Courses?
Coaching?
Memberships?
Digital products?

Before you try to do everything (tempting, I know), let’s simplify this.

Start Simple With Your Online Business (This Is Where Most People Go Wrong)

Right now, my business has multiple income streams.

But I didn’t start that way. I wouldn’t recommend you do either.

• Start with 1–2 income streams
• Get them working
• Then layer in more later

Trying to build everything at once is like opening five stores on the same day… with one cashier (you )

Why Multiple Income Streams Still Matter

Once things are running, having multiple income streams is powerful.

• If one offer slows down → you have others
• If something stops converting → you can pivot quickly
• You’re not relying on one single idea to carry your income

I saw this firsthand recently.

My course sales slowed down for a bit, and I had to stop and rethink:

• What’s changing?
• What’s working now?
• What should I test next?

(Yes… AI has definitely changed the landscape.)

But because I had other income streams, I wasn’t stuck.

And once I had a breather from working on course sales I came back to it and figured out how to get my course sales moving again!

The 4 Best Online Business Models I Recommend

If you’re building an online business, these are the combinations I’ve seen work over and over again.

1. Coaching + Courses

• Coaching = faster cash flow
• Courses = scalable income

This is one of the best combos when you’re starting out.

You can:

• Work directly with clients
• Turn what you do into a course later

2. Membership + Courses

• Membership = recurring income
• Courses = deeper transformation

Great if you want:

• Community
• Ongoing support
• Predictable monthly revenue

3. Courses + Affiliate Marketing

• Courses = your own products
• Affiliate marketing = promoting others

This is a powerful combo because:

• You don’t need to create everything yourself
• You can earn while building your own offers

4. Digital Products + Courses

• Digital products = quick, lower-ticket sales
• Courses = higher-ticket transformation

Think:

• Templates
• Checklists
• Guides

These can bring in daily sales while your course does the heavy lifting.

The Thread That Connects All of These

No matter which model you choose…

You can sell all of them with one simple strategy:

One email a day.

That’s been the foundation of my business for years.

No complicated funnels required to start.
No constant content hamster wheel.

Just:

• Show up
• Share value
• Make offers

Your Simple Online Business Checklist (Start Here)

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, strip it back to this:

• Choose ONE main offer (coaching, course, etc.)
• Add ONE supporting income stream
• Start building an email list
• Send emails consistently
• Sell every week

That’s it.

You don’t need a perfect setup.
You need momentum.

Want Help Putting This Together?

If you want a full breakdown of how to set this up (step-by-step), I walk through all of this inside my course:

Lifestyle Freedom Business

It’ll help you:

• Choose your model
• Set up your offers
• Start making sales

This is just one piece of your online business checklist.

But it’s a big one.

Because once you know what you’re selling…

Everything else gets a whole lot easier.

The post Choosing Your Best Online Business Model (Without Overwhelm) appeared first on Living Lifestyle Freedom.

Today I worked with a VIP Day Client who was doing just that.

Here are the steps we went through to get her set up to make and sell printables from her new website:

Steps to Make and Sell Printables:

Step 1: Decide on a website or blog platform to sell your printables from

My client choose Wix to host her website for her printables and I think it was a fantastic choice! Wix is so smooth to use, intuitive and has so many pre-set features that save time (for example the entire shopping process including automatic customer emails with download included).

Of course there are other choices for your printables website. Here are a few:

• Shopify
• Squarespace
• Gumroad
• WordPress

Every option has its benefits and/or potential drawbacks. You’ll want to consider your needs, pricing, ease of use (test out trials if you can), etc.

I used to recommend WordPress for everything but it is definitely more tech heavy, requires you to maintain your own site and takes a lot more work to get a custom, seamless process like Wix did us easily in a five hour VIP Day!

Why not Etsy? Well… it has it’s benefits as well but if you don’t want to pay the higher fees and have much more control over your sales process then you would be better to choose a platform that gives you that control.

Step 2: Create Printables for Your Site

Canva makes it ridiculously easy to create printables.

In order to sell them and follow Canva’s licensing rules you need to create the design from scratch or significantly edit a template. There are rules around what you can and can’t do, so be sure to check those out.

See the Canva content rules here.

Once you’ve created your printable you simply download it as a PDF.

Step 3: Create Your Website to Sell Printables From

Choosing a platform that makes this a smooth process is a great idea. Wix made it super easy to create the website using a site template and the drag and drop editor was customizable, seamless and smooth.

We easily added opt-in forms for those who wanted to sign in to get a free printable. Created products that showed up by default on a shop page. We uploaded the PDF into the product area and that was automatically added to the product and delivered via email.

Other website software will create similar setups.

If you’re using a site like WordPress you have to do all the pages, emails and connections manually. It’s significantly more work to do that setup. The situation where this is a good choice is usually for blogging. WordPress themes and plugins allow for more of the functions and features that bloggers often need.

