1. You are playing in Amazon’s sandbox and they can shut you down at any time and for any reason. We’ve no doubt all heard the horror stories of sellers who are shut down without provocation, given no clear explanation, and are suddenly stuck with thousands of dollars in inventory they can’t move.  Yikes!

2. You don’t own the customers, Amazon does. There are strict guidelines that prohibit sellers from driving customers away from the Amazon platform to their own website.

3. Because Amazon owns the customers, you cannot contact them directly (except when following up on an order) which means you cannot offer them discounts on related products, announce new products, give referral bonuses for friends, etc.

The way around this is to create your own eCommerce website.  This will allow you to collect your customers’ information, contact them, foster a relationship, offer discounts, advertise new products, build a referral program, and much more.  You’ll also find that with the right combination of discounts and shipping you’ll get bigger orders AND more profitable orders!  Here’s a comparison of my sales for the week of July 2-8, 2016.  First, let’s look at Amazon:

This was my best week ever (so far!) as it came on the heels of an article about our company and our product in a major metropolitan newspaper.  (You can learn more about using free press to build your business in my previous post.)  Notice we got an average 1.27 units/order with an average sales of $15.16/order.  Now let’s compare this to the sales from my own website over the same period.

We only had 41 orders on our website compared to 171 through Amazon.  That doesn’t look too good until you look at the average order size.  On Amazon we sold 1.27 units/order but our website had an average of 2.56 units/order.  This means we sold TWICE as many units to each customer on our website compared to Amazon.  But the real kicker is that our website sales are twice as profitable as Amazon.  So while we only had one-fourth as many orders as Amazon, because they were twice as large and twice as profitable, we netted nearly the same amount!

Think about that for a second – We made the same amount of money with ¼ the customers!

PLUS, we have their email addresses so we can follow up and give future discounts, advertise new products, offer referral incentives, and much more.  This will lead to more sales over the long-term; something that is impossible with Amazon because those customers are theirs, not yours.

Where to Start

First, let me say that in my opinion it only makes sense to build your own online store if it can operate as passively as Amazon does.  That’s where a magical plugin called NS FBA comes in that automates all of your website orders through Amazon’s multi-channel fulfillment service.  But more on that in a bit!

There are really three options when building your own online store.

1. Hire someone to build it.
2. Use a shopping platform like Shopify
3. Build it yourself

Option #1 – Hire Someone to Build Your eCommerce Website

Sometimes it makes sense to pay someone to do what they’re good at (building websites) so you can do what you’re good at (creating products).  Sure it costs a little money, but it saves you a whole lot of time and as the saying goes, time is money!  If you decide that hiring a pro is the way to go (and I certainly don’t blame you!), then check out Upwork.  Upwork is the #1 one place to hire freelancers.  You can post a description of your job, interview candidates, and read reviews of their past work before ever hiring someone.  I’ve used it many times for help on projects.  Even if you do decide to outsource this, it’s probably a good idea to read the remainder of this post so you have some ideas of what you want and what’s possible.  For example, you’ll probably want to ensure they use the NS FBA plugin so your store integrates with Amazon.

Option #2 – Use a Shopping Platform Like Shopify

Shopify is a platform that makes it easy to build a store.  You answer a few questions, choose a theme, enter your product(s), and that’s it! Shopify offers numerous apps that can give your store additional functionality.  Some are free, but most come with a monthly fee.  They also integrate with Amazon so all of your Shopify orders can be processed automatically!  Pricing starts at $29/month for a basic store or $79/month for more bells & whistles.  If you want a done-for-you solution with great customer support, Shopify is the way to go.

Option #3 – Build It Yourself

While Shopify is a great option for most people, I have experience with creating websites and wanted something a bit more customizable than I could get out of the box with Shopify.  So I took the extra time to build my own.  Along the way, I discovered some great plugins that really make my store a beast.  I’ll share those, along with some other recommended resources, below.

eCommerce Website Resources

1. Mailing List

Before you start building your website, realize that one of the best things about having your own site is the ability to build a mailing list of customers. This is simply not possible when you sell through Amazon.  You can also create a separate mailing list of potential customers, or leads, by offering them something such as a discount on their first order or a PDF guide in exchange for their email address.

My personal favorite email service provider is MailChimp.  I’ve used it since 2012, and not only is it easy to use and powerful, it’s also free for your first 2,000 subscribers or 12,000 emails/month.  If you decide you need additional features, like an autoresponder series (which you will – see below!), it’s only $9/month when you enroll in autopay.  Click here to sign up for a free MailChimp account.

2. Domain Name

Your domain name is your address on the internet. It’s the part that comes between www. and .com.  I’ve used GoDaddy to register all of mine.  If your name is easily misspelled, then I recommend registering those as well.  For example, if your domain is www.hottamales.com (plural) then you might also want to register www.hottamale.com (singular).

3. Web Hosting

The first thing you need is a place to host your website. A host is really just a computer on the internet that holds all of the files that compose your site and shows them to people when they visit.  Since you’ll most likely be building your site using WordPress (the #1 platform in the world), you’ll need a host that supports it.  There are two host companies I’ve used and recommend depending on your needs.

• Bluehost – When you’re just starting out and don’t have a lot of traffic, or money, this is a great host. Plans are only a few dollars per month, making them a great deal!  I still host several of my low traffic sites where speed isn’t an issue on Bluehost.

• WP Engine – This is the Cadillac of WordPress hosting. It’s all they do and they’re quite possibly the best in the world at it.  When you’re ready to move to a blazingly fast host with outstanding technology and best-in-class customer service, WP Engine is the way to go.  I cannot tell you how many times I’ve frantically called them at some odd hour on a weekend and found a patient, helpful engineer willing to walk me through my issues.  They’re definitely more expensive with a single site costing $29/month to host, but for $99/month you can host up to 10 sites making it only $9.90 per site for world-class hosting and service.  You literally cannot go wrong with them.

4. Theme

A theme is the basic template that tells WordPress what your site looks like. There are thousands available, including numerous free ones, but for a professional-looking site that includes regular updates and customer support, you’ll want to spend a few dollars.  ($29-$59 is typical.)  I buy all of my themes from ThemeForest which has nearly 7,000 WordPress themes to choose from!  The one I currently use for my store is called Flatsome, but there are many other good ones.  I like to sort the themes by Best Sellers or Best Rated then look at the demo sites to get an idea of what my site could look like.

5. Plugins

These are what makes running a site on WordPress so powerful. Plugins are prebuilt pieces of code that give your website additional functionality.  For example, there are plugins that display your Instagram feed on your website, add a mailing list sign up, and so much more.  Here are few essentials:

• WooCommerce – This is the plugin that turns your WordPress site in to an ecommerce store. It includes everything you need to begin listing products, selling them, taking payments, etc.  Best of all, it’s FREE!  (They make money by offering additional plugins that increase the things your store can do.)  When you search for a theme on ThemeForest, be sure to look at ones that are WooCommerce compatible.

• NS FBA – Magic! This plugin integrates your store with Amazon FBA so that all of the orders taken through your website are automatically fulfilled through Amazon using their multichannel fulfillment services.  I was so happy the day I found this plugin!  You send all of your inventory to Amazon like normal, connect your ecommerce store, then any orders that taken are automatically submitted to Amazon and fulfilled by them.  It’s completely automated!  This is what makes your ecommerce sales just as passive as your Amazon ones.  Best of all, it’s surprisingly cheap – just $12/month when you pay for a year in advance!

