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How to Create an Online Course

One of the best ways to make money online is the create an online course.

Everyone either has a passion or interest on some topic, or knowledge that they are able to teach.

Obviously if you are an expert at something then it makes clear sense that someone would be willing to pay you for that knowledge.

But you don’t even need to be an expert.

As long as you know more than the person wanting your information, you are able to teach them.

Why Create an Online Course?

Creating an online course is very powerful.

It is effectively your own digital product. That you are able to sell.

And sell to a global audience.

It is always a form of passive income.

You create your course content once.

And then you just focus on the promotion or getting other people to promote it as an affiliate.

Who Can Create an Online Course?

As mentioned before, I genuinely feel that anyone can put together information that other people want.

Usually you would be wanting to provide a solution to someones problem.

And if that solution is desired enough, then people will pay.

Think about all of the different things you know about.

Do you know how to build a website?

Do you know much about Yoga?

Do you know how to do soccer trick shots?

Do you know exercises that can be done at home?

Do you know how to play chess?

The beauty about creating an online course is that anyone can do it. Any age and any type of skill.

And this is through platforms such as Teachable that make the putting together the course easy for anyone.

What do I need to create an online course?

You need a couple of essential elements to create your own online course.

The platform – such as Teachable .

And the content.

This can be videos, word documents, powerpoint presentations or even mp3 audio files.

You can make videos with your smart phone, or do screen capture videos of your computer to explain certain things.

You just focus on putting together a structured training course using whatever you think is best.

And then you are able to put it together in a packaged up solution for people to buy!

How do you create an online course?

Creating your own online course is super simple.

Teachable is an online platform that is amazing and I highly recommend!

It will host your videos, pdfs or course content in easy drag and drop features, either from your computer or dropbox ect.

It has it’s own affilite program that you can use.

Meaning that you are able to get other people to promote and sell your course!

You can track progress on videos and throughout the course which makes it easy for people to know where they are up too.

It really is a fast, easy and simple solution for putting together your very own online course.

List Building 101 – How to Build Email List

By Rob Sharp on

Building an email list is one of the essentials for any business owner. Whether you have a traditional bricks and mortar type of business like a hair salon, or physiotherapy, or you have an online business – you should definitely be learning how to build email list.

Your Email List is an Asset

A well known saying within the online world is “the money is in the list”.
Meaning the bigger the emai list you have created, the more money you will be earning.

Why is this?

Basically, having an email list means you are able to connect and contact your audience whenever you like.

The likely hood of someone continually returning to your website is slim. Even if your content is amazing.

However if you are able to send an email to your whole list letting them know of a new blog post, or a special offer you a running – the implications of this are huge.

Not only do you have the potential to make sales from sending one 1 email. But you are able to generate traffic back to your website.

How to build email list?

In order to build your email list, you need main 5 components. Each are just as important as the other.

1. Email Autoresponder

An email autoresponder manages the email list. It is able to automatically send a sequence of emails that you create once and set up, and then starts that sequences as soon as someone “Opts into” your email list.

The email autoresponder I recommend if you are starting out is Aweber.

If you already have an email list and want more professional features then I recommend ConvertKit which was built for bloggers, by bloggers.

2. Landing Pages / Squeeze Page

A landing page is a page that allows someone to put in their email address and name.

I recommend something like Leadpages. They make it easy to create, drag and drop functionality, have plenty of templates for you to choose from, and the landing pages are professional looking.

Leadpages also works with email autoresponders such as Aweber, so it makes life nice and easy.

3. An attractive offer or free gift

In order for someone to give you their email address, you have to give them something in return. This is usually in the form of a free gift such as an ebook, video course, plugin, or even just a special offer or discount.

It has to be something of value and targeted to your specific audience.

4. A product or service.

The whole goal of building an email list is to get more customers, or to make sales.

If you already have a business then you are obviously covered. If you are just starting out building a website and online business, then you need to have something for your audience to buy.

If you don’t have your own product, you can promote other people’s products an earn a comission.

This is a great option for people starting out, however it’s also great for existing business owners as you are effectively making sales to your existing audience or clientele, but without needing to take the time or money to create them.

5. Traffic

The best offer or content in the world is useless unless people are actually seeing it.