Step 4: Marketing and Selling Your Printables

I think we all know by now that “if you build it they will come” is a lie.

Nobody is seeing your website until you bring them TO the website.

Here are some of the ways I advised my client to bring traffic to her site that could sign up for her email list and buy her products:

• Join Bundle Events and Giveaways – learn how to do that here
• Telesummits, Podcasts & Interviews
• Give Away Printable to Membership Sites
• Pinterest – Pin your products and any content/blog posts about them
• SEO Optimization of Website and Product Pages/Posts

There are plenty of other ways you can grow your traffic and business.

My best advice about marketing anything you’re selling is find something that works well for YOU. Do what will make sense to your and move your business forward.

Step 5: Presence, Products, Promotion

In my membership, mastermind and coaching offers I teach a simple, repeatable, effective framework.

It’s this:

They all work together. Start in the most pressing “bucket” and them move through the others as needed. It will be a continuous movement through these as you create a business that works on YOUR terms, that builds your lifestyle freedom.

If you’re looking for lifestyle freedom check out my Lifestyle Freedom Business course, here, free.

Hope that helps!

The post How to Make and Sell Printables on Your Site appeared first on Living Lifestyle Freedom.

What is Website Flipping?

Website flipping is the activity of buying website, increasing their value, and then selling them for a profit.

Why Do It? Benefits of Site Flipping

There are so many great reasons to flip websites! Let’s go over them:

1. It’s a low-cost investment opportunity – You can buy websites to flip for as low as $300. The cost to improve them is only your own labor or the cost of hiring people to do the work for you. At this compared to other investment opportunities (like house flipping) you only need to invest small amounts and stand to gain large returns.
   
2. You can create passive income – While you are building up your websites to sell later you will be earning income, sometimes passive. So you earn while you are turning this investment into a more profitable asset. Win-win!
   
3. It’s easier than you think – You might think updating a website, making it look great and adding quality content is hard. Well, it’s easier than you think! Learning WordPress will be a great value to you. There are so many ways to get images and graphics that are high quality. And writing – either you can DIY or find quality writers to do it for you.
   
4. Scaleable – Once you get this process down you can do it again and again. Growing your income larger the more experience you gain. The potential to scale with a team or by being more aware of the best sites to flip make this a great business to get into!
   
5. Huge Profit Margins – As mentioned it’s low cost to get into. Not only that, once you figure out how to make a site profitable you can make a lot of money on each website flipping project.
   
6. You can Make Money Quickly – Some websites can be bought, fixed up to look better, and flipped quickly. This gives you a way to make money quickly.

As you can tell website flipping is a very attractive online business model for creating lifestyle freedom!

Perhaps one of the BEST reasons to website flip, though, is how flexible the work is:

Work from Anywhere – You can work on your websites from anywhere. You can work on them anytime. Choose the sites you want to work on and the kind of niches you want to work with. This allows for great lifestyle freedom flexibility!

Where to Find Websites to Flip

Sites like Flippa, Empire Builders and Niche Investor have websites and blogs for sale.

One of my favorite ways to find sites, though, is to look for a site that isn’t active anymore and ask the owner if they are selling. I’ve managed to grab some great deals this way!

Another way to find sites is to join blogger or website owner Facebook groups. There are also groups for people who are selling sites but beware a lot of those are just scammer type sites they throw up to make a quick buck.

What is a Website Worth? Valuation

When you are buying or selling a website the typical valuation of a site for sale is 2 – 3 years worth of income.

This also depends on the type of site. The more work and training a website takes for someone to take over, the lower that number shrinks down.

So it’s important to choose and build sites that can easily be taken over by someone else so they can keep the income going.

Missed Website Flipping Opportunity

Since websites are typically valued a 2-3 times their annual income it is often thought that websites not making money are worthless.

Not so!

You can sell starter sites or sites that just haven’t been monetized yet. I’ve done it many times myself!

The key to selling this type of site is to show the value if that site were to be hired out to build.

For example a website designer charges $3-$5k for a good website design.
A graphic designer charges hundreds per graphic.
Good stock images are not free.
Blog posts also cost $100 or $100’s per post.

Adding up the value in these and showing your buyers they can get all this at a deal is how you sell these sites. If the site has courses and salespages – even better – because those cost thousands to build. Has it been building an email list? Even more value added!

Methods of Monetizing Your Website

Here are some of the ways you can monetize your website flipping efforts!

Ads – Mediavine is one of the most popular companies to work with to put ads on your site.

Digital Downloads & Printables – Checklists, Workbooks, Printable Coloring sheets and more can be easy purchases for your website visitors.

Courses – You can create full courses to sell on your site. These may require more effort to sell and so you’ll be best to setup an email list (always best) to make those visitors part of your business community!

