You Need Support to Make Money Online

Do you want to be able to make money online? Do you read about it all the time, maybe try some of the different ways, but nothing seems to work?
I read a log of blogs about building an online home-based business. Who doesn’t want to be able to work from home in a business of their own where they are their own boss and call all the shots?
Most of the bloggers that I read either promote creating your own digital product or affiliate marketing. I even read a post today about plr marketing. What are they?

Digital products are usually ebooks or membership sites and possibly a coaching program. They take a lot of work to create and usually require that you have a significant amount of experience at whatever you do. They are not great options for people just getting started. Running a coaching program is really only a little bit better than having a job because it requires you to trade your time for money, and your time is limited.
Affiliate marketing is selling someone else’s digital product for a commission. It is much easier than creating your own product because someone else goes to all of that work for you. You just agree to review the product on your blog and promote it in other ways and earn a commission. Commissions for affiliate products can run from a few percent (4% is usually what Amazon.com offers to their affiliates) up to 100% of the sale price in some cases. Usually they fall between 25% and 50%.
PLR stands for “private label rights.” Somebody creates a product, let’s say an ebook in this case, and they sell you all of the rights. You pay a one-time fee and you keep all of the commissions. That means that you own the product, you can modify the product, and are responsible for all of the product support should something go wrong.
What's the biggest challenge to making money online? Share on X

What’s the Biggest Challenge to Making Money Online?

They all work. There have been very successful people who have made a lot of money and created fantastic lifestyles with all of these methods. Of those methods, I like affiliate marketing the best. Somebody else creates and supports the product. You have no responsibility beyond sending them traffic and collecting a check.
The biggest challenge with those business models I have talked about so far is an almost complete lack of support. With all of them you are truly on your own, what they sometimes call a solopreneur.
I don’t mean a lack of product support. You might be able to get some of that from an affiliate or PLR product. I mean a lack of business building support. There is no one to point you in the right direction. You’ve created or found a product that you want to promote. How do you go about it? You’re completely on your own.

How to Make Money Online and Have Support

So, is there an online business model that does include support on how to build your business? Yes, there is. It’s network marketing. Or if you want to do it online you can call it either online network marketing or internet network marketing.
One of the great things about network marketing has always been that  you are not on your own. Even if you get a crappy sponsor who signs you up and abandons you, you should be able to find someone else either in your upline or crossline who can help you. At least that’s how it’s been with the company I joined. I spend more time with people who are not in my pay line than I do with people who are.
Maybe right now you’re thinking…

Internet Network Marketing? Are you for real?

Yes! I’m absolutely for real.
If you’re thinking that, then you have a negative image of network marketing based on the actions of a few distributors who have been absolutely desperate to sign you up and/or make a sale. Don’t let the few color your view of the whole business. Car salesmen have the same reputation, yet you probably have a car anyway. Give it a serious look before you dismiss it.
Network Marketing is living life on your own terms. No questions asked! - Deborah Dawui Share on X
From an online marketing standpoint, network marketing is very similar to affiliate marketing, and that is pretty much how I approach my network marketing business. Someone else creates and supports the products. All you have to do is send traffic to the sales page and collect a check every month.
The benefit is that you have access to several other people who are also selling the product who can give you different perspectives on the product and how to approach your business. You may also get benefit from the fact that you are now promoting a physical product, and one that could generate repeat sales if it is a consumable item.

How to Build a Network Marketing Business Online

Obviously this is a much bigger topic than what I can get into at the end of this post. My goal here is just to get you thinking about the possibility. I will layout the basics of how I have built my internet network marketing business.
I have broken it up into three parts:

• The products – this is where you make your money
• Product blog – where you promote the products to generate traffic
• Business blog – where you promote the business opportunity

This is just how I have done it. It’s definitely not the only way to do it.

The products

The network marketing company you join should have a website where you send your customers so that they can order online. If they don’t, then it’s too much work because you have to be involved in every sale and are going to lose business while you are sleeping. You’re back to having a job. Find another company that supports online sales.
You can link directly to your company’s product pages if you want to. I created pages for each of the products that I promote so that I can get my pages to rank on the search engines and get traffic. They also make maintaining my links easier because I only have one place linking to an external site instead of spread out across many blog posts and all of social media.
You can see what my product pages look like here.

Product Blog

The product blog is the meat of how I generate traffic. A blog is great for talking about the products, like in a product review or to answer customer questions about the product. Writing about the kinds of issues that the products can address is another great idea.
Blog posts are better for sharing with people and a softer way to generate interest in your business and product than just showing someone a sales page right from the beginning. They are also great for generating internal links on your website to promote the product pages for the search engines.
My product blog is here.

Business Blog

I separate out my business blog from my product blog because there is a very specific audience that would be interested in what I talk about here. I figure that the people who are only looking for the products might be turned off if they come to the website and start seeing a bunch of posts about how they could be building the business for themselves instead of buying the products from me. In my mind they are different audiences so I separated them out.
You are reading my business blog right now.

What Do You Think?

These are my thoughts on the best way to build a home-based business online. I like having the support of other people who are involved in the same business and products that I am. Naturally I think this is the best way because it is how I’ve been doing it for years. You can find more about working with me  in my network marketing business here.
I would love to hear your thoughts. Do you agree with me? Do you think having your own digital product or an affiliate product is better? Let me hear about it in a comment below. Let’s start a friendly debate about the best way to build an online business. There are no winners or losers because everyone is different and people have been successful in all of them.

Disclaimer

There is never any guarantee that you will make money when you start a business. It required diligence and persistence, and is still not guaranteed. I make no claims of any particular income level. I can only tell you that I have made money doing this, and I enjoy it (I mean I enjoy building my business online, though I do enjoy the money too).