I know, I know. These type of headlines always sound like hype.
But its true so there it is.
Of course there are people making $70,000 or $700,000 online every month instead of my $7,000 so everything is relative.
But this article is for people in a position similar to mine. You are just learning how to make money online and still working a full time job that you hope to transition off of eventually.
For you guys how nice would it be to have an extra $7,000 a month?
Well in this article I am going to tell you how I reached this level, how I plan to scale higher and some tips on how you can do the same.
What I Made
I made over $7,000 dollars last month with just one client (my best client) with my side Internet business!
The past few months have been really good with this particular client and have steadily come in between $6,000 to close to $8,000.
That is up from my previous high average of $4,000 – $5,000. The crazy thing is that is without adding a new clients and I actually have worked a little less then normal during the past few months because of increasing demands from my day job and some family issues that came up.
Below is the invoice they paid me for September 2016 for work done in August 2016. Again this is for my one main client.
So not going to lie having an extra $7,000 to $8,000 hit my bank account each month feels pretty damn good!
Right now in preparation for quitting my full time job in 4-5 months I basically put it all in my business account and only pay for my business costs out of that account.
My plan is to save everything in my business so when I quit my full time job I can pay myself a salary with the side business and subsidize the gap in income I will have with what I have saved.
For awhile anyway I expect Ill be making much less at my side business then I do with my full time job.
So if I make lets say, $6,000 one month from my Internet business but I’m used to making $8,000 a month from my full time job Ill take the extra $2,000 out of the business savings.
Assuming I slowly start to make more in my Internet business when I start full time the savings I have now should last at least a year.
Ill have a full post on my plans for financial transition in the future.
Whats your Plan?
So enough about me! Lets talk about you!
How would you like an extra $7,000 a month from a side business that you work on for about 4-6 hours a week?
Well, I am going to show you how I did it. One really big thing I want to point out!!
I did not just start learning this stuff a few months ago and now I make $7,000.
I had been struggling to try to learn Online marketing on my own and eventually reached this point.
Once I quit my day job and can do this full time I expect to quickly double and triple this.
But if you don’t already have a lot of experience with Internet Marketing don’t let that discourage you.
I am hoping with this post you can cut out a lot of the mistakes I made and go straight away to what works.
So for you hopefully it won’t take years to start making good money but instead months.
Different Ways to Make Money Online
First, let’s take a quick look at some of the ways to make money online.
Nowadays there are hundreds of ways to generate income online but some of the most popular are Affiliate Marketing, Product Selling (Amazon or Shopify store), or taking on clients for lead generation.
Lead generation can be SEO, Local SEO or paid marketing like Adwords and Facebook.
Now anyone who has made money in any of these areas is going to swear by it (and rightly so, since it works for them) but we are going to talk in this article just about Clients Leads or Lead Generation.
That is what I’m most familiar with and that is what has been putting that extra loot in my account the past 2 years.
Why I do Client Leads
–Fast way to make money
There are many, many reasons I am a fan of Lead Generation for Clients.
One of the biggest reasons is the speed at which you can get in the game and start making money.
All you have to do to get started with lead generation is to convince just one business owner to let you send them leads and pay you for them.
(Don’t worry I will go into detail later in this post on how to make an irresistible offer for your potential clients).
–Viable skills to learn for now and future
Another reason why I like lead generation for Internet business is that its a solid and viable business to be in for now AND the future.
The Internet changes daily and the way to successfully market online does as well.
But once you have mastered the basic principals of online marketing you can adapt along with the changes.
At the end of the day, every business is looking for new clients.
If you have the skill to bring them, new clients, you and your services are going to be in high demand.
–You can make money while learning
With Lead generation, it’s possible to make money while you are still learning.
Now, how many business opportunities are going to pay you while you are still learning?
When you first start out I recommend you only charge your customers on a performance basis.
In other words, they are only paying you when you bring them results (ie they have nothing to lose).
Now some experienced marketers are going to say that is crazy. You should up your sales skills and demand payment for all of your work.
But in my opinion, unless you are some type of Internet marketing savant you are not going to get great results in your first few months of learning.
So why provide bad service and make a client unhappy?
So you could either take 3-6 months pour yourself into training and rank your own websites.
You would then have the skills and proof to get a client.
Or you could use this method of agreeing to only get paid for what you bring and rank a live client site while learning and getting paid when you perform.
Here is a picture of what my 2016 income earnings from my ONE main client look like.
You can see steady growth each month for 2016. There was only a big drop off in the month of May but that was due to my client not being able to close his leads for 1/2 that month because of personal issues.
This is the method I have been doing for almost 2 years. 2015 was much less money and let me tell you my very first month I studied and worked so hard and my grand total for all my work was only $87 dollars!
But you know what? I was not discouraged!
I figured if I could make $87 dollars after just one month of learning a new skill the upside could be huge.
NOTE: I wish I still had the picture of this first check to show you. (I took a picture of it at the time but lost it on my old phone)
When I saw that first small check I knew this was possible I just had to get better at it!
How well could I do when I was actually sending the client dozens of new leads a month, instead of just one that first month that they closed for one of their low-end services?
Now that same client I made my first $87 dollars with 2 years ago is the one I am citing here for the $7,128 made last month.
(I only have a few clients with this one making the majority of my income. That is why I am using them in my example).