Paid traffic methods are my favourite because you can basically get instant amounts of traffic.
Whether thats facebook boosted posts, google adwords or youtube advertising.

With large traffic, you are also able to test your offer and optimize it.

Free Traffic is the other side of the coin. Free traffic usually takes longer. Such as waiting for google to rank your blog posts. Or for people to find your content and links on youtube or forums posts.

Free strategies should be part of your overall strategy, as well as the faster, instand traffic source that you have with paid marketing.

The List Building Business Model

This image below goes over the basic flow chart of how email list building works.

Always add value

As with anything you are doing, you should always be providing value and high quality content.

This goes for your emails, and also your free gift or offers.

People will unsubscribe if you are spammy and just want to sell them something.

The more value you add to people, the better success you will have in your business.

Hopefully this has shown you how to build email list for your business or website.

Make Money Blogging – Content Creation is King

By Rob Sharp on

How do you make money blogging?

There is a number of different strategies and techniques on how to make money blogging.

If you are looking to build a long term, robust and strong online business, then blogging – also known as content creation – should be an integral focus.

VIDEO: Make sure you check out the video at the bottom of this post where I go over the business model of making money with blogging by creating quality content.

Why content creation?

Content creation is king.

Think of every blog post, or page on your website as a potential seed.

The more pieces of quality content you create, the more seeds you are effectively planting around the internet.

And the more seeds planted, the bigger the harvest.

Plant those seeds far and wide.

It’s not simply enough to just write content. You have to share it, promote it, and get it out on various platforms.

Let’s say you write a blog post.

If you can create a video version, and share it on youtube. You now have the oppportunity of someone finding your content there and coming back to your website.

The same with Facebook. You should also be sharing your content on your social media channels, and then ideally paying to promote it.

If you dont have the money, that’s fine. But if you have even $5-10 you can potentially get that post viewed by 5000 or so people.

This is a smart way to leverage your time and money.

It still surprises me the amount of people that come across my content that I created years ago. And also where they come from.

Google Rankings Improve

Although paid marketing strategies are the fastest way to success. Getting ranked on google is the holy grail of free marketing.

If my website showed in the top 10 ranking for “How to make money online”…. I would be getting thousands and thousands of people coming to my website every day.

This means there is huge potential for sales.

The more high quality content you create, the more authority your website has.

This makes google happy and trusts you, and will reward you with ranking your content for certain keywords.

Many people give up though because this does take time, and content creation is a long term, slow strategy. And everyone likes fast results dont they.

But it’s powerful.

Combine it with paid marketing and you are onto a winner.

Quality Content

Don’t be fooled into thinking that the more content you create the better. Or even worse, hiring cheap crappy outsourcers to pump out your content.

This used to work back in the day. But now, it is far better to take the time to create something valueable for your audience. And then spend the time promoting that content and sharing it.

Where should you share your content?

For each blog post you create, you should immediately share it and promote it to the main platforms.

Facebook
This should be obvious. Share your blog to your business facebook page, and personal for added effect. I’d recommend always boosting the post with at least $5 or $10 to get some people checking it out.

Youtube
Get in front of the camera and talk about your blog content, read it out, do a screen capture. Just something that makes it video format and where you can put a link in the description of your blog.

Email List
You should be building an email list with Aweber.
For each piece of content you create, add it to your autoresponder so you can let those people know about your awesome content.

Google Plus
Even though Google plus never really took off as a social media platform, I would still recommend posting your blog link to your google plus account as many believe it helps in faster rankings.
It makes sense, as it’s google’s platform.

Forums
Become active on the big forums relative to your market. Where possible, share your blog links or at least your website as people will come across it and find their way on your site.
Bingo!

VIDEO – The Content Creation Strategy in a nutshell.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

By Rob Sharp on

Affiliate Marketing is by far one of the easiest and best ways to make money online.

It is usually where most people start in the online space and it is a tried and tested business model that if done correctly, can provide you with the holy grail of income,

Passive income.

That idea of earning money 24/7 while you sleep, or perhaps on the beach somewhere.

Is it possible? Of course it is.

