You don’t have to pursue “the next big thing” to make significant amount of money online; you also don’t have to be an authoritative blogger to make 5-figure income; in fact, what you need is to follow what works and focus on what you are doing.
A friend of mine is making $200,000 a year by laser-targeting his efforts in building his online business. In fact, he has been doing it for a decade so his strategy is time-tested and proven.
What my friend does is actually no secret. If you are dwelling long enough in online business and make money online, you’ll notice that many people are doing what he does.
No, what my friend does is not exploring the niches nobody has explored; his online business is on established, saturated market with tons of competitors. Cutting edge? Not even close. In fact, he learned a thing or two about social media and blogging from me, someone who can only dream to make such amount of money online; shame on me.
What my friend is doing, exactly: A case study
In essence, my friend is doing two things: Financial service lead generation and web directories.
No affiliate marketing, no direct selling, no emailing to prospects looking for business. He is running multiple sites in financial service and web directory niches.
In finance service niches, he partners with credit counseling companies. With his many finance sites, he drives targeted traffic in and converts visitors into leads. Leads are generated via filling in on-site forms and via calling a toll-free phone number (my friend is US resident – so it’s easy to take calls.) He forward the qualified lead information to the companies he partnered with. He is doing more than $10,000 a month from a dozen of finance sites he owns.
In web directory niches, he simply build and invest in good, well-promoted web directories that only take paid listing and make money from website listing fee. He is doing more than $5,000 a month from his web directories. And again, no, he does not own hundreds of directories; he owns less than 10 quality web directories.
Lessons learned
Like what I mentioned early in this article, the number one lesson I learn from my friend is that you need to focus in what you are doing. We often lose focus when it comes to exploring online business ideas, simply because there are plenty of opportunities out there on the Net.
You also need to continuously learn and adapt to things, because everything related to the Internet won’t stay the same forever. Not only focus, you need to master your niches and follow the trends in your industry up to the minute.
The next lesson I learned is that exploring something people don’t realise is not really a good idea. Micro-niches, some “underworld secrets,” and such could make you money, but you need special skills – mostly technical – in discovering those opportunities; this is the playground of the Internet marketing gurus – they can make millions out of this, but you need to be realistic: It’s probably not for you.
When people tell you that you should avoid highly competitive niches, don’t listen to them. All the niches in online business can be gold mines to the right person.
I don’t know about you, but I agree with my friend: A market is saturated simply because it is lucrative; that’s why there are so many people enter the market. There will be cut-throat competition, but focusing on what you are doing can make a difference, because 80 percent – maybe even 90 percent – of people entering the online business don’t have the resilience – many give up before striking on gold and telling everybody that the Internet gurus are scammers, there is no money in the Internet, and such.
Those who are resilient and focused will reap the reward. Are you ready to make money from your online business? If so, you need to focus, learn continuously, and tap to the trends in your target industry.
Any thoughts? Please share by commenting on this article.
Ivan Widjaya
On my way creating my own online business success story
Image by kipcurry