• YITH WooCommerce MailChimp – Automatically subscribes customers to a mailing list you’ve created in MailChimp. I recommend setting up a separate list just for customers.  The free version does most everything you’ll need, but the premium (paid) version adds some nice features.

• WooCommerce Stripe Gateway – WooCommerce comes integrated with PayPal, but if you want to offer customers a way of entering their credit card information directly, then try this free plugin. You’ll also need to setup an account with Stripe, the credit card processor, but that’s free too.

Those plugins will get your store up and running, and only NS FBA costs anything!  But eventually you’ll probably want some additional functionality to really build out your store and maximize your profits.  Here are a few of my favorites:

• Facebook Pixel – Even if you’re not running Facebook ads yet, it never hurts to start collecting data on your visitors by installing a Facebook pixel. This free plugin makes it super simple.

• Ninja Popups – Using popups to offer a discount code or other offer when people visit your site is a great way to build your mailing list. This plugin also lets you display what’s known as an “exit popup” when users attempt to leave you site.  This is a great way to offer another discount in order to keep them around and not lose the sale.  It’s easy to use, extremely customizable, and integrates with MailChimp.  Visit CodeCanyon and search for “Ninja Popups”.  Price is $25.

• Recover Abandoned Cart – If a potential customer adds a product to their cart then leaves without completing the purchase, this plugin will email them a reminder to complete their checkout. You can even include a one-time coupon to incentivize them. Visit CodeCanyon and search for “Recover Abandoned Cart”.  Price is $29.

• Sponsor a Friend – This plugin allows customers to refer a friend. Typically, the friend will get a coupon for a % off their first order while the referrer gets a voucher good for store credit.  Visit CodeCanyon and search for “Sponsor a Friend”.  Price is $19.

• YITH WooCommerce Affiliates – With this plugin you can create your own affiliate program. Affiliates will receive a unique link they can share that earns them a commission on each sale they send your way.  This is a great way to gain new customers!  There are both free and premium versions.

There’s much more you can do with plugins, but these will get you started!

6. Get Help

If you get stuck, here are two places to go for help:

• Upwork – As I mentioned earlier, I’ve used Upwork numerous times to hire freelancers for projects both big and small.

• Fiverr – This is a great site to get smaller tasks done such as designing graphics, editing photos, or creating an autoresponder email series. I’ve hired freelancers in the past to remove the background from images, design business cards, and other odd jobs.

Control Your Own Destiny

While building your own website takes time, effort, and money, in the end you’ll have a second stream of income that YOU control, not Amazon.  You’ll also have a customer mailing list that in itself is a valuable financial asset.  Yay, you!

To make it easy to refer back to the resources in this post, I created an eCommerce Website Checklist for you.  Click the link below to download the free eCommerce Website Checklist.

Got a question or comment?  Let me know below!

[Disclosure: Please note that some of the links included in this post are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase through them. If you do decide to use them I truly appreciate your support, so thanks!]

The post Building Your Own eCommerce Website appeared first on Steps to Passive Income.

Alumni Associations

This made me wonder who else I could contact that might be interested in sharing our story.  Next, I reached out to my two alumni associations, one from undergrad and one from grad school.  I told them briefly about what I was doing and that it would make an interesting for fellow alumni to hear.  Of course, it would also highlight how my education at their institution had helped make it possible.  Both schools responded that they wanted to interview me and that a reporter would be contacting me!  First, my graduate school wrote up an article that appeared on the alumni magazine’s blog as part of their “Young Alumni Series”.  (I’m not sure I really qualified as “young” considering I’m in my late forties, but I wasn’t going to argue!)  They also shared the story on their various social media platforms.  Shortly after it was released I began to get emails from readers looking forward to trying my product and supporting a fellow alum!  Second, my undergrad did an hour-long phone interview that will appear as part of a feature in the fall print edition of the alumni magazine.  I’m hoping that will garner more exposure, more sales, and more links to our website!

Newspapers

This free press thing was really working so I decided to reach out to the major newspaper in our city.  It reaches over a million readers weekly so if I could get a story there, I knew it would be a huge boost!  I visited the paper’s contact page and reached out to some of the editors, as well as the reporters who wrote up “human interest” stories.  I hoped that my story of a local family business looking for make a difference would connect.  I also mentioned I’d recently been featured on my college’s website as a way of showing there was already a little interest.  After a couple of days, one of reporters I contacted responded that she wanted more information so she could propose the story to her editor.  I responded and a few days later it was a go!  The reporter and a photographer/videographer came to our house to interview our entire family.  A week later, on Saturday July 2, 2016, our story came out online and in the print edition.  The week before the article was released we sold 36 units on Amazon, for an average of just over 5 sales per day.  But that Saturday we sold 103 units through Amazon and another 48 through our website for a total of 151!  We also got numerous emails from readers who were excited about our product and happy to support a local business.  We even got a couple emails from local business owners of similar companies who wanted to meet to swap ideas!  Over the next week we sold a total of 324 units across both sales channels!  Quite a bit better than the 36 of the previous week.  

While our sales didn’t remain at that extreme level, in the two weeks since that article appeared our sales have significantly increased.  Over the past week we sold 89 units through Amazon for an average of 12.7/day, and another 11 through our website.  I attribute the increased sales to a few factors:

1. Improved Page Rank – The huge spike in sales the week after the article came out bumped us to #1 for our primary search term!  Even today we bounce between #1-#3.
2. More Reviews – We’ve received dozens of new reviews and just surpassed 100 putting us in triple digits which I speculate gives a subconscious boost to our listing.
3. Gifts – After people tried our product for themselves, we’ve had several email us saying they were buying it for friends and family to try.
4. Repeat Buyers – As our product is consumable, people who like our product are starting to reorder it.  Exciting!
5. Better SEO – Our business’s ecommerce website is benefiting from all of the backlinks we’ve acquired from reputable sites, such as colleges and newspapers.

Other Outlets

That worked so well that I got excited about contacting other news outlets!  I contacted all of the local TV news stations, as well as public radio stations.  I also reached out to newspapers back in my the state where I grew up in the off-chance they’d be interested in a story on a hometown boy.  Finally, I contacted small, online newspapers in our area.  I’m still waiting to hear back from most of them as I just contacted them last week, but one small, online newspaper already interviewed me for an article that will appear in the next few days!

Interested in using free press to promote your business?  Here’s a list of potential outlets to get you started.

Sources of Free Press

Employer Newsletters – Many employers have regular newsletters, either print or via email, focused on the company and employees’ accomplishments and successes.

Alumni Associations – Alma maters love sharing stories of how their graduates are innovating and trying new things. Alumni success makes their institution look good!

Local Newspapers – Newspapers are always looking for “human interest” stories from their community to engage readers.

Local Radio & TV Stations – Much like newspapers, TV and radio stations (especially public radio) enjoy compelling, local news stories that connect with their audience.

Community Forums – Look for interest groups related to your product or market, share your story, and get involved!

Business Associations – While most chambers of commerce and business groups have paid memberships, some still share about new local businesses in hopes of getting them to join.

BONUS: Deal Sites – While not technically “press”, posting a coupon or special offer on a deal site can get you both traffic and sales. (I’ve had good luck with slickdeals.net but there are many others.)

Contacting Free Press

Once you’ve researched and brainstormed a list of free press outlets it’s time to contact them.  You can typically find contact information on their website’s Contact page.  You can also try looking for a “News Tip” email address or contact page.  Here are a few pointers on what to say:

• Keep It Short – Don’t write a giant email telling your entire story!

