Ep 012: How to make money online; tools from an expert

Dawn McGruer:

Welcome to Dawn of a new era, the podcast, all about the Chronicles of being a serial entrepreneur by myself, Dawn Magruder, author, speaker, and trainer in the world of digital marketing. Now on this podcast, we are going to cover one of the most searched topics in Google today. When people type in searches, one of the things that I always always look at, what are the trends? What are people looking for? Because do you know what that tells us? It tells us what the demand is, what consumers are actually looking for. And this is one of the most powerful things when it comes to online marketing. Now, when you type into Google, one of the most searched topics is how to make money on line. And I absolutely love this topic. The reason why I love the topic is because that’s exactly what I do for me and also for my clients. 

And I’ve been working in digital for the past 20 years. Now, I start my business up very much as the traditional face to face networking style business, traditional agency, where I was seeing clients face to face day in, day out. Now, as the years have changed, my business has changed and evolved and grown dynamically and organically based on consumer demand. And that’s exactly why we’re going to cover this in today’s podcast, because if I can teach you one thing, and one thing only the most important thing that I have ever learned in business is how to make money online. And it’s all about perception. Perception is everything. And people who are looking to make more money online or to grow and scale their business, or to enhance their own company’s profit. At the end of the day, everyone is looking for the same thing and that is they’re looking for help and advice. 

And they want to not just master the art of perhaps, you know, online marketing and social media to grow the business, but really they’re looking for the end result. And the biggest piece in the puzzle that I always find is missing. If someone is not making money online, it’s because they haven’t crafted additional business model. Now I have created lots and lots of video resources over the years, all about actually constructing this. And the worksheet that I’ve included in today’s podcast is all about how to create a digital asset and how to craft a digital business model. So what is it that you’re going to sell? How are you going to make money online? Now, the first thing is visibility is about having presence online and for people to be seen because the biggest gap, the biggest bridge that I often have to build for clients is the fact that they could have the best product or service in the entire world. 

But if they are not reaching an audience and people don’t know about them, how are they ever going to it? Now, the unfortunate thing is, is that many businesses that fail is not because the product or service it’s because of the lack of marketing or the ineffective or insufficient newness of their marketing efforts. Now that’s because, you know, not because they didn’t want to do something or because they’re lazy, but it’s, it’s difficult to understand sometimes how to get your product to market. You might have an idea, be sitting there with it, burning in your mind and thinking, how can I actually deliver it, or how can I make it available and sell it online. Now, when you’re crafting a digital business model, this is about looking at how you’re going to work with the consumer on what is it that you’re going to package and give to them. 

So, first of all, if you’ve got online presence, then we need to focus on the proposition and the proposition is the what’s in it for them. What are they going to get? Are you going to make a digital training course? Are you going to sell a masterclass, a webinar or a workshop? Are you going to work with people face to face online? Are you going to create something that’s generating recurring revenue for you? Like a membership site? Are you going to do something like an online course? Because passive income is, is something that you’ve set your heart on. Now all of these things need to be considered. And when you’re looking at crafting a digital business model, you have to think about what it means for you and how you want your consumer to see you. So your online visibility and presence, how are you going to package it and get your proposition together? 

So you’re not just selling the features, but you’re really, really focusing on what are the benefits. Now, I always work in the rule of threes. So when you’re looking at what this idea is, how are you going to get it to market? Think about the three most important that these huge goals and outcomes that your consumer is going to get from buying your product or service. Now, positioning many people think that, you know, if you are new to the internet, that you have to literally, you know, get yourself this audience, you have to be blogging. You have to be creating things. I speak to people day in, day out, who have said, you know, I’ve spent three months working on my website and now what I’m going to do is I’m going to get some blogging. Uh, you know, all of these things really are nice to have, and let’s get down to the nitty gritty. 

