You’re an entrepreneur. You don’t want a job. You want to build a business. 9-to-5 doesn’t exist in your mind. Because you’ll do what it takes to get the job done the right way. Always. It doesn’t matter how long you need to work. And it doesn’t matter what you need to sacrifice. Because you’re all in—one hundred percent devoted to your cause.
Still, we all know that hard work alone doesn’t cut it, right? Yes, you need to work hard. But you also need to work smart. You need leverage to make money as an entrepreneur. Real money. Why? Because there’s so much noise. So much to do. So many tasks that can bog you down and hold you back from accelerating your growth and making a boatload of cash.
But delegation doesn’t come easy for you. Right? It’s hard to let others do the things you know you’re better at. They can’t do it as good as you. There’s not a single person you can trust with that task. You know it and I know it. And that’s precisely the thing that’s holding you back. Time is a finite resource. You only have so much of it. But with leverage you can compress time. And you can accelerate your growth.
What makes us great as entrepreneurs also holds us back. The truth? We can’t do it all. And the more you try to do it all the less money you’ll make as an entrepreneur or business owner. You must be able to hire people and implement systems and processes to grow and scale fast. This isn’t about trying to make a little bit of money here just to survive. This is about finding ways you can thrive by making a lot of money and making it fast. Very fast.
How to Make Money as an Entrepreneur
If you want to make money, there are quick ways and there are slow ways. You can make money online or offline. In your sleep and from your phone. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you understand the principles of time and leverage. Most entrepreneurs feel trapped. They feel stuck. After all, they try to do everything. And that doesn’t work. You’ll never make enough money like that.
Money buys time. And it buys leverage. When you start out you must implement systems and processes that will compress time. Everything you do on a daily basis should be farmed out. Everything. Build systems and processes at scale. Systematize everything. Every last thing. That allows you to compress time and focus on real money-making activities.
While there are many ways to make money, the point is this. Take one thing and focus on that. It should be the core money-making activity in your business. After all, you’re the creative genius behind it all. You’re the one running the show that everyone else is relying on. Why would you spend time working on activities that can easily be farmed out?
Running a one-man show is not a business. It’s a job. If you want to make money as an entrepreneur you must build a business that’s sustainable. Think about it this way. What would happen if you couldn’t work for 6 months? As an employee you would likely lose your job. As a business owner? Would you still have a business? If not you don’t have a business. You have a job.
#1: Build Sales Funnels
It doesn’t matter what business you’re in. You could be selling anything under the sun. Products. Services. Business to business. Business to consumer. It does not matter. If you don’t have a sales funnel you will struggle to make money as an entrepreneur. And I don’t say that lightly. Sales funnels are the key to the success of the biggest businesses on earth.
Sales funnels allow you to compress time and buy leverage—the keys to entrepreneurial success. Websites are outdated. If you’re relying on a website to make you money, then you might not make it very far. Why? Because websites overwhelm us with choices. There’s so much going on when you visit a website. Most people get lost in them. That’s not the case with sales funnels.
A sales funnel has a singular focus. It points the prospect in one direction. It has one aim. A direct path. That’s why they convert far better than websites—137% better (on average). So if you don’t have a sales funnel, build one now. What kind of funnel should you build? Start by creating a lead magnet and promote it inside of a lead generation funnel.
#2: Sell Digital Products
Even if you’re selling physical products right now you should consider selling digital products. It doesn’t mean you need one or the other. You can sell digital products alongside physical products. Even better is that you can combine the two together. Digital products are a great way to make money because the fulfillment costs you next to nothing. There’s no shipping involved at all.
Digital products work great when they’re designed to solve problems. After all, to make real money as an entrepreneur you must be in the business of solving problems. The bigger the problems you can solve the more money you can make. That’s clear as day. Digital products are no different. They should be designed to solve a specific problem for a specific person.
Selling digital products online is easy. You can set up a sales funnel or use a system like Shopify to sell digital products. Use a system that helps you fulfill the digital product automatically. This takes the guesswork out of fulfillment. As long as you can position that digital product the right way, the sky is the limit. Why? Because there’s no inventory. No fulfillment. No shipping. It’s all digital.
#3: Digital Marketing
How do you make money in digital marketing as an entrepreneur? Many ways. The first is to focus on paid channels. These are your search engine marketing tactics where you can pay to run ads to an offer or a landing page. You can run video ads or social media ads. Whatever it takes to get the prospect to show up to your landing page.
But most entrepreneurs don’t get this right. They run ads to a page where they try to sell off the bat. That typically doesn’t work. Especially when you’re marketing to a cold audience. Instead, you should run ads to a lead magnet that addresses the problem and agitates the pain. Once a prospect claims your lead magnet, you can develop a relationship with them. And that’s when the real magic begins.
You can also focus on organic methods for digital marketing. Whatever product or service you sell can be promoted organically. Yes it’s more time-consuming and complicated. But the results speak for themselves. Because organic traffic is highly relevant and it’s free. So invest in things like search engine optimization to help increase sales and revenue for your business fast.