• Hit the Highlights – Give a brief overview and be sure to include any elements that make for a compelling story. A few examples:
  • Family business, single parent, young entrepreneur, immigrant/American dream, better life for your family, pursuing a lifelong dream, turning a passion into a business, making a difference, helping others, helping the planet, supporting a charity, competing against huge corporations, etc.

• Give Social Proof – Once you get some press, mention it as a way of building credibility with other outlets.

• Invite Them to Contact You – Include your name, email, and phone number so they can contact you for more information if they’re interested in your story.

You can download my Free Press Checklist, along with two Sample Email Templates, by clicking the link below.

I’d leave to hear your questions or comments, so leave them below!

The post Using Free Press to Grow Your Business appeared first on Steps to Passive Income.

1. Grow a mailing list of potential customers
2. Get them excited about my product before it’s even available
3. Build a foundation of 25 reviews for my product once it arrives
4. Have my mailing list and everyone I know go buy the product over a one week period

I divided up the process in to what I call the Pre-Launch, Soft Launch, and Hard Launch phases.  Below are some of the things I did, along with a few I wish I’d done!

Pre-Launch

Once you order your first product, you’ll probably have several weeks or even months until it arrives and is ready for sale.  This gives you time to begin thinking about how you’re going to launch your product.  Your two goals during this phase are to rank for search terms (i.e. get to page 1 on Amazon search results) and to get as many reviews as possible so potential customers will be more likely to purchase our super widget.

1. Build a Mailing List

A. Sign up for an email service provider that can collect the email addresses of interested people from your target market.

My personal favorite is MailChimp.  I’ve used it since 2012, and not only is it easy to use and powerful, it’s also free for your first 2,000 subscribers or 12,000 emails/month.  If you decide you need additional features, like an autoresponder series (which you will – see below!), it’s only $9/month when you enroll in autopay.  Click here to sign up for a free MailChimp account.

B. Begin collecting the email addresses of your target market.

1. Research Facebook groups, discussion forums, blogs, etc. related to your target audience. You might already be active in a few that you used for market research when creating your product.  Share about your new product and recruit people join an exclusive beta-test or launch group.  Tell them that in exchange for joining your mailing list and helping with your product launch that they’ll receive a steep discount (or free product) when it’s available.

2. Ask friends & family to spread the word to people that would be interested in your product and get them to join your list. Note that family & friends should not join your list themselves as Amazon specifically prohibits “family members or close friends of the person, group, or company selling on Amazon” from writing “Customer Reviews for those particular items” which is one thing you’ll eventually want.  Violating this can get your account closed!

3. Optional: Run Facebook ads to a landing page to get mailing list sign ups. Obviously this isn’t free, but it is another way grow your mailing list by targeting specific demographics, interests, etc.

2. Introduce You, Your Company, and Your Product via Email

A. Build a connection with your mailing list by telling them about you (& your family, if applicable), your dreams, why you started your company, why your product is awesome, etc. This personal connection will make people more likely to support you and tell others once your product is available.

B. It’s best to drip this content out over a series of emails rather than a long novel that rivals Moby Dick. The easiest way to do this is by setting up an autoresponder series using MailChimp or whatever provider you chose.  An autoresponder is a pre-written series of emails that is sent to new subscribers in a certain order over a certain time frame.  For example, you can have the first email sent immediately after the join, the second email sent a day later, the third email sent two days later, etc.  Again, this is easy to do with MailChimp but you’ll need to upgrade from a free account to their $9/month account which is what I use.

3. Keep Your List Informed

Let them know what’s going on with your product. Build excitement by sharing your logo, pre-production shots, anticipated release date, etc. as they become available.  By the time your product is actually offered you should have a salivating group of people ready to buy!

4. Sign Up for the Amazon Associates Program

Amazon has a referral program called Amazon Associates that allows you to earn a percentage of every sale for traffic that you send them. You ARE allowed to use this program to send traffic to your own listing, but you CANNOT click and use your own referral link.  The nice thing about this program is that you earn a percentage on everything the people you refer buy while on Amazon.  For example, someone clicks your referral link, adds your product to their cart, then keeps shopping for other items they need.  You will earn a percentage of everything they buy during that shopping trip!  This program is absolutely free so go sign up at https://affiliate-program.amazon.com.

5. Get Your List to Begin Reviewing Other Amazon Products

Eventually, you’re going to ask your list to leave an honest review of your product. It can look suspicious to Amazon if your new product suddenly gets a barrage of reviews from first-time reviewers so I suggest having your list review other products they’ve previously purchased on Amazon.  Send an email walking them through this process and explaining why it’s important.  Give some guidelines on what a good review looks like –several sentences in length, describes features of the product, talks about what the reviewer liked and didn’t like, etc.

6. Build Your Company’s Social Media Accounts

A. Create accounts for your company on the various social media platforms. Although you can have multiple accounts, you’ll want to spend your effort on the one or two platforms where your target audience spends most of their time.

B. Post regular, relevant content to your accounts. Make it easy on yourself by curating the content from other sites and accounts you follow rather than creating a bunch of new content yourself.  It feels a bit like stealing, but they’ll actually appreciate you spreading their content around!

Soft Launch

Once your product is available I recommend doing a soft launch before beginning Amazon Sponsored Ads, social media marketing, etc.  The purpose of the soft launch is to get a foundation of around 25 reviews to act as “social proof” for potential customers.  I know it’s hard to be patient and wait for those 25 reviews, but it will pay off in the end with better conversions for both your organic and ad-driven traffic.  While you can certainly skip this step, the odds of someone buying a product with zero or few reviews is very low so you’ll likely just be wasting money on paid advertising.

1. Ask Your List for Volunteers to Purchase Your Product

The BIG DAY is here and the product you’ve been hyping for days, weeks, and possibly months is finally available! Email your list with the big news and ask for a “handful” of volunteers who are willing to test the product and give their honest feedback.  At this point, I wouldn’t offer any discount.  If you’ve done a good job building excitement with your autoresponder series, then you should be able to get a few dozen volunteers to buy it at cost.  If not, then offer a small 10-20% discount for the “privilege” of early access to your product.

Choose around 35 volunteers and individually email them with directions on how to buy your product.  (You really only need 25, but odds are that some won’t follow through.)  The optimal way is to have them search for your primary search term and scroll through the pages until they find your product.  This will give a little boost to your ranking for that particular search term.  It helps if you include a screenshot of what your listing looks like so they know what to look for.  If this is too much work, then just send them directly to your product using your Amazon Associates link.

2. Follow Up with Your Volunteers

A. Ask How They’re Enjoying Your Product

1. Rather than asking directly for a review, email them directly and ask how they’re enjoying the product. This is a good opportunity to catch recurring problems with your product before it goes wide to everyone.  It’s also a way to head off potentially negative reviews by offering to make things right with your customers.

2. Remind your volunteers to review other products if they haven’t yet.

B. Ask for Their Honest Review

If they’re happy with the product, then ask them for their honest review. You can either provide a direct link (easiest) or walk them through the steps in an email.  Amazon is insistent that all reviews be honest so be careful not to influence them with what to write.  You can however remind them of some general guidelines: ideal length is 75 to 500 words; discuss why they liked the product; focus on specific features; comparisons to other products are fine; photos & videos are awesome!

