How to Make Money Online with ZERO Followers
Coming out of high school, I knew that I didn’t want to have to choose a normal nine-to-five job. It’s almost expected that once you graduate high school, you go to college to graduate with a degree (and lots of debt) only to get an average job and live paycheck to paycheck. This would mean limited lifestyle and choices, and I knew I wanted the flexibility that an alternate career option could offer.
Reading The Four Hour Work Week and Rich Dad Poor Dad early on in my life inspired me to think bigger, to explore those alternate options, and essentially to discover a way to earn passive income. I had no idea what I wanted to do or what it would look like, but these two books validated my longing to do something different.
I quickly began following the principles taught in each of the books, but I found I was having a hard time making any money in the real world. The problem? I couldn’t figure out WHY it wasn’t working for me, and WHY I wasn’t bringing in the income I desired.
I uncovered that much of the reason I was struggling so hard was because I didn’t have an audience to actually sell my products and services to!
This was the ESSENTIAL missing ingredient.
But, I didn’t want to wait for my audience to grow through organic measures because, oftentimes, that is a slow process. So I went to work and figured out how I could make money online more immediately with limited or no audience.
4 principles to make money online WITHOUT an audience
In order to make money as a business owner, you need someone to actually buy a product or service you offer. Your potential customer needs to find value in what you’re offering so they will be drawn to pay you for it.
As I worked to understand how to fix my problem of having no audience but still wanting to earn an income right away in my business, I uncovered 4 key principles that allowed me to make money online before I had an audience AND as I grew my audience.
ONE: You need customers
In order to make money, you need someone to buy something you sell. If you don’t have an audience right now, then the first thing you need to do is to figure out some way that you can find customers.
It’s important to get more exposure, and here are three ways you can do this (we’ll cover more about each of these as we continue):
Build an audience
Get more exposure without an audience
Contact individuals
TWO: Waiting for organic growth is the slowest way to make money
Many people think that the first thing they need to do when starting a business is to build their audience. This is actually a myth! Yes, you do need to grow an audience, for sure! And, yes, you do need to work on content marketing to build your organic audience. However, waiting for organic growth is the slowest way to make money, and organic growth is NOT your only option (more on this in a minute).
THREE: You MUST invest either time or money
You can’t make something out of nothing. I know you know that. In order to get a result, you need to do something to get it. In the business world, this means either investing your time or your money – two very precious commodities.
Here are some examples of how you may invest your time:
You can reach out to individuals who may be interested in what you’re offering. This is a bit more time consuming than an automated process, but with a limited audience, this is a great way to build relationships and connect with your current audience (even if it’s just a few people).
You could use your time to network and build connections. Networking is a powerful tool in which you will talk to people you already know and ask them if they have anyone in their life who may be looking for what you offer.
You could take the time to continue to build your audience through organic-growth measures such as content marketing.
An example of how you may you invest money in your business?
A very common way would be paying for advertising in the form of Facebook or Google ads. IF you have the money to invest early on, investing it into advertising could be a quicker way to draw in new target customers. However, in order for the ad to work, you will need to make sure that it is enticing enough for your leads to click on it and enter your network.
You may think you have neither of these things – NEITHER time NOR money – to invest, and I know where you’re coming from with that mindset! BUT, most of us have more of one of those things – EITHER time OR money – that we can do something with. It’s how we look at those two things that makes all the difference.
No matter which way you decide to invest, there will be a cost. If you choose to invest time, you’ll need to sacrifice that time from somewhere else in your schedule or life. If you choose to invest money, you may need to delay some gratifications or cut your cable or do something to gain that money to invest. There is sacrifice in either spending time or spending money.
Which one is it going to be for you? Will you invest time or money initially?
FOUR: When you don’t have an audience, leveraging your connections is a MUST
In Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki shares about the power of leveraging your money through real estate. He paints a picture of how a small down payment on a real estate investment is a good thing because you’re borrowing the entire mortgage amount outside of that down payment, and when the value of the property increases even a small percentage, it becomes a sizable gain for you.
Take this concept and apply it to your business. When you have little to no audience, your main goal is to leverage the little that you have – or your current network. Investing in advertising can work if you do it right, but I don’t recommend it when you’re starting out because you need to invest a good chunk of money to see the results you’re looking for.
Rather, I want you to think about leveraging the small audience you have right now so you can reach more people. Who is this small audience? It’s your personal network of family and friends, and I’m not talking about selling to them – they may not be your target customer, and that’s okay!
I know what it’s like to be sold to by friends who are selling the next great multi-level marketing product. If you’ve ever been part of a direct-sales marketing company or you know anyone who is, you know how incredibly uncomfortable it is to NEED your friends and family to buy from you. This system of selling is unscalable and unsustainable if your only marketing strategy is your friends and family.
What I want you to do is to forget about selling to your Aunt Sue. She doesn’t need nor want the product you’re offering. However, if you tell her about your business in a relaxed and more casual way, and you share with her how excited you are about it, she may know someone who is interested in what you’re doing, and her referral could go a long way!
This is strategic networking. This is you leveraging your connections.
If you put the bug in Aunt Sue’s ear, and later on she’s talking to a friend who’s problem could be solved by your product, you better believe she’s going to tell them about it. People love to be the hero of the story, and helping someone else overcome their problem is a way to be that said hero. If Aunt Sue tells her bestie about your product, and it’s their solution, Aunt Sue becomes the hero in the story, and now, not only will she continue to tell other people about what you’re doing, but her bestie will too!
Your network wants to support you and will recommend you, but in order for them to do so, you’ll need to actually let them in on what you’re doing and ask them if they can keep their ears open for anyone looking to solve the problem you’re addressing. If you do this, you will come to mind first when your friends or family hear of someone who may be interested in what you’re doing.
FIVE (Bonus): Invest in growth and scalable systems before you need them.
I know I said I was going to share about four principles you can use to make money online with zero followers, and the four principles above are the way to do that. BUT, these strategies are not scalable. These principles will help you to get your first few sales and validate your business or product idea, but they are not sustainable long term.
In the beginning, you want to focus on being personal, direct, and using contacts you already have to leverage connections and reach others. However, in order to scale and go from 5-10 sales to 500 sales and beyond, you will need additional scalability. This includes gaining more traffic and having a system that can work with numerous leads and potential customers filtering into your network.
I recommend working toward compound interest, which means you are investing in BOTH your audience growth AND the systems for handling those people as they come into your sales funnel. Investing early on is vital because it will take time to acquire traction with the systems and to see the growth you desire.
Don’t wait until you feel maxed out or burned out! Invest in learning and growing now so you can have the systems ready when you see an influx in your audience down the line.
What does success look like?
A successful business looks different at different points on your entrepreneurial journey. Making your first few dollars is considered successful early on because it validates your business idea.
From there, success means seeing an increase in profits, then scaling to $100,000 in revenue.
You need a plan to move through each of the stages because you don’t want to get stuck in one of the phases. I’m sure you know that being stuck in the beginning stages with just a few dollars in sales is no fun, but I promise you, being stuck at $100,000 and not seeing progress still isn’t any fun. Create those strategies and systems now so you can grow through each stage without getting stuck.
As we wrap up, let’s recap the 4 key principles to making money in your online business with zero followers:
You need customers
Waiting for organic growth is the slowest way to make money
You MUST invest either time or money
When you don’t have an audience, leveraging your connections is a MUST
And, bonus, invest in growth and scalable systems before you need them.
What size of an audience do you have? What product or service are you working on? Have you used any of these 4 strategies to gain visibility with a small audience?
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