#4: YouTube
You can promote any type of business on YouTube. Whatever industry or niche you’re in doesn’t matter. What matters is your consistency in posting high quality content on a consistent basis. Keep in mind that YouTube growth is typically slow. It takes time to grow a YouTube channel. But it’s time well spent. Because YouTube can be a big driver of growth.
Most entrepreneurs looking to make money turn to YouTube at some point. YouTube offers some of the best monetization in terms of ad revenue. You can expect anywhere from $5 to $15 per thousand views (CPM) on YouTube. That’s incredibly high. But the beauty of YouTube goes far beyond that. It offers one of the most engaged audiences anywhere out there.
You can use your YouTube audience to sell whatever it is that you’re peddling. You can also use it to do affiliate marketing by promoting affiliate links inside of your video descriptions. The best way to approach YouTube is to create videos around the problems that people struggle with. Problems that you can solve in your business. Think about all the problems they face that apply to your business. Then create videos that address those problems by offering solutions.
#5: Social Media Marketing
Social media is a powerful way to promote any business. On social media you have access to the entire world. You can use platforms like TikTok and Instagram to grow your business fast on social media. Document your journey and address objections that your target audience faces. Use your videos to share stories and allow people to get to know you.
You can also use social media to build a marketing business. Build up your social media profile and make it look professional. Then you can target other businesses on social media platforms by sending them direct messages. You can offer to help them grow their social media following and promote the products and services that they’re selling.
You can make a lot of money on social media many different ways. But the best ways involve growing and scaling the products and services you have to offer. Build a brand. Not just a business. This way no matter what happens to your business you will still have your brand. That’s the power of social media today.
#6: Email Marketing
Email marketing is the most powerful form of marketing. Period. If you’re not using email marketing to grow your business then you’re doing yourself a disservice. Email has the highest return on investment of any marketing channel. Use a powerful lead magnet inside of a lead generation funnel to grow your email list fast.
When you run ads, make sure you run them to a lead magnet. You’ll get the best return on your ad spend. And once a person is on your email list you can use the power of storytelling to build rapport and develop a relationship with that person. That will warm up the cold audience. It’ll take them from being problem-aware to being aware of who you are and the solution you provide.
That doesn’t mean you can’t make money with a powerful trip wire or other irresistible offer to a cold audience. You can. But for most entrepreneurs looking to make money, you need to focus on building up the list. And that all starts with a great lead magnet. Take the time to build up powerful lead magnets so that you can take your business and income to the next level.
#7: Online Courses
Online courses are a great way to make money online no matter what business you’re in. Every entrepreneur must understand that the online educational industry is growing fast. And people want to consume organized content to better understand how to solve problems they’re facing. But this isn’t just about solving a broad problem like “how to make money online.” That’s a tough course title to sell. And most people who see an online course with a title like that think it’s a scam.
Don’t go broad. Niche down. Because the riches are in the niches. Think about specific problems you can solve for specific people. Instead of teaching people how to make money online, teach them how to make money by reverse wholesaling single-family real estate. Can you see how that is far more specific? Or you can teach them how to line up cash buyers for reverse wholesaling single-family real estate.
The more specific you are, the more money you can charge for your online course. Why? Because you’re targeting a specific person who is facing a specific problem. People who start out in real estate wholesaling have a tough time finding cash buyers. You can design an entire online course about ways you can find cash buyers. And you can charge more money for this. And the more money you can charge, the more money you can make.
#8: Affiliate Marketing
Even if you have an existing business, you can make money with affiliate marketing. All you need to do is be really good at promoting affiliate links. To do that you need to create value. It’s not just about spamming links. Help people solve the problem that the affiliate offer intends to solve. Maybe you do that by creating a video tutorial for how to use the affiliate product or service. Or maybe you take a different approach.
You can also take the existing products or services that you sell and roll them into an offer for anyone who joins the affiliate program using your link. That helps incentivize a person to join that affiliate program because they’re receiving valuable products and services from you. Either way, you are creating value for the end customer.
Another way to make money with affiliate marketing is to take the product or service you sell and find affiliates to help you sell it. You can use existing affiliate networks such as CJ, Rakuten, Impact and others to do this. Create an affiliate program that pays 40% to 50% to attract the best affiliates into your program. That’ll help you make the most amount of money.
#9: Sell Physical Products
Most entrepreneurs know that they can make money selling physical products online. But what physical products should you sell? The best ones are products that are replenished. Think about razors, supplements, vitamins, snack bars, meal plans, and so on. This keeps customers coming back again and again.
The best way to sell physical products today is to use a sales funnel. Sales funnels give you the highest return on your ad dollars spent. It allows you to do upsells and downsells. This helps increase your average order value. And by doing products that replenish, you can have recurring revenue that keeps going. This boosts the lifetime value of a customer, allowing you to spend more to acquire those customers.