C. Sign Up for a Salesbacker Account

Salesbacker is basically an autoresponder service for your Amazon customers. It will automatically email your customers at set intervals requesting and reminding them to leave a product review.  You can either use their prebuilt email templates or write your own personalized sequence.  It is a fantastic way to quickly grow your reviews and build up your all-important “social proof” that helps turn browsers in to buyers.  I use Salesbacker myself and couldn’t be happier with it!

At this point I wouldn’t turn Salesbacker on because you’re manually reaching out to your group of volunteers and walking them through the review process.  But you do want to set up your follow-up sequence and have it ready to go for the next phase.

Hard Launch

It seemed to take forever, but you finally have 25 positive reviews for your new product!  It’s finally time to move on the last phase of your launch.  Your patience is about to be rewarded!

1. Get Sales and Improve Your Rank!

This final phase is focused on maximizing sales over a one-week time frame to increase your rank and hopefully reach page one of search results for your primary search term.

A. Offer a Limited Time Discount Code to Your Mailing List

1. Share a few of your best early reviews with your mailing list to get them excited. Then offer them an exclusive coupon code to purchase your product at a discount.  If you’ve done a good job of grooming your list, you should be able to offer a break-even or slightly profitable discount rather than giving your product away for free or at a loss.

2. Emphasize that this discount code is for a limited time and will expire on a specific date at midnight. (You can set this in your Amazon promotions.)

3. Ask your list to find your product by searching for your main primary search term and scrolling through until they find your product. Again, including a screenshot of what they’re looking for will help.  It’s a bit of work, but most people are willing as it’s a small price to pay for a discounted, brand new product!  Alternatively, you can give them a direct affiliate link to your product via the Amazon Associates program but you’ll get less of a boost to your page rank.

4. Continue to email them throughout the week, reminding them that their exclusive coupon code expires at midnight on a certain day. On the last day, emphasize that this huge discount will not be repeated as you’re not making any (or very little) money off the product at this price point.  Deadlines are powerful motivation.  You’ll typically find that you’ll get a huge number of sales the first day and another spike the last day, just before the coupon expires.

B. Offer a Limited Time Discount to Friends & Family

There’s nothing in Amazon’s terms of service that prohibits friends and family from purchasing your product, so repeat the above steps. Blast the affiliate link and a coupon code out on your personal social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) every day during launch week.  Ask them to share the link & coupon with anyone they think might be interested in your product.  You can decide how large of a discount you want to give, but it should be substantial to maximize the number of sales.  The goal during launch week is not profit, it’s sales rank, so get as many sales as you can!

C. Share a Limited Time Offer with Your Target Market

Go back to the Facebook groups, discussion forums, blogs, etc. that you researched way back in step 1.B., share some of your best initial reviews, and offer then a limited discount code. For Facebook groups, it’s best to approach the moderators first and ask permission.  For blogs, ask if they’d like a special code just for their audience.  (The code can somehow be related to the blog’s name.)  Blog owners tend to appreciate this as they like offering valuable, relevant content to their audience and a special code makes them look important.  J

D. Post a Deal to Your Company’s Social Media Accounts

Hopefully by now you’ve gotten at least a small following that has enjoyed the regular content you’ve been sharing.  Start mixing in your content this week with affiliate links to your product and a steep discount code.

E. Post a Limited Time Discount on Deal Sites

Create another offer that you can share on deal sites such as slickdeals.net. Use your affiliate link and a give as steep of a discount as you can bear.  It’s all about sales this week!

F. Turn on Salesbacker

Now’s the time to start automatically following up with buyers, asking them to leave an honest review. The more sales you get, the more reviews you’ll get, which leads to more sales, which leads to more reviews, and on and on it goes!  (You should personally follow up with family & friends, telling them NOT to leave you a review as it’s against Amazon’s Terms of Service.)

That’s it!  Hopefully by the end of your launch week you’ve reached page one for at least one of your primary search terms.  You will most likely lose a little rank after the flood of sales slows to a trickle, but thanks to your rank and dozens of excellent reviews, you should begin getting organic sales.  With a little work, you should slowly see your regular sales increasing week-over-week.

What’s Next!?

1. Keep Up the Momentum

A. Begin Running Amazon Sponsored Ads

I recommend NOT running ads until your launch week is over, otherwise your well-meaning supporters may click the ads when searching for your product which costs you money!

B. Continue Reaching Out to Your Target Market

1. Keep posting in relevant Facebook groups, discussion forums, and blogs. Reach out to more blog owners, offering them a free product to test and a discount code for their audience if they like it.

2. Post regularly to your company’s social media accounts. Be sure to focus on offering valuable content that is only occasionally interspersed with sales and links to buy.  Focus on delivering value first and the sales will come.

C. Use Free Press

One of my favorite avenues of attracting customers is using newspapers, alumni associations, employer newsletters, etc. Let others talk you up and tell their audience how great you and your product are!  Click here to learn how I used free press to build my business and to get my Free Press Checklist for more information.

D. Build Your Own Ecommerce Website

Amazon is a great source of traffic and revenue, but you’re also completely at their mercy. They can, and have, shut down accounts for the smallest of infractions, even if only perceived.  Having your own online store has multiple benefits:

1. You Control It – Amazon can’t shut you down on a whim.

2. Collect Customer Email Addresses – A customer mailing list is one of your most valuable resources! It’s like a spigot of sales that you control and can turn on at will.

3. Increased Profits – You’ll keep a much larger chunk of your profits when Amazon isn’t skimming off the top!

4. Larger Orders – By combining targeted coupons, free shipping offers, and other strategies, you will get larger orders. On Amazon I average just over 1 unit/order but on my company’s website it’s closer to 2.5 units/order!

Click here to learn how I built my online store and to get my Ecommerce Website Checklist.

My Launch Week Results

So how did my Launch Week go?  After about a month-long soft launch, I officially held my hard launch from April 26 – May 2, 2016.  Here are my results:

Amazon Sales: 143 orders, 182 units, $2,720.90 in sales

Amazon Associates (Affiliate Program): $58.77 (pure profit!)

Amazon Reviews: 37 total by week’s end 

Amazon Page Rank: First page, #3 for my primary search term

All in all, I counted it a rousing success!  And the great thing was that I didn’t need to give away dozens of products for free while spending tons of advertising.  In fact, the only expenses (other than Amazon fees) were the $9/month for my MailChimp account and $19/month for my Salesbacker account.

Whew!  That’s a lot of information to digest so I created a simple Launch Process Checklist to summarize it.  Click the button below to download the checklist.

In my next post, I’ll share about how I’m using free press such as newspapers and alumni associations to spread the word and build our customer base.

I’d leave to hear your questions or comments, so leave them below!

[Disclosure: Please note that some of the links included in this post are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase through them. If you do decide to use them I truly appreciate your support, so thanks!]

The post The Three Phases of a Product Launch appeared first on Steps to Passive Income.

Last summer (2015) I realized I needed to double down on one path and give it a few months of consistent effort, uninterrupted by teaching.  While GetChemistryHelp.com had been quietly chugging along making me a little ad revenue every month on 2+ year old content, I decided that it would be difficult to make it large enough to support my family and our crazy dreams.  I still want to build it out as a secondary stream of income, but not my primary.  Instead, I decided to focus on creating our own private label product.

What Is Private Labeling?