Affiliate Marketing – Not to be confused with MLM. You sign up for an affiliate program with companies that offer them. Use your affiliate link and earn commissions anytime someone buys through your link. It’s a low-effort way to earn great income! Learn more about affiliate marketing here.

How to Increase a Websites Value

Monetization – Of course you’ll want to increase the income of a website when you buy it. This is always the goal. The section above gives you some starting ideas but there are many ways to monetize a website and streams of income you could create!

Automation – There are so many incredible tools out there to automate the processes of a website. From sending emails to following up with potential customers to delivering a course – these and more can be automated. This increases the sites value because the cost and time requirements go down when a person doesn’t need to manually do the work.

Clean up the site – If you can find a website that has good potential but it’s basically a MESS then you’re in luck! You could clean this site up and do a quick flip. Or keep it and build up the income even more.

Improve design – Some sites are great but just ugly. A quick clean up of the design makes it more desirable to buyers and potential customers. It’s an instant boost in value!

Email List – As an email marketer myself it blows my mind how many websites with a ton of traffic don’t even have an email list! Or worse, a huge list that they never email. There’s gold in the list. Build one and email them and increase the website’s value.

SEO / Pinterest / etc – A website with traffic is a good website. Whether the site is making money or not it’s value is going to increase if you do SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to get a growing flow of traffic. Or if we’re in one of the “everyone hates Google” phases you could work on the Pinterest traffic, etc. Any steady, stable flow of traffic will increase the website value.

How to Sell Your Website

There are many ways to sell a website:

• Through a website broker.
• On websites like Flippa.
• To your own audience.
• In website for sale Facebook groups.

The key to selling your site is figuring out where best to list it. Start simply and test the space that works for you.

Website Flipping Mistakes to Avoid

Warnings for buying and selling…

Website Buying:

When buying a site be careful. Make sure you do your “due diligence”. Due diligence means to fully check out the site.

Confirm everything you can. Get detailed data on the site from the owner. Check that they are telling the truth. That they have the traffic they say, the email list they say. Make sure they haven’t faked anything or lied (as best you can).

Beware there is risk in buying here so the better the source for sale the more likely you won’t get scammed.

Selling a Website:

I don’t recommend taking payment plans. This is, however, often common practice for larger sites so if you do offer it be sure to vet the buyer as much as possible. Will they be able to actually make the payments?

Get everything in order for the sale. Have a great host is going to make this 10X easier! I recommend WPX hosting as they have a free move-in service. You can have them move the site to the same hosting and put the buyer on as the owner. Easy!

Website Flipping Case Studies

Here are some of my favorite website flipping examples that I did myself:

Article Writing Agency:

I purchased this small article writing agency site for $500. By the time I sold it the monthly income was about $1000/month. I sold it for only $3000, which seemed great at the time, but I could have got at LEAST $12k for it!

Virtual Assistant Training Site:

I built this site up to making about $500/month with a growing email list and customer based. It sold for $10,000.

Party Plan Blog

I bought this party plan blog which had a big email list, a ton of content and products and 10 years of blog posts. It was a heck of a deal at $1000! I earned money from it for over a year, getting the site income up to $1200/month and then sold it for many multiples of what I paid.

How to Flip Your First Website With Almost No Money (Less than $50)!

It might not be the most commonly thought of but you can also build websites to flip.

Now this will require the cost of a domain and hosting. But this can be VERY affordable.

So you build your site. Make it nice. Create a great design. Add 25 posts. Do keyword research. Add an email list opt-in. Sell it for $1000 as a starter site and repeat!

Get enough money going so that you can buy sites (to save you some work) and then you can get into buying and selling bigger and bigger sites. I did see this post on Reddit from a lady who said she’s been making sites and flipping them for years. Over S100k in sites sold and she’s been doing it ten years.

You Can Flip Websites, Too

On that same Reddit post above someone asked where you can acquire the skills to flip sites. I offer this kind of training here at Living Lifestyle Freedom. Depending on what you need here are the courses I offer to help:

• Make Websites from Scratch
• Email for a Living
• Lifestyle Affiliate Marketing
• Website Flipping for Fun and Profit

All the best on your website flipping adventures!

The post Website Flipping Guide: How to Flip Websites appeared first on Living Lifestyle Freedom.

How to Make an Ebook to Sell

Here are the simplified steps to writing and selling an ebook:

1. Choose a topic that will serve your community, that you have knowledge and expertise on.
2. Write the ebook. You can easily do this is Google Docs, MS Word or any writing tool you want.
3. Turn the ebook into a PDF. Boom – it’s almost ready to sell!
4. Add your ebook to a shopping cart / order system. You can use a tool like ThriveCart or even Kit (mainly for email) allows you to sell digital downloads!
5. Add your ebook to your website, post on social media or send to your email list.
6. It’s as easy as that! Now you’ve learned how to make an ebook to sell. If you’d love to dive deeper make sure you watch the video interview below with expert ebook creator Gael Wood!

