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Okay, it’s time for a small confession.
I didn’t figure this all out on my own.
In fact, I decided to start taking things seriously and actually get a real education in online marketing.
I had tried and failed at so many online money making methods.
And after a while I realized there was a huge problem with what I was doing.
I was taking advice from the wrong people.
Most of the courses and guides that I studied were from ‘TikTok gurus‘ or ‘Marketing Influencers‘.
And to be honest, these people really didn’t have my best interests at heart.
All they really care about is building up their own online presence.
They want more followers and more fame so they can pitch whatever crappy course or eBook they’re selling.
Their end goals is not for you to be successful, it’s for you to buy a ‘magic money making method’ for $50 and that’s it.
At this point you’ll either get bored and give up, after the actual course doesn’t live up to the hype, or if you’re like me, you’ll try you’re hardest and then after a few months realize you’re not making any money and give up.
Both end up the exact same way, you’re $50 poorer and the marketing guru is $50 richer.
Either way, your life didn’t change for the better, and you’re no closer to having an online business.
The courses that most gurus are selling online all revolve around the exact same, old, re-hashed methods.
And there’s a huge problem with that:
1. These are not new ways to make money, meaning the market is already extremely competitive.
2. They don’t actually give you the tools you need to be successful.
3. They make wild claims that you’ll be rich in 15 days without needing to put any effort. (Which is just not true.)
Let’s imagine that your aim is to make $5,000/month.
That is a totally doable.
But NOT with the majority of methods that are currently being promoted.
I’m going to break down and share ALL of the most common methods that the ‘gurus’ teach so you can see if that’s actually realistic.
Not only will it show you if this is possible, but it will also save you from having to buy any of these crappy courses!
Below you’ll see the number of sales that you’d need to make to hit your $5,000/month aim.
Spoiler: You need a HUGE amount of sales.
What is it? Promote products or services through your content and earn commissions for referrals using affiliate links on your blog, social media, or website.
Your Earnings:
Average sale price: $10-$80
Average commission: $20/sale
What is it? Buy products in bulk, send them to Amazon’s fulfillment centers, and sell them on Amazon’s platform, leveraging their customer base and shipping logistics.
Your Earnings:
Average sale price: $10-$20, Amazon takes a 15% commission plus fees. Plus expenses to buy and hold merchandise.
Average Earnings/Sale: $5
What is it? Create an online store that sells products from suppliers, who ship directly to customers, allowing you to sell without holding inventory.
Average sale price: $10-$30, profit margin after costs: 10-20%.
Average commission: $6
What is it? Build your own e-commerce website using Shopify’s platform, customize your store, manage inventory, and process sales.
Average sale price varies widely; Shopify takes 2.9% + 30¢ per online transaction.
Profit earned per sale: $20
What is it? Design custom graphics for products like t-shirts and mugs, and use a print-on-demand service to print and ship products as orders come in.
Average sale price: $15-$30.
Profit earned per sale: $5
What is it? Offer your writing services online through freelance platforms or content mills, or pitch articles to websites and magazines that pay for submissions.
Average earnings: $0.01-$0.10 per word for beginners.
Commission earned: $5/article written and purchased.
What is it? Sell handmade, vintage items, or craft supplies on Etsy, a marketplace tailored for creative and unique goods.
Average sale price: $30.
Profit earned per sale: $20
What is it? Create and publish videos on YouTube, monetizing through ads, sponsorships, and fan donations as you grow your audience.
Earnings vary widely; roughly $1-$5 per 1,000 views after YouTube takes its cut.
Commission earned: N/A.
What is it? Trade cryptocurrencies on exchanges, or invest in crypto assets for long-term gains, keeping an eye on market trends and volatility.
Highly variable and speculative.
Invest in stocks, bonds, or mutual funds through online brokers or trading platforms, focusing on long-term growth or dividend income.
Profit earned: Depends on market performance; dividends yield 1-4% on average.
You’re probably seeing now, that to hit your target, you’ve got to sell a SERIOUS amount of product, or have huge initial investments.
So not only do these methods require hundreds and hundreds or even THOUSANDS of sales per month to hit your $5,000 goal, but they also give you zero information about how to ACTUALLY do this.
All of these methods require:
1. Serious financial investment.
2. Huge amounts of knowledge & experience.
3. Working full time, normally at least 10 hours + per day when starting out.
Now of course NONE of these guides actually tell you this.
They just paint a very pretty picture, tell you you’re going to earn millions and then give you a crappy 10 page guide with a general overview of how these methods work.
In return for a small fee of course!
All of these methods DO work.
And people are making millions from doing all of the above activities.
So the initial pitch to you is extremely believable.
They can show you hundreds of examples of young mult-millionaires who have built businesses with these methods and tell you that you can be just like them!
However the people who are actually making money with these systems have spent their entire lives learning, investing and working to become successful.
Well the good news is, it IS totally possible.
But there are two main principles that you need:
As you’ve just seen, to hit your $5,000 target with any of the above methods, you need hundreds if not thousands of sales per month.
When you’re starting out, things are going to move more slowly.
This means that you’re only realistically going to be able to achieve a few sales per month.