If you want to get a product to market quickly, and you want to go and get money coming in the door, spending hours and hours on all of this content is going to do one thing. It’s going to drag you down and it’s going to absolutely drain any money that you’re putting into that business fast. And you have to recognize revenue quickly because at the end of the day, it’s all about the profit. If you’re not making profit in business, your business is not successful and it’s not sustainable. So this isn’t just about the whole big topic of making money. This is about making successful business. And when we look at crafting a digital business model, this is about how you’re going to make money. So for instance, we have the console club and a membership site is brilliant for several things. It’s brilliant for recurring revenue. 

It’s also amazing for really building a community, a strong community of people who are invested in you. And within that community, it is easy then to upsale and CrossFit’s out. Any other items that you’re doing, it’s, it’s all about kind of getting the positioning, right? And you know, you don’t even need a huge membership group. You know, we started the console club. We’d like 20 members and grow to 50 and then 75. And then, then you enter the hundreds, but it takes time. And I’m a true believer that if you invest properly in the proposition and the online visibility, keep your focus every single day about how you would get someone new into that club. And the great thing is, is that it’s a, it’s a small investment for them, but they’re getting huge value. If you’ve got a service based business, there is nothing more powerful than things like a membership, because it solves a lot of the needs of your consumers. 

You know, that they’re joining a community of likeminded, people that are accessing an expert who is going to guide them and help them navigate and learn and master a particular skill. Now let’s look at online courses. Now online courses have been around for years and years, and it’s definitely one of the things that I would say is core to our business and online courses. People spend hours and hours and hours and hours planning and plotting. And for me, a successful online course is when there is a balance, because with an online course, what you’ll find is there’s a huge array of people who will want to sign up and think, yeah, you know, if you’ve packaged this currently the propositions, right? And you’ve got this to market, you will get people signing up, but it’s difficult to get people to be logging in and doing a course because unfortunately life gets in the way. 

Now, what I’ve always found is when you’re creating a digital asset, like an online course, is that having some form of live teacher within it. Now, the great thing about this is, is that you don’t have to have huge courses. You could have a three part course that you taught live. That means that you can get your course really quickly to market without procrastination, without delay and start making money, because you might not even have created the course. Now you might think I’m mad, but it’s not. It’s about testing the market, tweaking that proposition until you get people biting. And then when people actually start buying, then you know, you’ve hit the right proposition that the product solid and people want it there’s demand for it. Now it’s all about research because the thing is, is if you sell a course, that is a live teacher, let’s say over three weeks, then you can spend that time knowing that money is coming in the door, creating a slide, creating your content, building something that’s going to be really interactive, really immersive. 

And you can absolutely smash it and deliver that online. Now, guess what? You’ve now got a recording of that course. And that course now is an asset within your business because you can package that and sell it as an instant access course or something along those lines. Now, for me, I would urge you to start thinking about what is the quickest, fastest way that you can get a really good quality product to market. Now, often face to face has been a great way of getting people into a room. Now, during obviously COVID in the pandemic that we’re going through, it is more difficult. So think about your delivery method of this online digital asset. Because as much as you’re selling online, you could be delivering it face to face. Now we’ve seen that there’s a huge demand for people being there and doing coworking sessions. 

We have a want an online workshop, which is just a one day workshop and it runs say 10 till four. But in the morning, what we do is we do the teach, the live, teach interactive chatting to the other delegates on the actual course. And then after the lunch break, we do a coworking session. So instead of them going away and thinking, Oh, you know, that was great. I feel really inspired, but gosh, I’ve got a lot to do. We do it on the workshop and we get people implementing. Now, those are, those are great ways of really kind of just getting a couple of people. You could get 10 people onto something like that. And then you start to understand what people want, because you can use those clients as market research to make it more effective, to grow it to, to diversify, or to create other digital assets that are available for you. 

So think about what it is that you have. What skill do you have? What is that burning idea that you really want to kind of turn this passion into profit and think about, it’s not about making websites and content all day. You can get immersed in that. I mean, literally if you started your business, you could probably quite easily spend the first two years setting all of that up. Now it’s better to get things done rather than trying to perfect everything now. And you’ve got to think about, you know, what’s going to have the biggest return. What’s going to have the biggest impact on your business. Now, creating a website is great because you need that online space, but it doesn’t have to be a huge website. It just has to be able to sell the content is the most important, the persuasive. So even if you had one product or a landing page that was amazing, then that’s great. 

