If you are reading this chances are you want to build and grow online.

As an entrepreneur trying to build my brand and business online since 2020, I have tried everything from drop-shipping, E-commerce, Affiliate marketing, and info-products in different seasons of my career and I have come to realize that making money online is not complex if you do it smartly.

Although there are a lot of ways you can play this online game, I want to talk about the one where you have the highest probabilistic chance of succeeding.

Sometimes the abundance of options can leave you confused without action and that is my biggest fear of the modern world.

There is so much you can do that you might end up doing nothing!

The reason why it took me so much time to build my business online is that I was trying every random thing the Youtube videos recommended without thinking from the first principles.

Juggling and failure are inevitable but if I can tell you my thought process and what I would do if I have to start from scratch today it will give you a clear path and will save you years of time.

In a world where everyone tells you 50 business ideas to become a millionaire from AI, you must snap out and focus on fundamentals.

If you have never done business in your life, you are not an entertainer, and you want to make money digitally the path I am about to tell you would give you the highest odds of winning.

Let me lay out some fundamentals before we dive deep!

Setting the Tone

Making money online majorly depends on 2 things

• Visibility and

• leverage of attention

If you are visible and you have leverage of attention it is foolishly easy to make money.

Now the reason why a lot of people never make money online is because they chase attention and status.

They want to become a CREATOR!

So they start creating content and soon they realize it’s hard to grow on social media, they get stressed, they keep creating more content, they buy courses, and they try all the hacks to grow!

After investing so much energy and time in content now they not only do not have attention but have built nothing that can make them money.

When you are just starting out focus on making yourself visible rather than chasing follower count online.

Take business-first approach

As Jk Molina says - “Likes ain’t cash”

Building a business is a completely different ball game altogether.

There are creators who suck at business and there are business people who absolutely suck at being creators.

As a beginner, your entire focus should be on building a service or a product and selling it!

This is the path I am walking on and recommend!

1. Build a Freelancing business

It’s hard to make money without leverage. When you are just starting, the only leverage you can build without permission is your skills.

Start by following your curiosity and getting really good at one or two things.

Getting good at something is like coining your own currency.

Now you can use this currency to trade with a currency that the world operates on.

It’s hard like all starts are.

You need to taste the mud, you need to get in the trenches.

Find the intersection of what you like and what the market will pay you money for.

Now learn everything you have to, in order to sell your skills.

This is where you trade your time for experience and proof of work that you can then show to the world for better rewards.

Do not try to maximize profits at this point.

• Learn a skill

• Learn marketing

• Learn communication

• Learn sales

And everything that allows you to sell your skills.

Be a Freelancer, handle everything on your own.

This is where you will taste the Freedom of making money online. Once you make your first dollar online, the possibilities open up in your head and then there is no going back.

You will soon be making more money than your relatives and cousins can fathom if you just do this right.

2. Scale a productized service business

When you start getting more demand for your freelancing services than you can fulfill, this is where it gets interesting and you have a choice to make.

• You can either keep freelancing OR

• You can turn your idea into a business

Don’t offer anything and everything you can as a service to everyone. This is the worst way of scaling a business.

Build a service package that is constant for one specific set of audiences.

The entire concept of a productized service business is to be able to sell your service like a product.

WHY?

When you have one service package and one target market:

• You can target your market with force

• You can show your expertise in one segment

• You can automate redundant tasks in your business

• You can delegate the tasks easily

Productized service business allows you to get out of the business.

But the bigger you grow the bigger problems you need to solve.

and you solve problems by learning new things that are essential to solving the problem at hand.

• Learn marketing

• Learn to position

• Learn operations

• Learn team building

Focus on building systems at this phase and money will come as a result of it.

3. Create content

Now you have a business that is up and running and you have cash flow. Your bills are getting paid, and your head is out of the water.

This is the time when you start creating content.

Pick one social platform and post everyday

• Share your journey

• Share the mistakes

• Share your learnings

• Share your perspectives

You might not be good at content creation games but it doesn’t matter because you can hire people to guide and help you.

Because you can afford to hire people!

You are not relying on content creation to get your business up and running and so you create with Freedom without any execution blocks.

You can flow freely, and experiment!

I made the mistake of creating content along with freelancing and my mental bandwidth was distributed every day.

The better approach is to build a sustainable business and then start the journey of content creation.

If you can afford to create content without getting paid and you have some financial buffer, you can always start here.

The idea is not to put the pressure of printing money on your content creation process.

Building an audience online is magical and you would be surprised by the possibilities it opens up for you.

DO NOT SLEEP ON CONTENT CREATION!

Time it in your journey with the right intent and you will reap the rewards.

I talk in-depth about my content creation system here

5. Build a community

Content creation is an opportunity to build a community of people just like yourself.

Focus on scaling your business and showing up every day with your content.

Now you have two engines to fuel but you can always take help from people who are much better at things that you suck at.

Talk to people who follow your content.

Provide value like no one else.

Once they see your content they should stay.

Building a community is like watering a plant - You need to constantly work at it.

Value is the currency here!

The more Free value you provide the better your life gets

• Build a community of savages like yourself

• Make Friends

• Make a Tribe of people that will show up for you and your community

A community gives you a sense of belonging, a greater sense of WHY!

6. Build a product for the community

By the time you get here, you will be making a good amount of money and you will have love of people on the Internet!

There will be thousands of people who will start looking up to you.

It is your responsibility to help them solve the problems you once faced.

It is your responsibility to give them a path to follow. A path that will eventually allow them to reach the point where ‘you’ stand today.

You must help them win!

Create a product that solves their biggest problems.

The price of your product is directly proportional to the difficulty of the problem your product solves for your community.

Your product can be

• An E-book

• A cohort

• A course

• A SaaS product

• A coaching program

There are no rules or limits, it all boils down to your expertise and skillset.

You help them and make money as a result of it

WIN, WIN

7. Invest

If you do all this right, you will have money coming your way from:

• Your service business

• YouTube revenue and brand deals

• Product sales

• Affiliate sales

• Referrals

You will have money in your bank account getting wasted.

Now you make your money work for you!

Invest it wherever you feel like but make it compound with time.

Your money must make you more money - That’s how you achieve financial freedom.

Until this point invest everything you make in learning new skills, hiring better people, and optimizing your life for focus and productivity.

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-Akshat Tongia