Let me define private labeling for those who might be unfamiliar with the term: Private labeling is taking an existing product created by a manufacturer and putting your company’s name (label) on it, often with only minimal modifications.  For example, taking a toaster already being produced in China, branding it with your company’s name, and then selling it through Amazon.  The potential for a relatively passive business is there because you order the product from China, have it shipped to Amazon, and they do all of the warehousing, order fulfillment, shipping, payment processing, returns, etc. and you get paid every 14 days.  Sounds easy, right?  Well, while finding products to private label is easy through sites like Alibaba.com, discovering one that has a shot at being successful is much more difficult.

Product Criteria

When I began, I didn’t really have any particular type of product in mind.  I just knew it needed to have the following qualities:

1. Lightweight – It needed to weigh under a pound to qualify for cheap shipping from China.
2. Small – It should fit in a shoebox, again for cheap shipping from China.
3. Simple/few moving parts – The product shouldn’t be easily broken as to minimize returns.
4. Not electronic – Way too many potential issues that can lead to returns.
5. No liability issues – Avoid items that are sharp, explosive, potential allergens, etc.
6. Not seasonal – I wanted something that would sell well year-around, at least for my first product or two.

Amazon Criteria

It also needed to meet a set of criteria to have a shot of being successful on Amazon.  I stole these from an outstanding interview Greg Mercer did with Scott Voelker on The Amazing Seller podcast.

1. Market depth – The top 10 sellers for a search term needed to be moving at least 3,000 units combined.  For example, if you search for “silicone spatula”, the first page of results should be selling a combined 3,000 units per month.  The thought being that if you can take even a small 10% of the top 10 sellers sales then you’ll be selling 300 units per month, or roughly 10 units per day.
2. Price point between $20-60 – Too low and it’s hard to make much after product costs, Amazon fees, shipping, advertising, etc.  Too high and it stops becoming an impulse purchase, thereby reducing your sales volume.
3. Low competition – Sales among the top 10 sellers should be relatively spread out.  In other words, the top two or three sellers shouldn’t be dominating while the rest are just getting scraps.
4. No name brand domination – Competing against name brands is fine so long as one isn’t dominating.  For example, if Apple or Black & Decker has 8 of the top 10 listings, then that’s not a niche you want to enter.
5. Low reviews – The #1 product should have less than 500 reviews, the #2 should have less than 300 reviews, and the rest should be even lower.  If every product has hundreds or thousands of reviews then it will be difficult to make your product stand out and compete.
6. Potential for related products – You want to build a brand of multiple products, not a one-off.

This is a lot of data to mine, but fortunately the aforementioned Greg Mercer developed a tool called Jungle Scout that makes it easy.  It’s a Chrome extension that allows you to simply click a button and get all of the data for the product results of a search term.  For example, I can go to Amazon, search for “silicone spatula”, wait for the results to come up, then click the Jungle Scout button.  I then get a table that looks like this:

Est. Sales are the estimated number of units sold per month.  Est. Revenue is the estimated revenue per month (basically just Price x Est. Sale).

Reviewing the Data

Let’s go through the criteria for this product.

1. Market depth – TONS of sales volume among the top 10.  Combined they’re selling over 24,700 units per month!
2. Price point between $20-60 – There are a few near at or over $20, but the average sale price is only $12.27.
3. Low competition – No one seller is dominating.  Sales are distributed among the top 10.
4. No name brand domination – A brand called called “di Oro Living” has spots 5, 6, and 8, but there are plenty of other brands doing well against them.
5. Low reviews – Definitely not!  Nearly every seller has hundreds of reviews and a few have over a thousand.  It would be very hard to get enough reviews to be competitive, especially as the competitions’ will also be increasing over time.
6. Potential for related products – There are numerous related kitchen gadgets and gizmos that could be added to this product line.

This product is definitely a loser as a potential private label product, but hopefully it illustrates the process I went through.  And I didn’t just go through it once or twice or or even fifty times.  No sir, I spent weeks going through hundreds upon hundreds of products in a variety of categories.  I looked at water bottles, reflective jogging vests, and passport wallets.  I looked at hydration backpacks, money belts, and dog food dishes.  I got desperate and began to violate my own rules by looking at shower caddies (too big), knives (too dangerous), and sun hats (too seasonal).  After weeks of this it began to get a bit discouraging.  I’m sure I was being too picky and I probably should have just chosen the best case and gone with it.  If nothing else, at least I would have learned numerous lessons along the way that no doubt would have made the second product more successful.

Lesson Learned

But I didn’t.  Instead, I kept looking and looking. Then I looked some more.  After that, I looked a little bit more.  If I hadn’t been so clear on the potential of a winning product, I would have given up much sooner.  After a couple of months of pounding my head against the wall without a clear lead, one day I began to think about the possibility of a consumable product – something that has to be purchased again and again, unlike a toaster or a silicone spatula.  Even if the price point was under $20 and the profit was $5 instead of $10, in theory the repeat buys should make up for it.  The problem with most consumables, whether it’s food, beauty products, or health & personal care items are that you generally don’t want to source them from China due to concerns over quality and contamination.  Sourcing more locally, like the US and Canada, does help with shipping costs but it also means the base cost of the unit will be much higher.

Eureka!

Without giving away my product and creating an army of competition, suffice it to say that I did finally hit upon a product I thought might work!  It was as simple as realizing there was need for a product that my family had been unable to find for ourselves.  I began by googling “private label xxxx manufacturer” and contacting dozens all over the US and Canada.  I told them what I was interested in and began to get quotes.  After interviewing a half-dozen or so, I settled on one who happened to be less than two hours away!  I sent him my criteria, he sent me some ideas, and we began to brainstorm.  It seemed like we were on the right track so I put down a $1,500 deposit to begin the prototype phase.  Summer came and went.  But after six months and over a dozen prototypes, we finally had our product!  I ordered 1,000 units to start with and our manufacturer recommended some companies to work with on packaging and design while our product waited its turn in the production queue.

In some ways, manufacturing the product is the easy part.  It’s selling it that is hard!

While all of that took nearly a year and countless hours of work, it was really only the beginning of the story!  In some ways, manufacturing the product is the easy part.  It’s selling it that is hard!  But more on that in my next post.

Hopefully you’ve learned something from my mistakes that will save you time, effort, and money!  If so, take a second to subscribe to my mailing list below.  No spam, just more free information on how I’m creating passive income in my own life.  

The post (Not So) Private Labeling – How I Chose My First Product appeared first on Steps to Passive Income.

So it’s been one year + one week since my last entry.  I guess this shows that I am a horrible blogger.

I had originally planned to chronicle my journey into the creation of passive income, both successes and failures, as I experienced it, sharing lessons learned along the way.  But, to be honest, I got so busy doing it that I didn’t have the time nor inclination to write about it.  Yet I’ve become increasingly aware that I need an outlet to process my thoughts on what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what’s next so here I am, yet again!

I Was Drowning!

So what have I been doing for the past 372 days?  A lot!  After several years full of plenty of talk but little action, I can honestly say that I finally dove in to entrepreneurship with both feet.  In fact, I dove in with both feet, both arms, and my torso, and was struggling to keep my head above water.  I violated one of the cardinal rules I’ve heard numerous times since which is to “Focus on one thing at a time.”  Instead, I began exploring a half-dozen different ventures which pulled me in too many directions and only let me dabble in each, rather than truly building one or two of them up.  Here’s where I dabbled:

1. Online Retail
2. Premium Mobile Websites
3. Web Design & Development
4. Graphic Design & Marketing
5. Chemistry Videos & Tutorials
6. Podcasting

I’ll write about each of these in more detail another time, but here are two lessons in creating passive income that I’ve learned.