The internet runs 24/7 with a global audience. Meaning there are people always on the hunt to buy something. Whether they buy from you will depend on the amount of effort you are willing to put in to build a strong

Meaning there’s always someone looking to buy. Whether they buy from you will depend on the amount of effort you are willing to put in to build a strong foundation.

So yes, passive income is possible, however in order to get to that position you have to put in the work.

First to learn, and educate yourself and what is actually required. And then to take consistent action which is the most important aspect.

Having a website that produces $500 per week, compared to $5,000 per week simply comes down to the amount of effort you are prepared to put in.

However it is possible for anyone, and anywhere to be able to do.

So what is affiliate marketing exactly?

It’s based on revenue sharing.

The process by which you, the affiliate, earns a commission based on your referral of a product or service.

Everyone is familiar with this.

Big companies such as Uber give people $20 for using your referral code.

Airbnb gives you $45 off your next booking for every person you refer.

American Express gives you 100,000 frequent flyer points for each person you refer and who signs up for a new credit card.

It’s an ethical, and tried and tested business model.

The idea is that you are simply the middle man and connecting people with something that they want. And for that, you get a commission.

And for that, you get a commission.

But how do you take it from getting $20 off your next Uber, to building an actual business?

I will explain….

Why is Affiliate Marketing so awesome?

Because you don’t have to create the product or service yourself. You don’t have to buy a whole bunch of products and store them in your living room and then sell them on eBay.Which means there is no outlay of money needed.

Which means there is no outlay of money needed.

All you need to do is sign up to the affiliate program, get the link, and then share it.

Essentially just connecting people with something that will add value, and you make money.

Of course, some people get spammy and go for the quick buck.

But if you have the mindset of creating value, and connecting people with something that they are already looking for, or something that they need, then you will succeed long term and your income will snowball.

So how do you build a real business?

The best long term strategy is to create a WordPress website around a certain niche or area.

Let’s say for example you create a website around how to get frequent flyer point hacks.

You create content around how people can get more frequent flyer points.

This means you know your audience, and what they are interested in.

Then you can recommend to them certain products or services that these people want.

If they buy, then you earn your commission.

Another example is creating a website about the health niche.

So you create content how to lose weight, recipes, different exercises ect.

When people find your content, either through searching for it on Google, or through other channels such as social media, you will have an audience that you can promote products too.

In this example, if someone is looking to lose weight, and find your blog post about the 10 best ways to lose weight – you can recommend to them different products and services that will help them out.

Of course, not everyone buys, but it’s a numbers game.

As long as the products you are recommending are high quality and will actually help your audience, then

How do people find your website and content?

Let’s say you create a website around the health niche.

The more blog posts/content you create, the more seeds you are effectively planting around the internet, which means there’s more opportunity for people to come to your page.

The key is to be consistent and to think long term.

It will take some time for Google to start ranking your pages, but the bigger and better the website, the faster it will happen.

Most people quit and give up because they don’t have the patience.

But trust me, if you stick with it, and think of the long game. Your traffic, and therefore income, will snowball and exponentially grow.

You could create a video review of a certain product, and put it up on Youtube. Then you list your affiliate link in the youtube description.

Someone will then search for that product review, find your video, watch your video, and then click on the link and buy.

Voila, you get a commission.

The main parties in Affiliate Marketing.

1. The Merchant (Advertiser)

First, you need what is called the Merchant. This is also known as the product creator, the seller, the brand.

It can be a massive brand like AirBnb. Or it can be someone who has created a course on “100 dog training tricks”.

Most products, or services have an affiliate program. They want people to help them promote their product.

If a product is selling for $100, and they are paying you $30 for each referral. They are still making a profit.

Digital products usually pay the affiliate much better.

Places like Clickbank – an affiliate marketplace/network and lists different products to promote – can offer up to 75% commission.

Amazon is another huge affiliate marketing platform which is obviously physical products.

2. The Affiliate (Publisher)

The affiliate is the person who is recommending the product or service.

An example of an affiliate could be the creation of a Vacumn Cleaner review site.

You then create reviews of different types and models of Vacuum cleaners.

People would find your blog after researching what is the best vacuum cleaner, and then at the bottom of the post you put an affiliate link to Amazon for the product.

As I mentioned before, not everyone is going to buy, but the more people that find your website, the more people clicking the link, the more income you will make.