You can also sell physical products on Amazon FBA or use Shopify. Amazon opens you up to a massive audience and lets you ride the back of all the trust Amazon has built in the marketplace. But Amazon is also competitive and you must learn how to use the Amazon ads platform to grow and scale. Whatever way you approach it will require a lot of effort and time. Find experts who can help you to leverage and compress time to achieve your goals faster.
#10: Membership Sites
Membership sites offer recurring revenue. They’re similar to replenishable physical products. People keep coming back again and again for fresh content once they’ve consumed the existing content. Membership sites can help you make a lot of money as an entrepreneur. And the best part? You can tack on a membership site to just about any business.
Think about it this way. What valuable information can you provide regularly to help people in your industry or niche? What problems can you continue to help them solve? Think about newsletters and gated content. Tools and information. How can you provide valuable content to help them tackle the problems they face?
This takes some coordination and planning. However, people will gladly pay for membership sites that deliver real value. Can you provide group coaching to the members of the site? Will members gain access to a private Facebook group? Think about ways you can increase the value of the membership site to get as many people to enroll as possible.
#11: Make Offers
One of the best ways to make money as an entrepreneur is to make offers. But not just any old offers. Make irresistible offers and make them often. So what makes offers irresistible? Think about it this way. Have you ever come across an offer that was just so good you couldn’t pass it up? Meaning that it was loaded with so much value that you just couldn’t say no? And you just had to buy it? Of course you have.
We call those offers irresistible. That’s because you can’t say no. You just can’t. They’re designed so effectively that they have a high take rate. And the best most irresistible offers are offers designed to solve specific problems for people. You must be able to define and articulate that problem. You also have to quantify the solution. Don’t just create random offers that aren’t specific and don’t go after a specific problem.
The best part? You don’t need much to make money with offers like this. All you need is a social media account. And a willingness to put yourself out there. If you can face rejection and understand that some people will mock you and laugh at you, then you’ll succeed. Put your offer out there for people to see. If you structure it the right way and the right people see it, you’ll make money.
#12: Start a Blog
Blogs are one of the most powerful and effective weapons for entrepreneurs trying to make money online. Especially when those blogs provide highly useful content that delivers real value. Why? Because that will help you rank that content higher organically. And content that ranks high organically gets the most relevant traffic. And if you design your content the right way, it can move people to take the action you desire (i.e. build your email list, sell a product or service, fill out an application, and so on).
Search engines like Google are more likely to boost content they deem valuable. So your entire goal should be to craft valuable content. How do they determine what content delivers real value? Search engines can track everything. From the amount of time you spend on the page to how far down you scrolled and whether you shared that page with others. Everything. That’s how they know.
However, you don’t need to start a blog to do this. You can use existing blogging platforms like Medium and others to push your content out there. You can also use some of the blogging tools inside of our sales funnel software. Either way you approach this, please understand this. Blogging takes time to build traction. So don’t get discouraged. Build useful content regularly and share that content as widely as possible. But do it the right way. Don’t try to cut corners or take shortcuts. Put in the work and the time because the results will be worth it.
#13: Vacation Rentals
Vacation rentals are still a big business. No matter what the media tells you, people around the world are spending a lot of money to rent private luxury homes and villas around the world. That doesn’t mean you need to buy vacation rental properties. All you need to do is manage luxury vacation rentals. Luxury rentals because it takes the same amount of time and effort to rent out luxury homes as it does standard homes. And you’ll make way more money doing it.
When choosing the area you want to represent make sure that you pick a place known for luxury travel. Many areas around the world are a draw for wealthy travelers. You can pick places like St Barts, Monaco, Mallorca, Aspen, Courchevel, Punta Mita, Cabo San Lucas, and many others. And you can expect to make anywhere between twenty to forty percent of the gross rental rate for commissions.
You can promote your properties on many sites. Everyone knows about Airbnb. Airbnb does have a luxury side. After all, they did acquire a company called Luxury Retreats and turned it into their “Airbnb Lux” category. You can also use other sites to promote your vacation rentals. Sites like VRBO, FlipKey and others are used far more often to book luxury properties.
#14: Real Estate
Can you make money in real estate? Yes. You most certainly can. And there are many ways you can do it. But the best way you can approach this is by purchasing cash-flowing real estate. Multi-family properties should be your focus. Even if you can only start with a 4-unit building do it. Why? Because it’s not just about the cash flow that the property generates. It’s about the tax incentives and the typical gains over the years.
If you’re an entrepreneur and you make a high income, real estate allows you to offset some of those gains. While you should always speak to an accountant or lawyer, here in the United States there are many tax benefits associated with real estate. You can also make money by wholesaling real estate. Wholesaling means that you don’t use cash or credit to buy properties. You flip the contract.
To wholesale a property you must find a distressed seller or a property in bad shape. This is typically when properties have overgrown lawns, delinquent on taxes, in pre-foreclosure, have utility shut-offs, and so on. You hunt for properties like this and make deals with the owner for a reduced purchase price. You then flip that contract to a cash buyer and make a spread.