Focus On One Thing

While most people think they’re great multi-taskers, most of us actually suck at it.  Studies have repeatedly shown that your productivity, comprehension, understanding, etc. all decrease when you attempt to multi-task.  Nowhere is this more true than in entrepreneurship.  There aren’t enough hours in the day to devote to multiple projects, clients, employees, and ideas across multiple different businesses, especially when they’re in unrelated niches.  It’s much more productive in the long run to take one idea, run with it, and see what you can make of it.  Once you do this, you can then…

Focus On What Is Working

I’ve heard it said that it takes three years of full-time effort (The 1000 Day Rule) to really know if a business is going to take off.  That may be true, but in my experience you can tell even sooner which ones have natural momentum and are producing results with little effort versus which ones are like pushing a boulder uphill yet producing little results.  Once you’ve identified which one (or maybe two) are working it’s time to double down and cut out the others.  While the first lesson was the one I was slowest to learn, this one was the hardest to learn.

It’s hard to “give up” on a business after you’ve invested hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars in it.  You try to justify keeping it afloat based on the investment you’ve already made and perhaps the minor successes you’ve had, but eventually you have to decide if the results you’re getting justifies the work you’re putting in.

If it doesn’t, then move on.  Better to figure it out now than spinning your wheels for months like I did…

One Failure

I’ll give you two personal examples. One business I began, Central Cog Design, was primarily involved in the creation of premium mobile websites for local businesses.  It only made sense to me that with a growing number of people using the internet on their smartphones and tablets that businesses need a mobile-friendly website.  In fact, Google has reported that 82% of businesses do not have a mobile-friendly website and that 61% of customers who visit a non-mobile-friendly website on their smartphone or tablet leave and often head to a competitor.  So I invested time researching the mobile website market and learning about mobile website development.  I invested time and money hiring a full-time web developer with experience in mobile websites.  I invested more time and money in creating sample websites for 40+ local businesses.  I invested time and money in hiring two different people to sell mobile websites to local businesses.  After untold hours and thousands of dollars I had a fantastic portfolio with dozens of examples, a company website with several functioning examples, and zero mobile-website customers.  I began to try to figure out what the issues were.  Was it a marketing issue?  Was it a pricing issue?  Was it a sales issue?  I honestly think it was primarily the latter as I didn’t have experienced salespeople attempting the selling.  But regardless of the reason, the fact remained that after serious hard work and thousands of dollars invested it was producing zip in the profit column.

One Success

Compare that to another business I started, GetChemistryHelp.  As a chemistry professor by day, it only made sense to begin to parlay my experience in to something I already knew about – teaching chemistry.  So in January 2013 I began producing short 10-15 minute video lessons on various high school and college chemistry topics and posting them on YouTube.  Each is concise, clearly laid out, and includes worked-out examples.  I invested a few hundred dollars in a high-quality USB microphone for recording my narration, a Wacom tablet for working out problems on the screen, and a website.  I did zero marketing, other than announcing the videos in my own courses; I just produced quality content, put it on YouTube, and began to see results.

At first my visitors were mostly my own students, but as months passed I began to get comments from people I didn’t know who were thanking me for the videos and asking me to please produce more.  Those hundreds of views turned in to thousands and then tens of thousands!   And it wasn’t just Americans who were watching them, I’ve currently had viewers from 168 different countries!  No marketing, big results.  Yet despite my success with GetChemistryHelp, I continued to pour the majority of my energy and time in to other endeavors convinced that surely they would pick up.  I just needed to give them more time or effort or change this or try that.  But one night on my drive home as I listened to a(nother) podcast it finally sunk in that I needed to focus on what was working.  Why continue hoeing the hard ground and scattering seeds, when’s there’s plenty of low-hanging fruit to be picked?  Now granted, GetChemistryHelp is still going to take plenty of work before it’s really profitable (to date I’ve only made just over $200 through YouTube ad revenue), but the market is obviously there.  And more importantly, it’s getting me results with little effort.  As an example, over the last several months I’ve only created a half-dozen new videos, yet I continue to get thousands upon thousands of views, hundreds of new subscribers, and comments literally every day during the school year from students thanking me for my videos.  Ding ding!  Lesson learned.

A Tale of Two Horses

Is this the horse you’re going to invest your time and energy in to win the race?

Perhaps I could have summed up everything above by simply saying: Stop banging your head against the wall and go for the open door.  If you’ve got two horses and are trying to win a race, you have to focus on the one that gives you the best odds of success.  Regardless of how much blood, sweat, and tears you’ve invested, at some point you have to pull the trigger on the lame horse and focus your time and energy on the one that’s thoroughbred material.  Even if he’s not quite running like a thoroughbred yet, you still need to commit your limited resources to the one that’s doing more than just eating all your hay and leaving steaming piles to show for it!

How about you? Have an endeavor that you just need to put to rest, despite the countless hours and dollars invested? Or maybe you got a project that is just naturally taking off and deserves more attention? I’d love to hear about it in the comments section below!

The post Two Lessons in Creating Passive Income – One Failure, One Success appeared first on Steps to Passive Income.

As I talked about in a previous post, passion is one of the keys to success. You have to find that thing you love to do so much that it doesn’t even feel like work when you’re doing it. You stay up until 3:00 AM doing it then get up at 6:00 AM to do it all over again, just because you’re so passionate about it. In this TED Talk I just found on Addicted2Success, Scott Dinsmore does a great job sharing about this very subject.

Scott Dinsmore – How To Find And Do Work You Love

“What is the work you can’t not do? Discover that. Live it. Not just for you, but for everyone around you. Because that is what starts to change the world.” – Scott Dinsmore

Scott is the founder of Live Your Legend, a website I just discovered thanks to this video. I’m definitely going to spend some time poking around his site to see what he has to offer!

Why settle for ordinary when you can devote your life to something that sets you on fire!?

The post Discover What You Love & Make Money Doing It appeared first on Steps to Passive Income.

I am addicted to the Smart Passive Income podcast with Pat Flynn. Pat is killing it online, making $50k+ every month from different online ventures. His insights, information, and training are awesome, but what I really appreciate is how down to earth and humble he is while sharing it. Yesterday, I was listening to session 24 where he interviewed three different online entrepreneurs on how they’re making money online, without being in the making money online niche. I especially enjoyed the first interview with Keith Snow from Harvest Eating so I thought it would be educational to break down exactly what he’s done and what he’s doing.

Harvest Eating

http://www.harvesteating.com

Chef Keith Snow is the founder of Harvest Eating. He began with a YouTube channel, cooking up fresh, local, seasonal recipes in his kitchen.  He also created a community website at http://www.harvesteating.com to go along with it where people could chat with him, ask questions, and share ideas with each other. Over time he added in various monetization strategies. First, YouTube invited him to become a YouTube Partner which entitles him to share a percentage of the advertising revenue they collect when visitors view his videos. Later, people suggested he try to sell the recipes to accompany his videos. At first he thought they were crazy, wondering why anyone would pay for a recipe when they could just watch the video of him preparing it. But he eventually gave it a shot, creating a membership section of his website where people pay $4.99 per month for access to all of his recipes and other content. (Although now the recipes are free to everyone and membership provides other benefits.) Members even get welcome kits delivered to their door that include items such as a signed, personal letter from Chef Snow, a bumper sticker, and even sample food products (more on this below). He currently has over 1,000 monthly paid subscribers.