3. The Affiliate Network / Marketplace

Not all the time, but most products that have an affiliate program are listed on an Affiliate network.This means that the network handles the payment processing of the products, and also handles the payment of the commissions.

Affiliate networks are a great place to start to find products and there are literally hundreds of thousands.

Common networks are ClickBank or Commission Junction.

They usually have digital products.

If you want to promote physical products then Amazon is your best bet.

Become a product creator yourself

People usually start their journey promoting other peoples products. But on the flip side, you can become a product creator, and then have other people promote your product.

You can surely see the power of this.

Create a product once, list it on an affiliate network, and then people will start promoting it.

You earn money basically for nothing because the affiliate is the one promoting and doing the work.

Most successful people use a combination.

They promote products and services as an affiliate and then have their own products that they have created.

There is literally an endless amount of ways you can go about Affiliate marketing.

But my advice would be to pick an area that you are passionate about or have some interest in, and then go from there.

The most profitable niches are always going to be in Health / Wealth / Relationships.

What is the best way to start?

If you want to fast track yourself then I highly suggest you take a training course that will give you a step by step guide in affiliate marketing and how you can create an income online.

Wealthy Affiliate is an excellent course that is affordable and if you follow it and be consistent in your actions, you will start to earn huge commissions that will only snowball as you keep growing your site.

7 Essential Free WordPress Plugins you should be using

By Rob Sharp on

WordPress plugins are one of the biggest factors in making WordPress websites so powerful.

There are literally a wordpress plugin for every situation. All you have to do is google and there will be one that you can install easily on your website and get huge value from.

Whether it’s something to make your website faster, to help build beautiful, professional pages with a page builder, to backup your website automatically or to help with SEO.

So what WordPress Plugins do you need?

Ideally you want to limit the number of plugins you have installed and acitvated on your website as they can slow down your website.

But here is a list of the Essential wordpress plugins every website should have installed at the very minimum that are free.

1. w3 Cache

w3 cache is a plugin that is essential to help speed up your website. It creates a cache (version of your website) so that when someone lands on your page, it loads up faster.

Having a fast website is important for SEO purposes to rank on google, but also people have short attention spans. Waiting 10 seconds for a website to load, and they will usually just click somewhere else.

We live in a brutal world like that now. Get speedy!

2. SEO by Yoast

In order to rank in google your website needs to be SEO optimized. This is also called On-page SEO.

When you install this plugin, it will make it easy to correctly label each of your pages or posts and put in the right keyword, description and meta description.

This is what is shown on google, so it’s important to fill out the information correctly. Not only to let google know what your page is about, but also to get better click through rates and make people want to visit your page.

3. Prettylink

PrettyLink is the essential plugin for affiliate. It allows you to cloak your affiliate links. This simply means that instead of having the affiliate link look long and ugly. It get transformed into a smaller, more attractive link.

For example, if your affiliate link to a product is

—> http://dogtrainingproduct101.com/affiliate101353/skjgjdl/id=32434

You are then able to transform that link to say something like

—> http://yourwebsite.com/dogtrainingproduct101

4. Aksimet

This plugin comes already installed with wordpress. It is a spam filter and will prevent any spam comments on your blog posts. It’s easy to active you just have to manually go into the settings and activate it.

5. ewww image optimizer

Images slow down your website. Of course, you will be putting images on your website for a range of beneficial purposes that you can’t avoid.

This plugin optimizes the images that you upload to your website automatically and shrinks down the file size, without losing it’s quality.

So essentially, you are cutting down the file size and keeping your website fast, but keeping it’s image quality.

Beautiful.

6. Updraft Backup

Be warned, back up your wordpress website!

Just like your computer and files – you don’t want to live in regret and wished you had taken action when disaster strikes.

WordPress sites are sometimes vunerable to Malware, viruses or hackers.

This plugin automatically backs up your website to things like Dropbox, or your computer, making it automatic and hassle free.

Use this plugin along with a backup from your hosting account such as Bluehost and you can live stress free and know that all your hard work will never go to waste.

7. Ultimate Social Duex

This plugin creates beautiful looking social media icons that make it easy for people to share your content.