Your aim should be between 2 – 5 sales when you’re first starting out.
That means, the ONLY way to be successful is to sell High Ticket Items.
The normal commission you can expect from selling High Ticket is around $1,500 on average.
That means you can make between $3,000 and $7,500 per month with only a very small amount of sales.
This is an absolutely attainable goal.
Compare that to the average $20 commission from most of the methods we looked at above.
You’d only make $100 max per month.
In my opinion that’s absurd, and definitely NOT a successful online business
As I mentioned before, I didn’t figure this out on my own.
If you want to be successful with this and actually have a real business, you need to expert guidance.
Imagine you were going into any other field of work:
A plumber
An electrician
A lawyer
A Baker
An Accountant
It would be absolutely ridiculous if you saw an advertisement online that said:
Hey! Want to make $200,000 a year? Buy my $50 guide and I’ll show you how to make a ton of money as a lawyer.
You’d read that and think, ‘hmm, that doesn’t make any sense, don’t you have to go to law school and stuff to be a lawyer??‘
And with online business it’s absolutely NO different.
Now the good news is that you don’t have to put in anywhere near as much time as a lawyer, but you DO need expert guidance and education on how to actually start and run your online business.
For some reason, people think that the online world is some ‘magical place’ where people become millionaires overnight after buying some random guide.
It just doesn’t work like that.
And if you think about it logically, why would it?!
But the GOOD news is that there are legitimate resources and education out there that can actually teach you how to do this.
You’ll need to put in around 1 hour a day, but they’ll teach you as you’re actually building your business.
That means that by the end of the course you’ve actually got a successful business set up and running.
Now there are a few good resources out there, but for me the one that changed everything is an organisation called Liberty Marketers.
Honestly, I stumbled upon them by complete accident.
After tying for many months to make my online business work I had joined a number of facebook groups where like minded people would get together and share tips and ideas.
We were all just trying to help each other make it as best we could.
Now after a while of trying to make money with lousy $20 commissions I realized on my own that if I really wanted to make it I was going to need more commission per sale.
And the crazy thing is that I wasn’t even doing BADLY for a beginner.
The only problem was the money absolutely SUCKED.
I’d managed to set up a small business where I was making around 10-15 sales a month.
But that was only making me around $200 a month, if that.
So I started talking with other members about High Ticket selling, and time and time again, the same name kept coming up: Liberty Marketers.
They’re basically an online Marketing school, but they specialize in High Ticket sales.
And the main reason that they do this is because they KNOW that if you’re a beginner, that’s the only way you can really sustain yourself as you grow.
When I first went on to the Liberty Marketers’s website it was hugely refreshing.
They were completely different from the other ‘guru’ sites I’d used in the past.
What I liked most is that they set clear expectations, without any of the usual bullsh*t.
They told me that if I wanted this to really work, I was going to have to put in time and effort.
So I decided to take their beginner’s course, the ‘Lightning Course‘, and honestly it changed my entire life.
It was like a breath of fresh air.
They literally guided me step by step through how to set up absolutely everything that I needed.
I’m talking about finding the right High Ticket Offer, Setting up Sales Funnels and how to send targeted traffic to the offer.
Within just a few days I had set up literally everything and within just 2 weeks my first sales started coming in.
I’ve got to tell you it’s an absolutely amazing feeling when you refresh your sales stats and you’ve made over $1,500 from just one sale.
That first month I made 6 sales (I probably did get a little lucky to be honest) and I had over $9,000 sitting in my bank account.
The feeling was unbelievable.
Ever since then, I’ve been slowly increasing my sales.
In the first 4 months I had made over $50,000 and from there it just kept growing and growing.
I write this guide as a cautionary tale.
I know how enticing the sparkling, flashing lights of the online ‘gurus’ and I myself have fallen for it many times over.
I want to make sure that you don’t make the same mistakes.
If you are actually serious about making money online, it’s totally possible but you need to choose the right path.
Now I’m not going to try and recreate everything I have learned over the past 2 years about making money online and setting up your business.
There are already amazing step by step guides that will show you how to do that.
You need to be careful out there, and ask yourself, ‘is it too good to be true?’
If the answer is yes, then it probably is!
If you’re interested in setting up a REAL online business, and you have the time and commitment to do it then I highly recommend getting the Liberty Marketer’s Lightning Course.
You’ll need at least one hour of free time per day to make this work, and there are investments that you’ll need to make into tools and things to set up your funnel, but if you stick to the steps it will work for you.
You can check out their page here that explains everything, and if it’s not for you, I totally understand.
But please, whatever you do, stay away from the Influencer ‘Gurus’. They do not have your best interests at heart.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my guide.
My main aim was to provide an oversight into what the ‘money making schemes’ out there actually are.
There’s so much confusion and false promises online and I know just how attractive that can be.
My main aim was to expose what these methods really are and to show you the reality of starting a successful online business.
I hope my words have helped you.
Oh and one last thing, if you think one of your friends is potentially going down a ‘guru’ rabbit-hole, then feel free to send this guide over to them.
You may save someone a lot of money!
Thanks again for reading!