie That Converts
Most people don’t simply sign up to a list to “receive emails.” Instead, they hand over their contact information in exchange for something valuable to them. In most online niche situations, this will be something like a free series of tips or a report, so brainstorm an idea and create something that will appeal to your new subscribers.
Day 13: Queue Up Your Email Content
Once your freebie gift is ready, go ahead and log into your email autoresponder system and go to your follow up email options. You want to whip up a welcome email that greets new subscribers and also gives them the download link to the free gift you promised.
If you’re doing an email series instead, set up each email and schedule it to drip out to the customer every day or every few days, depending on what you promised. You might also want to add an unexpected freebie to the gift, to sweeten its value.
Day 14: Populate Your Blog with Valuable Posts
As a niche leader, the value you put out into the marketplace is going to determine your earnings. It’s not just about product value that people pay for, either. In fact, the information you share on your blog in posts that you create will give them a taste of what you have to offer.
You want to spend a day writing some educational, informative, and inspiring content that makes your readers feel a strong connection to you as a potential leader. You want the posts to be worthy of being bookmarked and shared, so don’t skimp on the value you provide by being in a rush.
Day 15: Stake Claim to Your Social Media Accounts
Social media is a wonderful free traffic generator and brand builder. Before you start becoming well-known in the marketplace, you want to go out there and stake claim to the social profiles that are in your brand’s name.
Even if you don’t currently plan on using a site, grab the profile name anyway. Do this on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, SnapChat, YouTube, and more. That way, when the time comes and you want to cater to your audience there, you’ll have ownership of the profile name.
Day 16: Share Posts and Get Connected
Part of what will help your brand rise to the top of a niche is customer enthusiasm. One way people show their appreciation and trust in you is by sharing your content with their own followers and friends.
You want to make sure that you enable a plugin for social sharing buttons and remember to use a call to action in every blog post reminding people to share it with others.
You can choose a social button design you like – and even choose the shape of the buttons and where it’s positioned. Then you can pick which social buttons appear, such as Facebook, Pinterest, Email, etc.
Don’t forget to share your own posts on social media, too. Every time you create a new blog post, take time to socialize it to your social networking audience so it can get shared more in other places.
Day 17: Come Up with an Info Product Creation You Can Launch
Depending on your niche, you will likely want to launch an info product of your own. This is a great way to not only earn a lot of money (thanks to affiliates who promote for you) but also expand your reach to interested consumers.
It lends authority to those who have taken the time to create and launch a product of their own. You’ll be able to build a list quicker and easier because the subscribers of your affiliates will now be on your list as buyers.
Come up with a product idea such as an eBook, membership site, video course or other product that will help you bring in money and build a list. Do some thinking about a slant that will set you apart and be in high demand with customers, too.
Day 18: Order the Images You Need for Your Business
Every brand and product needs a graphic representation. You may or may not be good at graphics. If you’re not, just outsource them. There are different levels of freelancers – some perfect for a low budget and some that are more expensive.
Have them create things like header images for your blog and social accounts as well as for the product you’re about to launch. You can also use a free tool like Canva if you don’t have any money set aside for this task.
Day 19: Create a Chapter or Module Outline for Your Product
You have the main idea for your info product. Now, take a day to do the outlining that will speed up the product creation process. If you’re going to have a funnel with more than just the front end, go ahead and outline those too.
An eBook will have a table of content that you can work from. If you’re creating a video course, you’ll likely just outline the video modules and what you want to go in them so you can work fast.
Day 20: Start the Product Creation Process
You can sometimes create a product in a day, but depending on your topic and skills, it might take you longer than that. Start the process today, if you haven’t already. You want to take time to create the best product possible, whether it’s in text, video, audio or a multi-format approach.
Day 21: Create All Copy for Buyers and Partners
Today is copywriting day! If you’re new to copywriting, look for templates or swipe files online to help you get started. You’ll want to create a sales letter for your front end product, along with any one time offer upgrades you want to include in the launch.
You also need to create a page for your affiliates (known as a JV or joint venture page) and a download page, too – where buyers will see the link to your product. The JV page should give all of the launch details to your prospective customers, including dates and time, product specifications, and where to get their links.
Day 22: Set Up Your Listing and Notify Affiliates
Product completion is a great milestone to achieve. But you have more work to do! Today, you need to get your listings set up on whichever platform you want to launch it on. This can very from Warrior Plus to JVZoo or even ClickBank.
It’s also possible to have third party affiliate software installed on your site and launch it off your own affiliate program, to save yourself the fees of a platform. You can use AMember for something like this.
Once your listing is set up, go ahead and notify affiliates so they can begin planning their promotion and grab their links. You want to announce it to your affiliate list (if you have one) and on Muncheye and social groups where people share this kind of information.
Day 23: Get Top Affiliates Onboard
You never want to assume anyone will see your launch listing and jump onboard. You want to make that happen. So make a list of competitors or top affiliates you’d like to have promoting for you and embark on a campaign of recruitment.
Connect with them via email or private message, explaining what your product is, why their list would love it, and details of your launch. Make sure you give them free access of a review copy so they can see the quality and whip up a genuine product review.
Day 24: Find Other Info Products to Promote
As an online business entrepreneur, even if you’re creating your own info products, you’ll want to promote others, too. You can find these products on the same platform where you are listing yours, and apply for approval to promote them.
It’s always a good idea to either purchase or get a review copy before you blindly promote someone. You don’t want to destroy your reputation as a niche leader by promoting someone’s shoddy product.
Day 25: Look for Tangible Promo Opportunities
Digital products aren’t the only thing you can promote as an affiliate. Look at tangible items, too. They’re easier to find in some niches than others. For example, you might have a harder time finding tangible items for the relationship niche, but an easier time finding gardening products.
You can look to Amazon, Commission Junction, Share-a-Sale and even directly from manufacturers. They’ll typically want to review your website to see if you’re a serious affiliate, so make sure your content is valuable.
Day 26: Create Some Reviews for Your Blog Readers
You can begin creating product reviews on your blog for both digital and tangible products once you get approvals in place. As a product reviewer, your personal goal may be to make a commission, but that will be short-lived if you don’t have a larger goal – which is to provide good guidance to your readers about what they should consider buying.
Be honest with your reviews. A thorough review that talks about product specifications, lends additional tips, and even shares warnings will go the extra mile in convincing people to trust your opinion.
Day 27: See Where It Makes Sense to Put Money in Your Business
Take some time today to see if there’s anywhere you need to reinvest your earnings. It might be a course to help you level up or a tool that makes things more effective or easier.
Day 28: Spend Time Repurposing Your Content
Whether you wrote emails or blog posts, a lead magnet or a product – you can re-purpose your content and help it attract more subscribers, buyers or followers. Turn text into video or vice versa.
Take a blog post with a list of tips and make it into an infographic that you put on Pinterest. Extract the audio from a video and turn it into a podcast episode. There are endless ways to use what you’ve already got in a way that helps your business.
Day 29: Evaluate the Potential for a High Ticket Coaching Offer
As you wrap up your 30-day plan, take into consideration other business models you may not have considered, such as coaching. You can offering virtual solo or group coaching that acts as a high-ticket income stream for you.
Day 30: Have a Strategy for Scaling Your Profits
Now is the time for you to look to your future. Will you add more niches to your repertoire or additional business models – or, will you simply do more of the same? Your goal is to scale your income up year after year so that your business is earning more on autopilot for you.