Welcome to my article on how to become a successful entrepreneur online. We are going to look at 5 steps that I myself have used to become successful in this field.
- 1. Find a niche you are interested in
- 2. Become an affiliate marketer
- 3. Build a website around this niche
- 4. Create a YouTube channel around this niche
- 5. Run Bing Ads
1. Find a Niche you are Interested In
To be a successful promoter of something, you need to have a real interest in it as well as a certain level of experience. This is how you are going to get good at selling as well as persevere with your online marketing. What are your interests? What do you like? What passion do you have that you could potentially turn into a business? Is it technology related? Perhaps computers, MacBooks, iPads or studio equipment such as microphones, cameras or even lighting elements? Is your niche perhaps more sports or entertainment related? Mountain bikes, drones, basketball etc. Or are you into health, supplements, body fat loss, diet, etc?
We all have something we’re into, something we think about a lot. Whatever it is, you should be able to build an online business around it. As we will see further on in this article, you can become an affiliate for the products that belong to your niche, you can build a site, a channel and run ad campaigns all around this particular interest you have.
Finding a niche you are interested in gives you focus and brings out your passion for it, making an online business more of a fun experience and not something tedious and frustrating. You will know your stuff, you will enjoy talking about it, you will be able to promote the related products without sounding like a spammer and you will take pleasure in creating content around it. It all starts with the question of what to go with. Then you must simply make a decision and move on to the next step. If you really and truly don’t know what to start with, just go for the make money online niche.
2. Become an Affiliate Marketer
The next step after choosing your niche is to sign up as an affiliate who promotes products and services related to that specific niche. An affiliate marketer is simply someone who helps in the marketing efforts of a seller such as Amazon, ClickBank, JVZoo or Wealthy Affiliate. You job is to use your own methods and strategies to promote these products on the seller or vendor’s behalf. As an affiliate you will be given a unique link for each product you promote. Every time someone purchases something through your affiliate link, you will earn a commission on the sale of that product. Many digital products come with monthly subscription plans, allowing you to gain the benefit of recurring commissions.
Affiliate marketing is a great, hassle-free way to start an online business: no products of your own to worry about, just promotion of other people’s products, no customer service to deal with, no having to work 9-5 under a boss, no small fixed rate of weekly earnings, but the potential to earn more and more the better you become at affiliate marketing and the more you grow your online business.
3. Build a Website Around this Niche
Your next step once you have signed up and become an affiliate for products within your chosen niche, is to build your own website discussing this niche and promoting related products through interesting, engaging articles and reviews. Once your site gains traction, it will generate organic traffic. That is, people online will find your site through Google search, or through Bing and Yahoo and out of the many visitors it will attract, some will go on to buy the products recommended and promoted on your site.
The advantage of this is that you will not have to pay for these customers as in the case of ads. They will come of their own accord simply by searching for information and products that you are already offering on your site. A steady flow of traffic means eyes on your offers and since it will be targeted traffic due to the keywords used in your titles and articles, you have a high probability of generating plenty of sales.
It will take a good bit of time and honest work, but the rewards will come later and you will be able to look back at your efforts and thank yourself. Taking a long but sure way to success is better than looking for a short, fairly empty way of making money and then likely ending up with burnout, loss of money and eventual failure.
4. Create a YouTube Channel Around this Niche
Why not add to your affiliate website a YouTube channel which discusses and promotes the same things as your site does? What better way to increase the flow of free traffic to your business than by creating videos on YouTube, the largest, free video platform on the internet? The potential for sales here could double or even triple because overall, most people these days will sooner watch a video than read an article.
It works both ways: your website can be supported by your channel and your channel can be used to refer more visitors and potential buyers to your website.
5. Run Bing Ads
A website won’t cost you much money to run and YouTube is of course completely free to use and grow. So with even a fairly small budget, you could start running some ads as a side hustle and start making sales sooner. Even while you are making money with your site and/or channel, you can definitely use Bing Ads to increase your revenue.
Bing Ads is like Google Ads, only it is more cost-efficient. It may have a far smaller audience but you are more likely to save money and you can still make a lot of money if you become good at it.
Running Bing Ads (now called Microsoft Ads) is something that is taught in depth to students within the Wealthy Affiliate online training community. Otherwise there are other ways to learn about it such as through courses on Udemy or various bloggers and YouTubers. But since the teaching in Wealthy Affiliate comes from experts in the affiliate marketing industry with many years of experience and a very high level of credibility, this gives them a certain authority, making them easy to trust and follow.
My Overall Recommendation
I recommend that you become a member of Wealthy Affiliate for Free today and get started with affiliate marketing within a friendly community of like-minded people and excellent training. I would love to be your coach moving forward and as well as all the bonuses I will give you once inside, I will also give you advice on growing a YouTube channel.
Wishing you the very best in your aspirations to become a successful online entrepreneur!
Awesome post on how to become a successful entrepreneur online. I definitely agree that Wealthy Affiliate is a great place to get started in affiliate marketing and build a blog. I also agree that running a YouTube channel and ads is a great way to expand your reach significantly. I noticed that you talked about Bing ads. Is there a reason that you left out ads for other platforms such as Google and Facebook?
Thanks for the feedback. Yes, I also think WA is probably the best website training community online. This combined with a channel is a fulfilling business that gives real value to people. Bing Ads are far cheaper to run than Google Ads; they have a significantly lower PPC rate. As for Facebook Ads, it’s far too easy in my opinion to get your account banned by Fb. It’s a constant problem and frustration for those who adopt this strategy. Other than that though, they can be good.
Thank you so much for this awesome post! I am so glad I ran across this because I had planned on doing Google ads, and not bing ones, but if it is more cost efficient to take the bing ad route, then that is the route that I should go down, honestly. I also agree with you that building a website around a niche is the way to go because it deals with something you are passionate about so you can write more freely on the topic!
Oh, that’s brilliant that you got some practical use out of this! Yes, I always recommend that people go for the Bing Ads rather than Google Ads. You’ll save money and still be able to make plenty of sales if you do things correctly. And yes, definitely having a niche you are passionate about is how you will persevere with your business and attain success!
All the best!
HI Dominic. Very interesting article. I just starting my adventure with digital marketing and posts like this are extremely useful. Amount of knowledge related to this business may be overwhelming at the beginning (for sure it was to me) and I couldn’t agree more that wealthy affiliate is best starting point for all beginners. There are tons of trainings there which walked me through all topics related to affiliate marketing in clear and structured way. Highly recommending!
That’s great to hear! Thank you, and I am pleased to hear you have already learned so much from the Wealthy Affiliate community. You’ve made a wise decision. If you keep going with it, you will become an experienced blogger and affiliate marketer with time! Wishing you every success!