Some advantages to writing an ebook are:

• Ebooks are a low tech way to break into selling digital products
• Being an author opens doors and gets you invitations you wouldn’t otherwise
• Having created a book, even an eBook builds your own confidence
• eBooks are printable and some people keep these around their home for YEARS, giving you long term exposure and relationship building
• eBooks can be great relationship builders with your audience and allow you to go deep on a topic for low-cost to your customers
• There’s less commitment to buying an eBook because it’s a simple download.
• Having an eBook can cement your status as an expert on the topic

Interview on How to Make an Ebook to Sell with Gael Wood:

I sat down with my client and friend Gael Wood of Elevate with Gael to ask her about how to write an ebook and make money in your online business. Here’s the full interview and below I’ll give you some of the best highlights from this training:

eBook Writing Tips and Advice

Here are some of the best tips from this interview:

Ebook writing tips:

• Outline your eBook – what do you want to include in your eBook?
• Think about the outcome – what will they be able to do?
• Consider all important things to add to your eBook.
• Next, just start writing.
• Introduction – Introduce yourself and why it’s important to you to share the content of the eBook.
• Be sure to include what they’ll learn in your introduction or at the beginning of the eBook.
• eBooks are flexible for length/format and it’s good to write an eBook that people can consume easily so they’ll want to come back and learn more from you.
• Include a table contents and page numbers.
• Usually an eBook is over 25 pages, a smaller and easy to consume book is about 100 pages and a longer book would be 200-300 pages.

After thinking about writing eBooks for my business and using them in so many ways I’m so excited to start adding more eBooks into my own business!

How to Use eBooks in Your Business

So if you’re looking for some other ideas on who to use eBooks in your business after you’ve written in here are some ideas:

• Sell eBooks on your website.
• Use eBooks as an email list builder giveaway.
• Participate in collaborations and bundle giveaways/sales. Include your eBook.
• Bundle your own eBooks to offer extra value.
• Use eBooks as a bonus for other of your own products.
• Use eBooks as a bonus for affiliate marketing.

Ultimately eBooks are versatile, low tech and high value digital products! They are highly undervalued. I hope this post has helped you see how to write and sell eBooks to add more income to your business!

If you’d like to learn more about eBooks from Gael, you can find more training in a special workshop bundle here:
How to write and make money with eBooks

Other posts you might like:

• How to launch your online course
• Starting a Coaching Business checklist

The post How to Make an eBook to Sell! appeared first on Living Lifestyle Freedom.

A lifestyle business is built on a personal brand where you serve a community of people who get to know, like, trust and love you! 

This is me, with my son, in 2006 when I was starting my own online business and working it all out!

Here’s how I suggest you build the business…

1. Starting With Your Core Messaging

This is the part where most people tell you to choose a target market. 

I approach this differently. 

It’s my opinion that if you choose your Core Messaging instead of a target market you will attract what I call “forever customers”. 

With Core Messaging people are drawn to you based on your Core Values instead of what you sell. 

So when you niche to a market like, say, Copywriting for Coaches, and your build your entire business and marketing around that niche then that’s what people are there for. 

If you ever need or want to pivot you will lose your audience because they have no other connection to you. 

Starting an Online Business – Checklist on Values

However, let’s say you use Core Messaging. This means you attract people with messages based on what you value. You talk about honesty and integrity in coaching and how to be a coach who gets real results. You talk about how to convey that through copywriting. 

In the second case you will attract coaches who need copywriting but ALSO have the same values as you do. 

Then you also talk about other life things you value – like relationships, family, fun, etc. This endears people to you more. 

So think about this. You can Google Core Values or take a test. Decide your Core Values and then create Core Messaging around that. If you need help I have a class on this here (use the link to save big time on it). 

Create a checklist of your core values and then a list of your core messages. Put those somewhere where you can see them often (I like my computer sticky notes app).

Here’s my list of core values. I pop this up often to keep me on track with my content and connections:

2. Choose a Business Model & What You’ll Offer

Every business needs something to sell. This is business 101. 

Yet when people go online they sometimes forget the simple act of choosing their business model and offers!

As you work through this start an online business checklist you will realize there are so many options, so many ways to create a business online and so many business models. 

And it’s so easy to switch models OR run multiple models at once! 

So what can you do? 

YOU must choose. 

You have to start somewhere. 

My first online business was selling physical products.
Next, I moved on to teaching others how to make those products.
Then, I moved on to Virtual Assistance.
Later, I moved on to selling digital products. 

The thing is one thing leads to another. 

You don’t usually end up where you start. 