As the years have passed, he’s continued to innovate, adding new products to Harvest Eating that will not only add value to his community, but also create marketing opportunities and additional income streams.

1. Naturally, he produced a cookbook compiling the local, seasonal recipes everyone had come to love.
2. He sells his own line of sauces, seasonings, and other food products. Keeping with his theme of local ingredients, he ensures that his products contain only ingredients sourced from within the United States rather than imported, as with other manufacturers. This does mean his production costs are often higher, but by selling direct from his website rather than through stores he maintains a healthy profit margin.
3. In addition to his videos, he also started a podcast where he interacts with his audience, answers questions, and shares tips and advice.
4. Sponsors came knocking, asking to advertise to his dedicated niche audience through his various mediums.
5. He had an iPhone/iPad app developed where people can access his videos, podcasts, and recipes wherever they are. The app sells for $1.99.
6. Finally, he’s even branched into TV with a show on RFD TV, as well as a Roku channel that costs $4.99/month.

All this from a guy who probably started out just loving to cook! Inspired yet?

Passive Income Strategies Used

Let’s quickly recap the various passive income strategies Chef Snow is using to build his brand, monetize it, and create passive income in the process:

• YouTube videos – As a partner, he is paid every time one of his videos is viewed. (He currently has over 5 million views.)
• Membership Website – Loyal viewers, listeners, and visitors support Harvest Eating through either a monthly, annual, or lifetime membership for access to all recipes, videos, and other site content. (He has over 1,000 paid members.)
• eCommerce – Cookbook, sauces, seasonings, and more are available for sale.
• Podcasting – Currently over 100 episodes with listeners from around the world.
• Advertising – Sponsors pay to advertise on his website, videos, and other outlets.
• Apps & Software – $1.99 iPhone/iPad app that contains access to Harvest Eating videos, podcasts, and recipes.

That’s an impressive lineup of income streams! It’s equally impressive to think how passive several of these income streams are. In the podcast, Chef Snow shares a great story about how he spent two weeks traveling around France, Switzerland & Italy with a sponsor, all while passive income continued to flow from his various endeavors. Of course all of these income streams took significant hard work upfront to develop, but the foundation has been well laid and the production of new content to keep the machine cranking requires relatively few hours per month. And perhaps best of all, Chef Snow is his own boss and gets to do what he loves, so I bet much of this hardly feels like work at all!

One other lesson to take away is that you don’t need a huge audience to generate sustainable passive income. The local, seasonal food niche is fairly small but as with most niches, it’s not the size that matters but rather their engagement. Chef Snow keeps his community engaged by reaching out through multiple avenues (video, audio, iPhone/iPad, membership site), personally interacting with them online, sending each new community member a personal welcome letter, and much more. Harvest Eating demonstrates that if you provide your audience with the great content and great value they desire, then in return they’ll provide you with the loyalty and support you desire.

I highly recommend checking out session 24 of the Smart Passive Income podcast to hear the interview in its entirety for yourself!

So what lessons can you take away from this case study? Is there one thing you’re especially intrigued by or would like to add to your website? Leave a comment below with your thoughts!

The post Case Study: Harvest Eating – Cook Fresh & Earn Passive Income appeared first on Steps to Passive Income.

One podcast I discovered a couple of months ago was Eventual Millionaire by Jaime Tardy.  She has interviewed dozens of millionaires, picking their brains to see how they became successful and the lessons that we can learn from them.  One particular episode that stuck out to me was with Scott Fox entitled “Knitting, Chickens, and Online Business – How Millionaire Scott Fox helps people build six figure online businesses”. It was fascinating to hear the crazy stories of how people turned a passion for something completely esoteric like raising chickens, remote control aircraft, and knitting into six figure businesses!  I was inspired enough that I had to check out his latest book, Click Millionaires.  Here are three stories from the book that stood out to me.

[Disclosure: The two books I recommend here are both fantastic! I’ve included affiliate links to them on Amazon which means if you decide to purchase either or both that I will earn a commission, at no additional cost to you.  Thank you for your support!]

1. Suburban Chicken Farmers

http://www.backyardchickens.com

Rob Ludlow started with a few baby chicks inherited from a kindergarten project. Those few chicks turned into an obsession with raising chickens without having to live on a farm!  Rob created a community where people could come to share ideas on how to raise chickens in urban and suburban environments – how to build coops, what to feed them, how to care for them, and much more.  This has exploded into a community with over 11 million page views a month by 160,000 chicken owners who add about 6,000 new posts every day.  That’s the kind of active, engaged audience most websites in huge markets would kill for and Rob has done it with raising chickens in your backyard!   Rob monetizes the site through advertisements, sponsors, and my favorite, selling his own eBooks on raising chickens and building coops!  (I love eBooks because they are almost 100% pure profit on something you created just by taking a little time to type up a Word document.)

2. Requesting Permission to Buzz the Tower

http://www.rcpowers.com/

Dave Powers loves remote controlled aircraft. He started out just posting videos on YouTube of him flying his RC aircraft around.  He also added in tips on how to build them, upgrade them, launch them, etc. Apparently other people shared his passion for remote controlled aircraft because his YouTube channel now has over 100 million views! Much like Rob, Dave realized he was on to something, so he created a website and forum where he could send his viewers and build a community.  He then began to create and sell his own eBooks and online video courses to help others get started including plans on how to build various RC aircraft.

3. If You Knit It, They Will Come

http://sweaterbabe.com/

The last example I’ll share is a website created by Scott’s own wife, Katherine.  Katherine started knitting back in Iowa when she was 8-years old.  Over the years she picked up new knitting techniques, as well as learning how to crochet and tat (a lace-making technique). She eventually decided to try and market her own knitting patterns. As you can no doubt guess, her patterns were a hit!  She sells them as PDF downloads for $1-14.50 each. Let me say that again – people are paying $14.50 for a PDF download that costs Katherine $0 to produce, just time.  Create it once and sell it over & over again.  I love it!
What do all of these examples have in common? Passion. They took something they enjoyed and ran with it. Their passion was not only contagious, it was prosperous! I’m sure you’ve experienced that feeling when you’re sharing something that you’re passionate about and the words just flow, you get excited, and then the other person begins to get excited. You feel like you could talk about it for hours. Whatever that something is, that’s the thing you need to tap in to. Of course there are lots of way to make money online (and offline) by doing things you may not love, but when you’re starting out, start with passion!

As a chemistry professor, I often tell my students to never pick a career solely based on what pays the most. Instead, I tell them to choose what they enjoy and what they’re good at because ultimately that’s what will make them happiest and successful. Why choose chemical engineer or nurse as your career just because it pays well!? Do you want to spend 20, 30, or 40 years of your life doing something you’re not passionate about? Life is too short. Instead, find what you love to do and not only will it feel a lot less like work, but it will blossom. I truly believe that someone who is passionate about painting turtle shells could make more money than most lawyers and have a better time doing it! For more on profiting from your passion I highly recommend a book I’m currently reading entitled Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk. Great stuff!

So how about you? Are you starting to feel inspired? No matter what you love to do I truly believe there is a way to make money online by doing it. Do you have a passion you’d love to profit from? Leave me a comment below and let me know what it is!

The post You Can Make Money Online Doing What!? appeared first on Steps to Passive Income.

Step #1 – Sign Up for a Bluehost Account

Visit Bluehost and sign up for an account by clicking on the big green “Sign Up Now” button.

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Step #2 – Choose Your Domain Name

If you haven’t already registered a domain name with GoDaddy, you can get a free one with your Bluehost account.  In the box under “I Need a Domain Name” enter crochetingblankets and click “Next”.

