Tenet 1: Garner Attention Online
In 2023, we will be living in an attention economy. The game's name is online money generation to garner attention, i.e., generate online traffic (views, impressions, clicks, and engagement) and make people pay for a product or service.
In today's world, a recurring number of eyeballs directed towards your 'digital property' could be synonymous with cash flow. The cash flow amount depends on how often your views or leads pay you or use your digital setup to buy something else through you.
For an entrepreneur to garner attention, there are two routes: paid ads and organic. Read more on Paid Ads vs. Organic: What Strategy Is Best For Your Business? I prefer the latter, but the ads method also makes sense, especially if you have a reasonable budget and a target demographic.
In the organic route, you'll need to produce and post content. If your content is excellent, or if you strategically choose the mediums you post to, you will garner attention more easily.
For example, the first to adopt the internet had a net advantage in collecting revenue from it simply because they were on the platform first. They were the ones that had the intellect to buy off the best domains. Read about how the internet affects culture here.
Or for example, the first people to post on YouTube had a net advantage over those that joined years later.
So the question becomes how to facilitate the achievement of garnering attention online. There are thousands of ways to do so, but you'll want to focus on platform algorithms, trends and virality.
Identifying trends before they happen is a huge advantage to position yourself before cash flows to where you expect them to be. Being on the lookout and getting creative will set you apart from the masses. Creative and outside-the-box thinkers are well-suited to identify incoming trends and position themselves accordingly.
As for virality, that is more subject to luck. The drawback to viral digital achievements is that they are short-lived experiences, but sometimes more is needed to give you a head start toward digital conquest. For example, if a person sells a product that had gotten viral through drop shipping, his revenue would have spiked, allowing him to transition to more sustainable income models thanks to the capital gained.
Tenet 2: Produce Content Online, and Call your generated user views to pay
Depending on the platform, your goal is to facilitate the click of a purchase button. Whether the click needs to go through your website, affiliate link, or within the platform itself does not matter.
A wide variety of different strategies can be discussed at this point. Some to achieve the goal of getting you to buy is through grabbing some contact information in exchange for some info product. There are a lot of different info products out there. One that is popular is the famous free webinar. The webinar is the time and place digital entrepreneurs sell higher ticket items.
The process of getting clients to buy depends on different factors. On the technical side, some social media platforms or search engine applications will facilitate this process. In contrast, others have their developers set up limitations, and regulations that hinder you from achieving that goal, usually through various platform rules or technical setups. Read about the negative effects of social media.
There is also the user experience aspect for getting a client to buy. The entire client experience must be accounted for when setting a client acquisition funnel. Pre-meditating the buying and customer service experience will help avoid client upsets and setbacks, therefore equating to more revenue.
Entire books were written on the subject of marketing and consumer buyer psychology.
Buyers make compulsive decisions, are good at rationalizing a purchase after the fact, are influenced by others and authority (what they perceive as such), and tend to reciprocate. Also, they are likelier to say yes if they have already committed to something else with a seller.
I recommend reading The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. Here is a summary of The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini's book by Medium Blog writer Ravi Kumar.
As a Heuristic, small social media platforms make it better to generate clicks. In contrast, significant players, i.e. the infamous platforms everyone uses, privilege established businesses and have developed an environment where the status quo is beheld. That is unless you have excellent content. Therefore, unique content is something to strive for.
We can see this dynamic becoming more and more prevalent. For example, more and more social media platforms require 1,000 followers to place a link in a bio, clearly stating their legitimate position vis-a-vis starting online business entrepreneurs. Platforms limit small entrepreneurs because of the potential harm that can be achieved without strict rules enforced.
Also, as another example, manipulating the Google algorithm to rank higher in terms of SEO was easy pre-2005. Then, ever since, Google has implemented robust systems enabling high authority domains to position higher more quickly. Learn more on what are backlinks from moz.com.
Tenet 3: Maximize Your Online and Processes Performance
Keep in mind that the average consumer is a visual being. Therefore, you must lower their skepticism through your authority level, which links to the third tenet of making money online. Professional digital assets are the best way to be seen as legitimate. In a digital web full of misinformation and scams, gaining client trust takes time.
To increase trust, one should; for example, have professional content. If faith is negated from the equation, so will the number of sales you can close.
When you pick a niche, it generally means you know what you will be selling. A good strategy is to establish yourself as an authority in that niche. To do so, you publish high-quality content on the subject matter. The internet is fantastic because you do not need credentials or past work experience to establish yourself as an expert. Also, no hassle of dealing with gatekeepers, such as HR people, to work and generate income!
Also, performance is essential. Speed can mean two things. In a loose sense, one is the idea that everything must function quickly. Some examples of that are: setting up a website, time to fulfill an order, setting up an ad campaign, and responding to customer queries, which are all examples of things that need to be addressed quickly.
Learn more from this Forbes article on Speed Is The Most Important Thing For Your Business.
Speed is super important because the work you previously finished and the cash generated from it can be utilized quicker when accomplishing things fast. Therefore you spare yourself time and dispose of capital leverage. That time and capital then compound the more you perform under speed and other facets of your business.
But at some point, you'll arrive at a bottleneck caused by scaling problems. This is another subject. Different approaches can be made. For example, you can find talent online to do the tasks you usually do and pay them for a budget cost. Or you can find software that enables you to be more productive. Please read my article on the power of code to understand the importance of utilizing software that will enhance your life.
The second meaning of speed is speed, technically. Make sure your operations are performant. Examples would be your website load speeds need to be on point. Also, leveraging automation is critical. You want your repetitive processes to be automated. Tools like Zapier are great for automating emails, sending third-party notifications, setting up Zoom calls, share digital resources on cloud hosting services like Dropbox.
Conclusion
Notice everything we are trying to do, aligns with what Luke Belmar nailed as 'positioning' and 'intentionality.' Watch this youtube short of Luke Belmar talking about 'intentionality.' | Youtube. The idea is that more effort does not necessarily equate to more money. Otherwise, Onlyfans models would make pennies, and Janitors would make millions.
Hard work needs to be placed in endeavours that create leverage.
Remember, money is like water and water changes locations constantly; you must be positioned to get wet. Position yourself strategically in the digital realm and trust in the most Merciful.