So choose a business model and hit the ground running with that. 

Examples of business models to start online:

• Services Business (Virtual Assistant, Graphic Designer, Website Designer, Writer)
• Digital Downloads (Ebooks, Printables, Workbooks, Planners)
• Courses (Video, Group Coaching)
• Affiliate Marketing (Sell other people’s programs and products)

Next, you’ll need to start with an offer. 

What Will You Sell in Your Online Business?

Decide what you will sell. Will it be a course? Coaching? An eBook? A Membership? A Group Coaching Program? Plannings? Articles? 

Whatever you decide, remember it doesn’t have to be locked in forever. 

I think people struggle to create an offer because they think they can’t change their minds. This isn’t true! Your offers will surely evolve over time. 

Do decide what you will offer. 

Choose something you have enough true experience and results to help people with and move along to the next step. 

After you’ve done this step you’ll want to move to your offer formats and deciding what will serve your people best.

3. Decide Your Offer Formats

Formatting your offers can get complicated fast. 

Take a membership for example. 

You could start a SIMPLE membership with one product a month delivered and a Facebook group (I call this the Class-Based Membership). 

OR you could go all out with all the bells and whistles with a new membership: Monthly challenges, weekly membership calls, Facebook group, digital downloads, Q&As and more. 

It’s not a great idea to overcomplicate your plans. 

Start simple with your offer formats. You can always add more later. 

Offer format examples:

• Video course
• Mixed-media course
• Membership with group
• Membership with monthly classes 
• Monthly coaching calls
• Voxer coaching
• Email coaching
• eBook
• Hourly consulting
• Virtual event host
• Workshops

Don’t get caught up in your options. 

What’s great is you can always adapt as you go. 

Your customers will almost always help you, too, by asking what’s included or telling you what they need. Then you can add to your product or make others to fill those needs. 

You’ll want to think about your own skillsets, your desire to help others and the format you think will best deliver your message. 

Then go for it. 

Brainstorming offers is our next point on the checklist, below.

4. Brainstorm Offers

Flying by the seat of your pants is not a great way to create an offer so it’s best to brainstorm and outline the offer. 

My offers are outlined in mindmaps. I find them really helpful to see both big picture and small picture. It’s a myth that mindmaps are for non-linear thinkers. It’s true that they’re great for non-linear thinking but it’s true that they allow for very linear planning and processes! 

I teach this in Mindmap Everything and if you want to learn more you can opt-in on this page (learn mindmaps) to get email tips and info on the lessons. 

No matter HOW you brainstorm it’s so important to create that outline and plan so that you can go forward with confidence and take purposeful action. 

And remember, this is a checklist for starting an online business is about lifestyle business… so keep that in mind every step of the way.

My business provides me the lifestyle I want and love so I can have time with my family and enjoy that lifestyle freedom:

Now let’s move on to a very practice step in the checklist – building your website!

5. Starting an Online Business Website, Checklist

This next step in your starting an online business checklist can get BIG and SCARY so I’m going to give you the basics.

The best way I know to build a website you fully own, so it’s a business asset, is to get hosting and install WordPress. 

What I recommend for this phase, the starting your online business phase, is to get up a very SIMPLE website. 

Here’s your simple checklist. You want at most a:

• Homepage – This is where you welcome people and tell them what your business is about. 
• About Page – This is where people find out about you and it’s the second most popular page on most sites (after the homepage). 
• Contact Page – Where people can connect with you. 
• Offers Page – Where you tell people what you sell. 
• Blog – Where you add ongoing content to attract your people! 

This isn’t an article on how to build a website so for now I’ll refer you to my course : Make Websites from Scratch

When your website is built it’s now the perfect time to start creating an email list. Let’s learn that next.

6. Starting Your Email List

One of the most overlooked, effective and underused business marketing strategies is the email list. 

So while I will encourage you here to start your email list I also want to encourage you to actually EMAIL that list. 

Build the relationship. Get to know them. Let them get to know, like, trust and LOVE you! 

I’ve written some articles about emails lists that you’ll find useful for this step:

• Build an Email List without Traffic
• Email Marketing Platforms Free vs Paid
• Email Marketing is a Practice

Personally I’ve found email marketing to be one of the absolute BEST ways to build my business. 

In the 20 years I’ve been raising a business while raising a family I have spent at least 10+ years consistently emailing my list daily. Yes, daily. A quick message from me to keep in contact and build an incredible relationship. 

It’s the kind of relationship where I have had customers for over 10 YEARS still buying from me. I’ve sold over $1 Million Dollars through email marketing in that time. 

When I say build your email list I can’t understate this. It’s an incredibly effective marketing method not to be missed. 

Next let’s talk about generating traffic to that list…

7. Generate Traffic

No matter how you slice it you can’t get away from the fact that you need eyeballs on your offers. 