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Step #3 – Enter Your Account Info and Choose a Plan

Yay, crochetingblankets.com is available! I can already see the dollar signs dancing before your eyes.

Enter your Account Information, choose either a 12, 24, or 36 month plan, uncheck the boxes (the only one you might be interested in is the Domain Whois Privacy), and enter your Billing Information.

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Step #4 – Install WordPress on Your Bluehost Domain

Congrats! You’re now the owner of the web’s soon-to-be domination hub on everything related to crocheting blankets! Now it’s time to install WordPress so you can wow the world with your hot yarn tips and videos of your elite needle skills.

Under the cPanel tab, scroll down to “Site Builders” and click the button that says “Simple Scripts”.

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From the options available, choose “WordPress”. (At the time of this writing version 3.4.2 is the latest, but Bluehost always gives you the most recent stable release.)

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Click the green Install button.

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You’re almost there! Choose your domain name, crochetingblankets.com, from the dropdown menu. Next, give your website a name, most likely “Crocheting Blankets”. If you want to create a separate login & password for your WordPress installation then click “Click here to display”. Otherwise, uncheck the three boxes for the upsells Bluehost is trying to get you to buy, check the box to agree to the terms & conditions, then click the green “Complete” button.

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That’s it! Now go to http://www.crochetingblankets.com/wp-admin to login to your new website. Start creating content and let the passive income flow!

[Disclosure: Please note that some of the links included in this post are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase through them. If you do decide to use them I truly appreciate your support, so thanks!]

The post Installing WordPress on Bluehost appeared first on Steps to Passive Income.

Regardless of your primary focus in creating passive income online (podcasting, videos, eBooks, other digital products, software, apps, etc.) you’ll most likely need a website to act as a hub and home for the community you’re creating. So I thought I’d share how I went about setting up my website/blog. (More on how to monetize a blog in a future post.)

I debated for quite awhile what to start blogging about. So I sat down and brainstormed a list of all the topics I knew something about or was interested in such as chemistry, traveling, food, teaching, beer, writing, board games, editing, etc. But finally I decided that the one thing I was most interested in currently was making passive income online! I’ve listened to literally dozens of podcast episodes on the topic, read numerous books, attended webinars, and talked about it endlessly with friends and family. It may not be my first choice in terms of creating immediate passive income, but I hope it will at least help to keep me motivated to continue learning and doing, as well as providing me with a steady stream of things to blog about.

Once I decided on my topic, I needed two things: a domain name and a web host. You could get started by just creating a free page at wordpress.com and having an address like ilovebutter.wordpress.com, but if you’re serious about creating a business and having some credibility then it’s worth the few dollars it takes to setup a site properly.  Plus, you’ll probably find that once you actually invest some money into it you feel almost obligated to do something with it, which can be a huge bonus early on!

[Scary disclosure! Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase through them. But I only recommend what I’m actually using and having a good experience with, so rest easy. If you decide to use one of the links, then thank you for supporting this blog and taking part in this passive income experiment!]

Baby Step #1

I began by brainstorming names for my blog and trying them out at GoDaddy, a domain name registrar, to see which were taken. Initially I tried anything that came to mind like makingmoneyonline.com, financialfreedom.com, journeytofinancialfreedom.com, creatingwealthonline.com, howididit.com, kentrocksthefreeworld.com, etc. The easiest way to try out numerous domain names at once on the GoDaddy website is to to click All Products > Domains > Bulk Domain Registration and then enter up to 500 possible names. GoDaddy will quickly let you know which are available.

You can search multiple domain names at once to see which are available by going to All Products > Domains > Bulk Domain Registration as shown above. (Click to enlarge)

Tip: Try to choose a domain name that includes your keywords or primary focus. If your focus is on crocheting blankets then try to pick a domain that includes the keywords crocheting and blankets. This will help drive organic traffic to your website whenever someone searches for “crocheting blankets” online.

Once I decided my focus would be on creating passive income online, I started searching for domain names that included those keywords.  I tried domain names such as creatingpassiveincome.com, creatingpassiveincomeonline.com, howtocreatepassiveincome.com, guidetopassiveincome.com, journeytopassiveincome.com, etc. Eventually I settled on stepstopassiveincome.com, which I was honestly surprised was available!  So I broke out my credit card and reserved it painlessly at GoDaddy for less than $10 for an entire year.

Baby Step #2

Next, I needed to pick a web host. If a domain name is like the virtual address for your new business, then a web host is the building that houses it. Web hosts provide the space on their servers to store your witty writings, provocative podcasts, and vivacious videos (OK, that last one is a stretch) so the rest of the world can enjoy them. I researched far & wide, read numerous reviews, checked out what other websites were using, and finally decided to go with Bluehost. There are numerous providers out there, and I’m sure many of them are excellent, but I chose Bluehost for a few reasons:

1. Unlimited domains – Host all the websites you want on one account! How cool is that?
2. Unlimited data storage – Post all the blogs, images, audio, and video you desire.
3. 99.99% uptime means your website will most always be available.
4. Based in Utah with 24/7 US-based support and fast connections.
5. You can install WordPress with a couple of clicks. (More on WordPress below.)

Plans range from $4.95 to $6.95 per month depending on how long you want to sign up for. Regardless, I still find it amazing that you can host all of your websites and online businesses for just $5-7/month! How many other businesses can you begin with such little overhead!? Oh, and they even throw in one domain name for free!  Too bad I’d already reserved mine with GoDaddy. (But don’t worry, I chose a domain for another business I’ll tell you about later. Remember, I can host all the domains I want on the same Bluehost account!)

Baby Step #3

Finally, I had to decide how to create my actual website itself.  In the past I’ve gone old school, either writing the HTML code myself or using a program like Adobe Dreamweaver. But this time I decided to try out WordPress. Over 60% of all the websites in the world now use WordPress, so I figured it was worth giving it a shot.  Boy, am I glad I did because it’s so easy to setup, create content, and customize! Setup on Bluehost is a cinch (see my guide). Writing a new post is as simple as typing a letter in Microsoft Word. Customizing your website is crazy easy using various themes and plugins. (Themes change the entire look of your website, while plugins add functionality. For example, the current look of this website is thanks to the free Fashionista theme from aThemes. But those spiffy social media buttons above and below each post that allow you to share it on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. are easily added with a few mouse clicks by installing free plugin called Shareaholic.) It’s definitely the easiest website I’ve ever setup! Sure, there was a bit of a learning curve, but it’s fairly intuitive and in no-time at all I was up & running.  In fact, it only took me a couple of days to get this entire website off the ground and to a state where I felt comfortable sharing it. I find it amazing that I could start up an online business in two days for only a few dollars a month. If I can just make even $7-10/month I’ll be in the black!

Summary

In case you want to follow along, these are the baby steps that I’ve taken so far:

1. Researched and reserved a domain name with GoDaddy. (But remember, Bluehost gives you one domain name for free.)
2. Signed up for web hosting at Bluehost.
3. Installed WordPress and began customizing it with free themes and plugins.

Check out my step-by-step guide on how to sign up for a Bluehost account, choose a domain name, and install WordPress here.

In my next post I want to talk about ideas for creating passive income online. Perhaps you’re thinking that there’s nothing you know or are interested in that others care about or would pay money for.  But I think you’ll be surprised when you hear a few stories of exactly what people are doing right now online to earn passive income!

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