The Internet holds a giant online marketplace and there are obscene amounts of money to be made, especially as more and more people adapt and get accustomed to the web as a daily part of life. If you’re an entrepreneur, you know that opportunity abounds online. It’s just a matter of finding the right niches and focusing your efforts on the highest impact ideas.But what exactly are the highest impact ideas? What’s worthwhile and what’s not? In my experience, I’ve found that there are two different categories of online business opportunities: money makers and assets. A money maker represents quick cash and not much else. You’re not necessarily building your own business or anything of value you can leverage later on.
You’re simply making money. On the other hand, an asset is a real business that continues to grow in value as you invest your time and resources into the project.
Business Assets > Money Makers
So what’s better? What’s more worthwhile? In my opinion, business assets win over money makers every time. I’d much rather focus on investing in long term assets rather than making a quick buck off of the various online opportunities.Money makers may offer the potential of making money faster, but their long term outlook is severely limited. After a short while, you may have made some money, but you won’t have much to show for other than that.
Business assets are favorable because they represent solid business models with sustainable long term income potential. As you continue to invest your time and resources into the project, the site will grow and take on a life of its own. Compare that to money makers where you could easily have your income sources depleted and be forced to start again from scratch. Online business assets empower you with leverage as they open up new opportunities for marketing and future business ventures. In other words, you obtain bigger success with less work later on.
As you pursue online business opportunities, you should ask yourself a few important questions before getting involved. Will the opportunity allow you to build something valuable other than immediate income? What’s the future outlook? Can you leverage the site for future opportunities? You want an asset, not just a money maker. Let’s discuss a few guidelines to help you prevent the money maker pitfalls…
Don't of Making Money Online – How to build assets not just money makers
- Don’t focus on fad niches with limited life spans (e.g. popular celebrities, fads for diets, toys). Build around a niche that has solid long term potential.
- Don’t rely on black hat SEO (e.g. cloaking, obvious paid links) to provide you with traffic. You might be able to fool the engines and manipulate rankings for a short while but it’s not a battle you can win. Spend time using ethical SEO practices to build your site for the long haul.
- Don’t build thin affiliate/Adsense sites that offer little value outside of what the merchants already have. Users will have no incentive to visit your sites and Google is working to eliminate these sorts of sites from both their organic and paid search listings. Build a branded affiliate site instead.
- Don’t rely on PPC affiliate marketing for long term income. There are super affiliates who make a killing with it, but they’re not building assets. Here’s some proof. Paul Borque aka Uberaffiliate, tumbled from $300,000 per month to $182.64 profit in just one month after a few mistakes.
- Don’t host your content on other people’s sites. Blogging networks like Blogger and Wordpress.com might be easy to use, but they take away your control and ability to monetize your content. Similarly, don’t rely on e-commerce sites like eBay to run your business. You might be able to reach a larger audience in the beginning on a platform like eBay, but you severely limit your business potential. Sell products on your own domain and website. You never want to give up your assets to other people and do business on a platform you don’t have control over.
- Don’t just drive traffic to your sites. Build a list of leads through RSS/email/Twitter and develop relationships with your potential customers. Your list is extremely valuable and allows you to continuously profit from your most loyal followers.
- Don’t just work for money, build your personal brand . If you work for a company or do consulting for clients, the last thing you want to do is get comfortable with your monthly paycheck or steady income. What are you going to do if it disappears? Build your personal brand (blogging works great), build tools and processes, and develop relationships with effective networking (both online and off).
Are you building business assets or are you playing around with temporary money makers?
Source: Gyutae Park