That’s commonly known as “traffic”. 

As with much of your business there are many options for you. This can be a good thing and a bad thing. 

You could feel overwhelmed with the options or you could see the abundance of choices as a blessing that allows you to pick one just perfect for you! 

I recommend seeing it as a blessing and choose a traffic method that works for you. 

Some of my favorite traffic getting methods are:

• Collaborations such as bundle events. 
• Affiliate partners who often send me traffic AND sales. 
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which is one I’m still learning and super excited about! 

Again, many options are available to you. I won’t list them all but I will say you want to get in front of your audience where they are. 

This could be on podcasts, social media, YouTube, through partnerships, affiliates and more. 

If you need more help on this I share all the methods that are working for me with the most up to date info via my email list. You can sign up here if you’d like the scoop! 

Social media is next.

8. Add in Social Media & Other Methods

I have a number of posts on this blog about how I quit social media for a year or so. 

With that in mind you’ll know I’m not one to put a lot of stock or focus into social media but I do see it as a valuable tool. 

Social media gives you bonus touch points for those who are on your list.

My first priority would be to build my list (and it is) and THEN get those subscribers onto your social platforms so they see you more often, are reminded of your offers and go back to email to buy from you! 

That’s all I’ll say on social for now. I’m testing out some strategies and I share the kind of things I’m working on to my email list if you’d like to join  

9. Systemize & Improve Your Business

Once something is working in your business it’s not time to move along. 

It’s time to MAXIMIZE on that baby. 

So when I have my email list growing and making sales I don’t move to Pinterest. 

No I keep working to max out my results with email. 

To do that I keep looking for ways to improve what’s working and to make my current tasks easy and repeatable. 

My daily email task is a habit, it’s a system. I know when I’m writing, approximately how much I’m writing, what I’m writing about and I get it done – day after day. A system. 

Look for patterns and use those to be efficient and effective in your business. 

This is including in the starting an online business checklist because if you think about this from the start you’ll have such a leg up by the time your systems start to emerge. 

10. Innovate & Scale – Final Starting an Online Business Checklist Item

This final step of your starting an online business checklist is similar to the last.

The main difference is just the realization that sometimes systems need to be reinvented and sometimes they need your hustle to scale. 

Knowing when to scale and when to rework a plan is key. 

The best and really only way to know this is to know your metrics. 

Metrics are data points like your website traffic, your number of subscribers, your conversions, your daily sales, your best selling products – etc. 

You need to figure out which metrics are important to you and you business growth, watch them like a hawk and make smart decisions on what business moves to make. 

Best of luck to you as you are starting an online business and I hope this checklist helps you along that path. 

The post Growing & Starting an Online Business – Checklist & Steps appeared first on Living Lifestyle Freedom.

I showed up once a month and taught a class via live webinar. 

I used this same strategy for about 12 years successfully! It was simple, effective, fast and cost me no extra money on a team or any complicated setup.

What is a Membership Site?

A membership site is a type of online business where you charge a monthly fee for deliverables.

Sometimes there is a community component as well (like a Facebook group).

There are many ways to run a membership and many things you can deliver.

That brings us to the ideas for membership sites list below…

Ideas for membership sites that are working online now:

Self Serve Content Memberships

I’ve just today as I update this joined a membership that has courses available on self-serve format. I log in and I go through the courses. It also includes a community element and monthly live calls with the host. The topic of this membership is therapy (self healing) but it can be in any area such as crochet, horse riding, online marketing or anything that can have courses or online training!

Live Training or Class Memberships

I’m part of another membership where there is a weekly live training. This is a high commitment type of membership as you’ll need to show up. During the pandemic we certainly saw a fair share of yoga class and workout memberships popping up or promoting themselves. This isn’t the only time or the only topic to thrive with his membership type. There are so many ideas for membership sites where you can offer a live teaching – crafts, art, exercise, nutrition, cooking and more!

Community Style Membership

In this membership the focus is mostly or possibly entirely on the community. Members pay to be part of an exclusive community that is likely in some way more dedicated than a big free space. Membership site examples for this kind of offer could be any type of niche where people want to connect with others. More specifically in online marketing, video creation for business owners, designers (home or web) and more.

Coaching Memberships

Another type of membership site is one that puts coaching at the front of the offering. This could be a group coaching where people show up on a weekly or monthly basis to a live zoom meeting. It could also include some sort of one on one coaching with the founder or the team. This fits a huge range of niches from life coaching to weight training to creative ventures and more.

Template Memberships

Templates for resumes, press releases, email newsletters, salespages and anything you can think of that will help people do what they want to faster. This is a great membership because people love to collect things they can use later. If it’s the type of template they may use later or over and over they’re likely to stay in your membership for a while.

