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Looking for the best ways to make money online?
You might be thinking, “I'm in direct sales, I make money online by selling my products online.” And while that's true, what if I told you that you could make money online in other ways as well? In fact, with some proper planning and research, you could double or even triple your revenue.
A couple of things to keep in mind as you build out your monetization plans: not every strategy is necessarily going to work for every consultant. There are several ways to make money online and your direct sales company may have rules about which one(s) you can use. Additionally, each of these strategies is going to require your time and attention to get fully set up and working.
But once they are set correctly, they require minimal attention from you, allowing them to continue making money for you while you work your parties and sales.
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Here are three of the top ways to make money online for direct sales consultants that aren't sales.
1. Start a YouTube Channel
How many times have you watched – or even shared – a video from YouTube that was related to your company or your products? What if those videos were from your own channel? Or, more than that, imagine if other consultants were sharing your videos to their groups and pages and parties?
While a lot of people use YouTube to get sales, YouTube also pays its creators for creating valuable content that their users want to watch. They do this by showing ads on videos – the more people that see the ad, the more money you can make. Which means you can make money simply by having videos available for other consultants to share.
What kinds of videos are we talking?
Easy! What kinds of videos do you share with your groups that are not directly showing off your products?
- Self-care
- Time management tips
- Life hacks
- Book readings
- Cooking videos / recipes
Whether the videos showcase the products or just give valuable advice in a related area, if you or other consultants use them to bring value to their audience, it's a win-win for you.
How much money can you make this way? Depending on how many videos you have, how shareable they are, and how long they are, you can get up into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars per day. Just don't expect it to happen overnight.
First, you have to grow to 1,000+ followers and accumulate over 4,000 hours in watchtime views to be eligible for monetization – so it can take a little bit of time to get there. But you can use that time to build your brand and get your name out there.
2. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a great way to supplement your income by promoting tools, resources, and products you love to your audience.
What kinds of products? Once again, look for things your audience will find valuable – especially if they are products that make using your products even easier or better. If you sell food-related products and recipes, try signing on to be an affiliate for a company that sells kitchenware or cooking classes. If you sell makeup, try looking for products related to cleansers, organizers, mirrors, or cameras. If you often recommend books, find retailers for book readers, book marks, and other fun additions.
You can find several affiliate programs online, but here are a few of my favorites:
What kinds of products should you promote? Some people have a strict rule about only promoting things they use and love. For the most part, this is the rule I follow. If I recommend it to you, then it's a pretty safe bet that I use it on at least one of my websites or social profiles.
However, that's not necessarily a requirement. Perhaps you've taken the time to research and properly vet several alternatives but then decided to go with one over another one because of price or because of a particular feature the other one doesn't have – does that mean you can't recommend the other one to someone else if you know it will help them with something?
Is your audience really using all the same tools you're using? Probably not, unless they are consultants as well. But if that's the case, then this is a whole different conversation.
As long as you respect your audience's trust in you and your word and you continue to properly vet any product before recommending it, then it should be okay to promote that product to your audience through an affiliate link and grab a little compensation for your time and research.
3. Creating and Selling Digital Products
You've worked hard to get to where you are in your business today. Even if you're not quite where you want to be just yet, think about how far you've come.
That was a lot of work!
How much easier would it have been on you if you knew then what you know now? Take a look at your tool inventory: those trackers and templates and spreadsheets and cards….How much easier would your life have been if you'd had those from the very beginning?
Those are all things that can help make someone else's life easier now – giving them a bit of a jumpstart on their new business venture.
What kinds of digital products can you sell? Anything you had to create that would have made your life easier:
- keyword trackers
- customer trackers
- happy mail trackers
- hashtag trackers
- graphics templates
- party scripts
The list goes on and on and on.
And the best part about creating and selling digital products is that you can sell them to anyone. Some people think that if you create a tracker, you can only give it to your team or to other consultants in the same company…and then they find out that there are rules against selling things or profiting off other consultants and they give up.
But let me ask you something: if someone from a different company, selling different products, had shown you a customer tracker that you could customize to fit your business when you were brand new…how much easier would your life have been when you were just starting out?
Like a squillion times easier, right?
So, even if your company has guidelines in place that restrict you from selling digital products to your team or to other consultants, there is still a whole lot of room for you to be able to help so many other consultants.
Where can you sell these digital products? You name it and you can sell it there: your own website, your social channels, online marketplace, you can even sign up for an account over at Direct Creatives (and, bonus, they'll actually teach you how to market and sell that new digital product so you can really maximize those profits and start making money!)
What do you think?
Ready to make some money online?
#EmpowerSocial