Social sharing is a valuable part of SEO and also getting more visitors, so making it easy for people to share your stuff is important.

There are lots of different social plugins out there but this is my preferred plugin due to the great look and design of the icons.

How to Setup WordPress

By Rob Sharp on

Hopefully you have now bought your website hosting, you have a domain name, and now installed wordpress.

So now it’s time to setup your wordpress website.

If you have never created or setup a wordpress website it can seem daunting at first. But it’s an essential skill to learn and worth taking the time to get the basics down.

If you have some money to invest and you are time poor, then it can be a good idea to hire an outsourcer or freelancer to do the work for you.

One of the best outsourcing websites and finding quality people is Freelancer.

Outsourcing can really help leverage your business by utilising other people’s skills.

There are some basics that you should know about WordPress regardless of whether you are getting someone else to create your site because you will start want to add content yourself or make some small changes.

Each theme will have it’s own setup instructions that are usually really easy to follow such as StudioPress.

Below are the basics and essentials for getting around WordPress.

You can also watch this video tutorial….

1. Install a theme

When you install wordpress onto your domain it will come with a basic default theme. You will want to add your own theme.

There are free themes you can select, or if you are serious then I highly recommend you pay for a premium theme such as StudioPress.

For the price it is definitely worth having a professional looking website and StudioPress is what I use.

They look amazing, they are cheap, they have awesome tutorials that are easy to follow, they are mobile responsive, they are fast, and they are really SEO friendly.

2. Change permalinks

One of the first things you should do is change the permalinks. This just means that every time you name a blog post or new page, the actual html page name link will automatically be whatever you have called it.

So if your blog post is called “Build an online business”, then the link it will automatically be

yourwebsite.com/build-an-online-business

This is just a handy tip to make your life easier.

3. Add Pages

To add pages to your website you simply click on “Add New Page”.

You then give it a title, and then create the content, and click publish when you are done and it’s now live.

I recommend creating your basic pages right now in order to help with the setup.

A good start would be…

Home
About
Blog
Contact

It’s also important to note that for a Page, you can change the layout.

You may want the page to be setup as a “Full Width Page”, or you may want to have your content and then a sidebar.

4. Add Blog Posts

This is the same method for creating blog posts.

Add new blog post, give it a title, create your content and then publish.

For blog posts you would ideally also want to create a few key categories which you can label each post under.
It helps with organisation and also for your visitor to find the information they actually want.

5. Create Blog Categories

To create categories you simply click on Posts and then Categories if you know the types of categories for your site.Eg. Business, Mindset, Affiliate Marketing, WordPress.

You can, however, create them within a post “as you go.”

6. Setup home page as static and blog posts page.

If you have created a page titled “Home”, you will want to make this the default page that comes up when you first type in your “domain.com”.

To do this, you click on Settings, and then Reading.As shown in the image, you would make the Static Home page, your “home” page that you have created.

And then also for your “blog” page, make that the posts page.

This will be clearer later on how when you start creating more blog posts and pages.

7. Setup menu

Every website usually has a primary menu at the top of the page. And also a footer menu.

You can create this by clicking on Appearance and then Menu.

Simply add any pages that you have already been created into a new Menu.

If you create any new pages that you want in the top menu of your website, just add them in as you go along.

8. Widgets

To add any widgets you click Appearance – Widgets.

For your blog page, or blog posts, you would usually have a sidebar.

This is where the widgets show up. You simply drag and drop from the available widgets on the left side.

Usually when you install plugins, they will have their own widgets which you are then able to add.

You can customise your sidebar depending on what you want.

Also for some themes, especially StudioPress, they have widgets available for not just the sidebar, but for your homepage or other pages.

This is a great option as it makes page creation really easy.

Another reason why StudioPress is the best.

9. Plugins

One of the great advantages of WordPress is being able to install plugins. There is a plugin for basically anything you can think of. There would be millions and millions.

You can download them externally and then upload them as a zip file. Or you can search for a plugin directly through wordpress.

A plugin is kind of like a small program that adds different functions to your website.

Note that the more plugins you have, the slower your website can become.

So don’t go crazy on them and delete any plugins that aren’t neccesary.

Make sure you check out the “10 Essential WordPress Plugins”.