Digital Asset Memberships

There are memberships where you can download digital assets like audios, videos, images and more. There are clipart sites or sites with “stickers” for digital calendars and more. People need these for so many reasons for business or personal. I signed up for a site called Creative Fabrica on a one year recurring membership last year when we bought our Cricut cutting tool.

Subscription Memberships

If you sell products, digital or even physical, you could offer a membership to those products. This is obviously a very popular type of membership with subscription boxes being everywhere. It’s also very easy to set up with digital products as well. Nothing additional to create or offer – just one product per month for a monthly discount.

PLR Memberships

Website owners use PLR, also known as Private Label Rights, to provide content in many ways. This could be for their blog content, email marketing, creating free downloads or paid reports, courses and more. Sites who create this kind of content can offer memberships where members get access to new content every month.

Why Start a Membership Site

In 2010 I was running a course on how to create websites in WordPress. The course ran every three months and it was selling great! I would have five figure launches of the course but in-between those sales… nothing!

I felt like I was on a big ol income roller coaster (see graphic below)… and it was NO FUN!

So I set to working trying to figure out how to stabilize that income.

The first thought I had was to start a membership site. I was working with a business coach at the time and I asked her what she thought. She suggested I come up with at least one year worth of content and if I could that I should go for it.

The rest, as they say, is history!

From the graphic above you can see how a baseline income of a few thousand a month can help you avoid doing those great big income dips… it helps stabilize your income and your lifestyle.

This was the reason I started my membership site.

It’s not the only reason, though.

In 2005 I was a single mom trying to figure out how to earn a living online and I joined a membership that helped me change my life. It just seemed so natural to me to want to create something like that an potentially impact the lives of others in this big, beautiful way.

Membership sites gather your most loyal customers and keep them close… it’s just a great business model!

Ideas for Membership Sites –
How to Start a Membership Site

• Come up with a monthly recurring offer that you can deliver. Something your people will be excited to buy month after month. This can be a simple offer at first.
  
• Choose the tech to get it started. I use ThriveCart, Mailerlite, Zoom, Vimeo and Canva Pro for my membership site.
  
• START your membership or subscription offer. Don’t delay. Don’t overthink. I thought of my first membership and launched it within a few days. I wrote out about 24 months of topics and just got to it! What that means is you’ll want to get specific on your first offer, set up a sign up page and start marketing (I like emails). 
  
• START marketing – As I said I like email and if you want help learning how to write emails fast so you can do them EVERY day to build the relationship and consistent sales then check out my training this Thursday called Write Emails Faster OR join Email Practice Club for only $25 and get that training FREE. 

Membership Sites Can Be Easy to Manage

When people think of starting a membership site they often think it needs to be this huge undertaking that has to take months and months to plan. 

You can come up with dozens of ideas for membership sites but all you need is one. Keep it simple. This can get complicated if you let it.

It doesn’t have to be. 

Once I got the idea for Email Practice Club I got going very quickly and started get new members right away. My community knows me as a prolific email marketing and it was such a natural fit membership for me. 

Think of how your community knows you and something you’d like to create for YEARS to come. I have been doing email marketing for over 15 years now so I am quite positive I’m not going to get sick of it anytime soon! 

People have a lot of things holding them back when it comes to launching a membership site. Here are my answers to these biggest roadblocks:

FAQs on Membership Websites & Ideas

Will starting a membership website take up too much of my time?

It doesn’t have to! You can run a membership on only a few hours a month or it could be a full-time job. My membership, Email Practice Club, runs on only about 10 hours of my own work every month. That’s about 2 hours to create a training, 30 mins to create monthly prompts, 1 hour to record weekly pep talks and a few other hours to answer members in the group or add other resources/updates to the membership.

Think it through and how much time it may realistically take and see if that makes sense for you!  

Do I need a ton of content to launch a membership?

No! I started with one monthly workshop and that was it. Simple. Effective. Members loved it. 

Do I need complicated tech?

NO, not at all. I am running my membership site in one course module in ThriveCart and sending membership emails via MailerLite. Then, I get on zoom to host my training and upload it to Vimeo which I then post into the membership area. I create my monthly presentations (when I do those) in Canva Pro, graphics in Canva Pro and the PDF monthly swipes in Canva Pro. Easy tech compared to some of the solutions out there! No need to have a custom or complicated system. 

Do I need to commit long-term? 

Well, maybe. It takes work to build a membership site and if you’re only it in for six months it’s not going to be worth it. I would say you need to be willing to run a membership site for 3-5 years or so in order for it to be worth the effort you put in in the first year or two.

I hope that helps you decide if a membership or subscription offer is for you. If you have any questions at all just let me know! 

Membership Site Examples

Example #1 – Six Figure Systems Membership

Cindy Bidar of CindyBidar.com runs a highly successful membership site on creating a Six Figure Business Online. She’s been running this site for a number of years and grew her membership year after year.