That’s all you need. You just need one online presence, be it a landing page or a website that absolutely says to people, this is what I do now. You don’t have to have online visibility in terms of, you know, in search engines, straight away and start doing blogging. SEO is a task within every business that never stops. And it’s something that we’re constantly working on to, to vide, to keep on page wanting and keep in position one for some of our key products and stuff services. So it’s, it’s a nice to have, but it’s not the most important, crucial thing to start with. And often clients come to me and say, Dawn, I am absolutely struggling on what do I start with? I have so much my to do list. How do I know what to do? Well, bring it back to basics. Think about this one thing, this one idea that you could get ready and sell. 

And the easiest way to do this is start with a signature product that is a hundred pounds or 200 pounds, because it’s easy, easy to sell because if you’ve got the value there and the consumer can see that, and it’s a quality product and service that you’re giving, then it’s easy to sell. A lot of them, it’s much easier to sell something at 99 pounds than something at 9,000 pounds. And if you’re new to the market, this gives you social proof and it gets, it builds trust and it deepens relationships. And you start to be seen and known for what you do. And that leads us onto the positioning. You know, being known for what you do is great, but that will not happen overnight, but you don’t need that. You need to be able to talk to people and, and for them to believe in you, and if you will passionate about what you do then happen. 

So do not feel disheartened that, you know, you’ve come into the online space and you’re struggling because you’ve got all of these things. You see everyone else. They’ve got websites, they’re doing SEO. They’re doing advertising. They’re on LinkedIn. They’re now building Instagram. They’re looking at followers, looking at how to increased traffic to the website. Those are all things that come out you’ve make money. And when you start making money online, you then grow and diversify and invest in other things. That’s fine. But writing a book from day one is not really going to be the number one thing. You need to make some money. First of all, because generally when people create a book, they utilize it as an asset. So like for me, branded content, like my book dynamic, digital marketing. Amazing. Yes, I got a publishing deal. So yes, I made money from it, but it’s not why I did it. 

I used it as a positioning tool. And again, with my podcast, one of the things I was really passionate about doing is doing a podcast because I wanted to do it, but I wasn’t selling anything on it. It was branded content that in turn, the more people knew about me and CRE squeeze brand awareness, it deepened ships. And in turn it, it does as a byproduct form money for the business and drive revenue through, but it doesn’t happen overnight. So the get all of the nice to have and focus on the nitty gritty, get your signature product. If you’ve already got a product to service and you, you’re finding hard to get to market, get people involved, do some market research, understand is it really meeting demand and start crafting your digital business model. Now utilize the tools that I’ve given you. I’ve literally created a worksheet that you can go through to really understand what your digital business model should look like. 

Now. I hope you enjoyed today’s podcast. And I would urge you to come and connect with me because one of the things that we talk about a huge amount of time and where I give a lot of support is in the business console, marketing motivation and mindset group on Facebook. And we are a community of a few thousand, but this is what we’re all about. Our whole focus is about growing and scaling our businesses and making money online and indeed making more money online because we all have businesses and we’re all striving to get that online presence to really ramp up positioning and obviously get our proposition so solid that we’re selling it over and over each and every day. And it’s driving massive profit into the business. So come and let me know what you thinking of. If you’d bounce, if you want to bounce ideas off us, you know, that’s absolutely fine, but I shall see you on next week’s podcasts. 

And do me a favor. And if you have enjoyed this, please head over and just give me a rating and review on the podcast in Amazon just helps more and more people far and wide learn about the podcast and they can come and subscribe, take care, have a great day. Bye. I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode and don’t forget. I’m going to be with you each and every week. So download and listen on Dorma, grow.com or on iTunes and come and join us in our Facebook community too. All the details are on the website.