I actually made more in total with my few other clients then I show here. I have not been able to maximize the others or get new clients because of the demands of my current full-time job and that is why the whole goal is to quit the full-time gig soon so I can grow my business.
The Trick to Getting Your First Client
The trick is…..Find Someone With a Business Who Needs Leads!
Ok so you have little to no experience getting leads online so how in the hell do you get your first client?
The first thing to know is that despite your lack of experience you are going to have a pretty attractive pitch.
What if you owned a business and someone told you they were going to send you new customers and you did not even have to pay unless the leads they send became paying customers?
Pretty much sounds like a no lose proposition right?
Well it is but you would be surprised how many people reject this offer because it sounds to good to be true.
How to find Clients (family,friends)
So what your going to do is start with your personal network. I don’t care who you are or what you do, you have to know someone who owns their own business. A friend, a cousin, an uncle, a neighbor, whoever.
Anyone who has a business wants more customers. And for that they need new leads.
If no one comes to mind right away ask family and friends if they know anyone, look on your social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook for friends who own businesses.
Now for your first client if you are still learning marketing you probably cant be to picky. But I highly recommend you try to find people who have high end services.
Think Doctors (plastic surgeons), Lawyers or emergency plumbers etc).
You want clients where just one new customer is worth thousands of dollars to them. That way at the start when your leads are just trickling in at a few per month, its still worth it to them and you.
For example if you get a plastic surgeon as a client just one extra patient a month for them is potentially worth $10,000 to $15,000 to even $30,000.
Now compare that to someone who sells T-shirts or something where a new customer is only worth between $10-$20 to the owner.
So of course the surgeon is going to be a more lucrative customer for you even if you only got them a few extra leads a month.
How to convince them (performance pay)
So you have little to no experience and no existing customers. How do you pitch this? Once you find that friend, family member or acquaintance that owns a high end service its time to do a bit of research.
Before approaching them you want to see where there site is currently at. Most people who own a local business have terrible SEO and Internet Marketing and just by doing some very simple steps you can improve their results drastically.
But if they are already spending money on professional Internet marketing and getting good results they probably are not going to want to switch over to you despite your relationship.
Also you wouldn’t want them to if you cannot deliver the same or better results as the professionals they currently use as it may ruin your relationship.
What you want to do is find people who anything you can is going to be a benefit to them because they dont have good results now.
You can follow some of the steps in this post to see if professional marketing has been done to your potentila new clients site already. http://neilpatel.com/2015/09/01/the-simple-but-effective-guide-to-keyword-competition-analysis/
If they do not seem to have a strong presence on the Web and you know they are missing even some of the basics then you are in business!
How to approach
This of course is all going to depend on the relationship yo already have with the person. In general you do not want to make a big deal out of it.
Approach them causally and let them know that you do Internet Marketing now and think you could help send them new leads.
Do not go into technical details just tell them you think you can send them new leads online and would they be interested if you could? If they say Yes, tell them it will take at least a month or two of work to start seeing results.
Ask them how much each new client is worth to them.
Then ask them if it would be fair to pay you x amount per lead (I usually do 10% for high end leads so a $10,000 client for them gets me a $1,000).
Now if they are willing to spend money on paid advertising that would be best because you can start getting them leads quickly.
If they don’t want to invest much money in paid adverstising then you will need to do SEO. I typically recommend creating your own site all together instead of using their site.
This is more work at the start but will potentially save many headaches in the future.
First off. You can make sure the site is 100% clean and done right. If they had any bad SEO done in the past you wont have to worry about it.
Second. You own the site.
If you spend months or even years building up someone else site they still own it. When your business relationship ends the income generating asset you worked so hard on ends as well.
On the other hand if your relationship ends (disagreement, they decided to retire etc) you wont be left holding nothing.
All you have to do is find another person in the same business, in the same area, make a similar deal and start sending the leads to them.
Expanding your Online Business
You Never Forget Your First
When you are first starting out your most important client is your first. I am still with my first client from 2 years ago and its the one I have been using as an example in this blog post.
From $87 dollars the first month to almost $8,000 now.
Do not worry about making a ton of money at the start. As you learn more about this world you will see people on the Internet making $10,000 a month, $50,000 a month and even over a $100,000 a month.
Trust me NO T ONE of them STARTED there.
Don’t worry about making a bunch of money with your first few clients.
Instead focus on getting really good at what you do and providing the best value possible.
When you make people good money they naturally become your best advocates.
I have been doing this for over 2 years and I am just now getting to the point where I am looking to quit my job.
I know guys that knew next to nothing about SEO or Online Marketing and were able to quit their jobs in less then 6 months.
So we all come from different places and will advance differently.
It took me awhile because my job and family takes so much time and I’m super financially conservative (I have saved almost $100 thousand dollars in anticipation of covering my income lost with the job) but the point is this is not going to happen overnight.
After you start having success with that first client go get another one. Now that you have proof of results it should be easier to get another client.
After you start making money, reinvest it into the business with software tools and virtual assistants to help with the workload.
Once you are making close to the income from your day job and focus full time on your business.
With that extra time you should be able to increase your clients and the positive results you bring them.
Then keep repeating these steps until you scale to the level you want to be at.
–Reinvest profits in your business
–Keep learning more
–Spend on getting new clients
–Hire help as you grow
I hope you enjoyed this article on how I made/make money on part time Internet business. Get started now. Commit to learning and never quit. You will get to where you want to be.