5 Online Entrepreneur Types
Being an online entrepreneur is one of the most powerful ways to make money online. It is both location-independent and time-independent. So, which type of online entrepreneur are you?
Being location-independent means that you can make money from anywhere. As long as you have a laptop computer and a connection to the internet, you can earn your income. Even if you’re sitting with your laptop on the beach or by the pool.
Being time-independent means that you have full control over when you work and how long you work. Sometimes we call this being able to make money while you sleep.
As an online entrepreneur, if you structure your business correctly, you really can make money while you sleep. Here are 5 online entrepreneur types that allow you to do this.
Affiliate Marketer
Being an affiliate marketer is one of the simplest ways to get your foot in the door as an online marketer.
As an affiliate, you sell other people’s products and receive a commission on each sale. And, there’s really no limit to the types of products you can sell as an affiliate.
Some affiliate products are information products, like online courses. Other types are online services, such as autoresponders, web hosting platforms, social media tools, etc. You can even sell physical products as an affiliate.
Succeeding as an affiliate marketing can be as easy as building an audience and promoting your products to your audience. Your audience can be a social media audience, your own email list, or even the audience on your blog.
But the real power of affiliate marketing comes when you combine it with one of the other 4 online marketing types, below.
See also: Affiliate Marketing Success Secrets
Content Creator
The content creator business model is actually as old as the printing press.
The earliest primitive newspaper publishers followed this model. They built an audience of subscribers. Then they provided tons of valuable information or content. And then they sold advertising space in the newspapers. Usually, the advertising revenue far exceeded the subscription revenue.
Today, the primitive newspaper has been replaced by email newsletters, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs (like YouTube). Content creators create a ton of useful content, and then enable some form of advertising on their content.
There’s also a more powerful and profitable hybrid of content creation. In this hybrid, content creators identify related affiliate products or create their own information products. They then promote these on their email newsletter, blog, podcast, or YouTube channel.
See also:
Course Creator
As a course creator, you create your own information product or online course, and sell it to your audience.
We all have something, some area where we have a particular skill. And, somewhere, there is likely an audience who will want to pay you so that they can learn that skill.
And, the skill doesn’t need to be a huge, monumental, life-changing skill, either. Perhaps you just know how to build a potato gun that fires potatoes farther than anyone else’s. Or, maybe you know how to throw awesome sleepovers for teen girls. You might know how to set up and run a hotdog cart that generates more profit than anyone else’s.
These are just some examples of information products that have sold profitably.
Course creators create their information product, then promote it to their audience or (for more leverage) buy paid ads online to advertise their courses. But many course creators are also very successful content creators, and they promote their courses to their content subscribers.
See also: How to Create an Online Course You Can Be Proud Of
Ecommerce Marketer
Many online entrepreneurs choose to market physical products through online stores. We call this being an ecommerce marketer.
Typically, ecommerce marketers find small niches of people who have two passions that intersect. For example, they may identify a target market of firemen who love dalmatians or of nurses who love chocolate.
The ecommerce marketers then identify a series of products that will appeal to this small niche.
One type of product is drop-ship products. The manufacturers pre-make the product, but are willing to ship directly to the end customer.
Another type of product is print-on-demand. The ecommerce marketer creates a visual design. Customers in their small niche can purchase this design printed on things like t-shirts, hoodies, coffee mugs, phone cases, etc. The printer prints the product when the order arrives.
Ecommerce marketers never need to take physical control of the merchandise. When they receive an order they forward it to the drop-shipper or print-on-design wholesaler, who then produces and ships the product directly to the customer.
When they start selling in large volume, some ecommerce marketers may choose to take advantage of bulk purchase prices, order in bulk to their own location, and do their own shipping and fulfillment.
See also: Eye-Opening Sales Funnel Secrets For Beginners
Online Networker
We call the last online entrepreneur type the online networker.
The online networker is a network marketer. In the old days, network marketing was truly a belly-to-belly, in-person process. But with the advent of social media, many network marketers now build their teams and customers completely online.
Some online networkers simply get active on social media, then do the same prospecting online that they would have done in-person at the mall or grocery store.
Other networkers create a lot of valuable content relating to their network marketing company’s product line. They then collect leads and subscribers onto their email list. Once there, they promote their products and opportunity to their list subscribers.
Some online networkers lead with their products and then convert customers to team members. Others lead with their opportunity and convert team members to customers.
Online networking is a bit tricky. There’s a right way to do it and a wrong way, as well. If you do it the wrong way, social media companies may ban you or shut down your account. You may even get in legal trouble.
And so, those are 5 powerful types of online entrepreneurs. Each of them can be amazing on their own. As you combine different online entrepreneur types, you can get a profitable leverage.
So, which type of online entrepreneur are YOU?
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