...I was standing at the waterpark, staring at the phone in my hand. Every time it dinged, I must have been getting a surge of endorphins and epinephrine. I felt this wonderful feeling of achievement and happiness.
And it was amazing.
I remember the sounds of the park around me, the way the sun beat down that day, my kids laughing and running around. All the while, my wife and I were staring at these notifications. I was getting paid.
I had put in a lot of work upfront: I had automated a process and put a product online. And here I was spending the day with my family, making sales without lifting a finger.
I had put in a lot of work upfront: I had automated a process and put a product online. And here I was spending the day with my family, making sales without lifting a finger.
That moment changed my life.
Eventually, I had to put the phone away to go spend the day with my family. It was a great day; we had a lot of fun. And in the back of my mind, I knew as I was going down the waterslide or playing with my kids or having a hot dog, that in the background, I had created a system that was making me money.
Getting Paid Online
In today’s installment, I am talking about what it takes to get paid online. This is a pretty basic topic, but it gives you the foundation you’ll need to make money online.
In the previous blog, we talked about different ways to make money. Digital products, dropshipping and so forth. But how do you actually get that money? How does one make a transaction from the good or service to the actual money in your bank account? There are a couple of different ways to go about it.
The first thing I did to make money online was selling t-shirts. I was able to upload a design to the Teespring marketplace, and whenever anyone bought that t-shirt, they would create and ship it to the customer.
To get that setup, I first had to create a Teespring account, which meant filling out all of my information on the Teespring site before I could upload my designs.
To get paid when someone bought a t-shirt, however, I also had to have an account with PayPal, the payment processor. They're the ones actually handling the money in the transaction. And because PayPal is so well known, it integrates with many different companies and software. Setting up a PayPal account, setting up my Teespring account, and then connecting the two was all very simple within the Teespring application.
I would upload a design to the Teespring website, and tell people about it by sharing the link to that design. There would be a buy button, which would take buyers through Teespring's process. Teespring received a notification to create the shirt, and the customer would be sent to checkout. During checkout, the customer’s money would go into Teespring's account. In a month or two, Teespring would transfer the month's revenue to my PayPal account, where I could transfer it to my bank.
So I didn't get paid immediately. But I did get paid eventually. It's a cool process, and once you get it set up, it's very simple. Teespring was great, but I had to keep running ads to sell the shirts, and I wasn't able to produce enough profit. I know people who have become very successful in doing that. And I did enjoy it.
The Magic of Marketplaces
The same process applied with Udemy, the course creation platform that I started on. That's where I made my first courses. I created a Udemy account, I filled out my information. And instead of uploading shirt designs, I was uploading courses and videos. On Udemy, you could teach whatever you want. It could be yoga, guitar, cooking, weightlifting, business or design. Any of these things, and much more.
The same thing would happen on Udemy as it did on Teespring. Students would come to the site, find my course, and hit the buy button. Udemy would send them the course and collect the payment. I also set up PayPal with Udemy. And each month or two, Udemy sends me a check for however much revenue I’ve made.
Udemy and Teespring are both marketplaces, which means they feature products and services for customers. As a creator or content provider, you share your profit with the marketplace. Udemy is a marketplace with thousands of instructors and millions of students. They take a cut because they're handling the hosting, website, fulfillment, customer service, marketing, and advertising, etc.
Alternately, you could have your own website with your own courses, and keep more of the profits. But you would have to invest in all those things I just mentioned.
Either way, the very basics of the transaction are simple. People are trading money for a good or service. And they're deciding is it worth buying that good or service? In my case, they look at my course and say "Is the money I'm going to spend on this course worth the information I'll get?"
Most of the time, the answer is yes. And that's all this really is.
Your Income Strategy
So, what can you do to make money online? Can you offer a service? Design something? Write music? Can you teach someone how to do yoga? Can you teach someone how to create a business like I'm doing?
In a previous post, I wrote about affiliate marketing, where you can make money off of other people's products. With affiliate marketing, the same transaction is happening. The only difference is that you're the advertiser for someone else's product, and that person is giving you a cut of the sale.
So if you're an affiliate, you tell the customer, "Hey, I've got this cool product or service or online course. You should check it out." The customer follows your recommendation and buys the product. In the transaction, the customer gets the online course, or golf club, or whatever it is. The owner of the product or service gets their money. And they pay the affiliate 50% or 30% or 10%, or whatever amount is agreed on.
They can send you that money in various ways. Typically, it's through software or a PayPal account. But it all comes down to transactions.
What I want you to understand is that making money online is easier than people think. It's a lot easier than I thought it was.
At this point, I've created multiple revenue streams over several different platforms. All of these are funneled back into my bank account, usually on a monthly basis, one way or another. I get paid through PayPal, direct deposits, and checks in the mail.
It's a very simple strategy.
For instance, I actually have my courses on a couple of different platforms. On platform a), I get one payment schedule. It might be every two months and I get paid on the sixth of the month. On platform b), I get paid every month, on the 15th.
It's cool because once you set up some of these revenue streams, you can get paid at different intervals. And they all start accumulating and becoming more and more powerful.
Modern Moneymaking Online
Back in the early days of internet commerce, merchants had to set up shopping carts and that kind of thing. I know a little about this because I did some web design work for a while. It was a lot more complicated back then to make transactions happen. But now that PayPal, Stripe and other payment processors have come in and gotten bigger, it's become easier. Most of these marketplace websites integrate things like PayPal and Stripe and direct depositing in their services. So you can go online and find one of these marketplaces and different ways to make money.
Even if you're doing YouTube, for example, and you want to make money from ads, you simply set up your PayPal account and connect it to your YouTube account. YouTube will generate ad revenue for you as people watch your ads; you make money, and YouTube puts it in your account for you, and then you withdraw from that account.
So to get started, do some research and find out what you want to do to make money online. Then you decide which platform you want to work on. Simply set up an account with the marketplace platform and the payment processor they use. It's very simple.
I talk to people, and when they don't know about this world or how to have an online business, it sounds very complicated. But I want you to know how simple it can be to get started.
I hope this gives you some ideas about how you can make money online and how easy it is to receive payments. In future installments, I will start drilling down on some of the digital products that I like to talk about; things like ebooks and courses.
And what would an extra hundred dollars do for you a month? Or an extra $500, $5,000 or $10,000? That is possible. And it's getting easier. There are so many great ways to do it now, that I can't wait to tell you more.
I hope you're enjoying the blog. Stick around, we're definitely going to deep dive into a lot more specifics on these topics. I'm going to keep posting and teaching you what I've learned along my journey. I'm still learning, and I can't wait to share all these exciting things with you.
Please also check out my podcast, The Digital Product Show. Visit digitalproductshow.com to find out where the podcast is available, or search for The Digital Product Show on your favorite listening platform.
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