Cindy’s membership includes a huge library of courses that she created over many years. I don’t recommend that you launch your membership promising a library like this but you can build it over time like Cindy did!

You can see Cindy’s salespage here

Membership Site Example #2 – Email Practice Club

Full disclosure this is my own membership. Every month members get new or updated training to help them build their email list. I also have a members-only Facebook group, monthly email prompts and a monthly pep talk, too. I include a library of ready to go training that I also created over the last two years.

For my two year membership anniversary I’m going to be adding email templates, checklists and tutorials. Everyone someone needs to be successful with email marketing!

You can see the Email Practice Club Membership salespage here.

Example #3 – Embroidery Business Academy Membership

One of my awesome clients, Joyce Jagger, is the founder of the Embroidery Business Academy where she offers three levels of membership! Each level of member offers more than the last.

Her membership includes variations of beginner to advanced training, Q&A sessions, email support, certification program and phone support.

See Joyce’s Embroidery Business Academy here

Want to Start Your Own Membership Site?

As a busy mom I needed a way to run a membership that didn’t take up too much time. I created the quick, class-based membership so I could take less than 10-15 hours a month to run my membership.

It was so successful that I’ve been using this method since 2010 to stabilize my income! I can teach you how. Click the button for more info on that!

Start a Membership Site

Have a great day! 

The post Should You Start a Membership Site? Ideas for Membership Sites… appeared first on Living Lifestyle Freedom.

Here are my top three favorite business models for leveraging your work into more time AND more income:

• Affiliate Marketing
• Subscription Offers
• Membership Sites

I personally have been running some kind of recurring revenue business since 2010. For almost that entire time I had a base income I could rely on and help me move through life changes, economy shifts and more. I also spent much time looking for sustainable passive income business models as well.

Passive Income Ideas for Moms

As a mom of two and a major contributor to the household I have always been looking for ways to work smarter and make the work I do go as far as I possibly can.

There was a period of time when I decided to cancel my membership site and run my business without it. Do not recommend! I spent about seven months in a major scramble to earn income. Starting from $0 in income each month is just harder and it requires you to do more work.

Building Recurring Revenue Businesses

If you want a business where you are not in a constant hustle for money then I highly recommend you start implementing recurring income into your business NOW.

This allows you to be a better business owner because you will have time to focus on your products, your customers and the other things that allow you to scale and improve your business.

When you have recurring business revenue you have:

• Peace of mind knowing money is coming no matter what new marketing you can do.
• A baseline of income you can build on.
• The ability to take a break when you need it, or rest, or plan, create strategies, etc.

Three Recurring Revenue Businesses To Start

Recurring & Passive Income Idea #1: Affiliate Marketing

An affiliate marketer is like a commissioned salesperson. You sign up to be an affiliate, get a special link that identifies you as the referrer and promote other people’s products to earn an income.

Many companies run their own affiliate programs within their own software. Other companies join a large affiliate network. As an affiliate in a network you can choose from hundreds of programs to promote all within one system.

Personally I like in-house affiliate programs and to really focus on one product that I love. I find this is the most effective way to promote an affiliate offer. I share what I love and find programs that have recurring offers, such as a monthly software as a service.

In recurring revenue programs you do the work once and get paid month after month.
In passive revenue programs you do the work once and get paid randomly – little surprise commissions that keep on coming

Here’s my affiliate statistics from Aweber, an email marketing software program that I started promoting in 2006 and have not promoted since around 2016 yet I’m STILL getting monthly commissions.

The biggest key to making long-term recurring income like this is to choose programs with staying power. I knew at the time when I choose Aweber that it was a great program, I didn’t realize that 17 years later I’d STILL be earning commissions from it!

Recurring & Passive Income Idea #2: Subscription Offers

You can easily add subscription offers to a product or service you offer regularly.

It’s less of a commitment than a membership site but with the same kind of perks!

This type of business model is not normally passive but it is recurring. You will be earning a steady and growing monthly income if you continually find new subscribers to your offer.

Recurring & Passive Income Idea #3: Membership Site

The membership is an “all-in” option when you know you really want to dig in with your community and offers for the long term.

A membership site has so many rewards but it’s a big commitment so you want to be ready.

Essentially a membership is much like a subscription. It’s a recurring revenue business offer however members tend to expect to be able to engage with each other, often the owner and receive other perks and upgrades.

Whatever you do – please take recurring income seriously. Not only is a lifesaver on the month to month… it’s ESSENTIAL when life pops up. 

Wishing you all the best and lots of lifestyle freedom! 

Other posts you might like:

How to Add Passive Income to Your Business
Growing and Starting an Online Business

The post Recurring Revenue Businesses & Passive Income Ideas Online appeared first on Living Lifestyle Freedom.