July 25th, 2024
About the Author:
My name is Gary Hayes. I am an entrepreneur, author, and a marketing consultant for the last 8 years. I have been involved in at least 200 large scale marketing projects on behalf of my clients and have had a few dozen online articles published in the last 5 years. Hope you enjoy this article.
Gary Hayes
In a recent report I was reading about Harvard Business graduates, there was lots of examples of individuals who were dropouts and yet they made millions of Dollars within a few years of getting into the Internet and online business industry.
This report included many comments at the bottom, mostly asking if this was really possible. After all, how could someone without the basic knowledge of business management, strategies, and financing could make millions or even billions? Many asked how anyone could actually accomplish such major success without even a college degree. Well, is that possible, really?
The fact is: you don’t need a college education or a college degree to be successful or become a millionaire/billionaire.
Have you ever asked these questions of yourself …
How can I become a millionaire or wealthy quickly?
What is the best way to become a millionaire quickly, through traditional businesses, or through an online business, or some other way?
What products sell best, which have high profit margins, and are very popular and trending well constantly?
If you asked these questions, or similar ones, you have already started your way to potentially becoming a millionaire.
Now, let’s get real. Let’s ask ourselves, what is possible to achieve and what is a pie in the sky?
It is literally possible to become a millionaire with an online business within a 2-5 years period.
Yes, it is, indeed. If you search online and read through the bios, you will discover that many people have done just that. The numbers are actually very high, relatively.
Anything quicker than 2 to 5 years though … well, not so likely, but still possible. I would consider that on the realm of lucky break, or lucky/perfect timing, or something rare in terms of genius abilities or gifted individuals.
For most people, 2 to 5 years is a realistic time line to become a millionaire with an online business. And, of course, that is if you do all the key things that make sense to do, and your timing is good and also a good product/service is selected for your venture.
Now, can anybody do it?
Ummm, that is hard to answer. Define anybody?
If you are a smart enough person (say average or above average) and you are a hard worker, don’t quit easily, a problem solver, and determined – then the odds are very much stacked in your favor. These days with all the market information and business technology at your fingertips, almost anyone has what they need to start/run an online business and succeed.
There is no need for a major initial capital. There is no need for investment in an office or retail or warehouse space. You can get started selling right away, with little or no inventory.
There are so many tools and so many methods of marketing, many are quite affordable and accessible that, without a doubt, you can get started and become successful.
If everyone CAN DO this and become a millionaire, how come everyone has not done it already? That is a great question. The answer is: combination of a) lack of discipline, b) quitting too early, c) failing to prioritize on key steps for success and avoiding unnecessary time-wasting, and d) failing to plan and execute the plan smartly, efficiently, and effectively.
It is important to remind yourself: you cannot skip the “essentials”.
First, the “desire to succeed without excuses to quit early”.
Don’t lie to yourself. If you “really” want to do it, then you really want it. If you don’t, and are just wasting time and procrastinating, then, probably not.
You know what I mean. “Really wanting it”, is wanting it for “REAL” – no lying to yourself.
If you have gotten this far in reading this article, then you really do have at least some desire to succeed. But wanting to succeed, in particular, wanting to be a millionaire, says a lot about who you are and what you may be capable of. So that’s good.
Second, “essential”, is for you to realize that you cannot skip the “trial and error” phase of your startup. Yes, there is a phase that you have to try many small things/steps, learn from them, build some knowledge and create some idea or innovate some strategies and plans in order to succeed in the long run.
If you ignore this phase, it will be at your peril. If you quit early, then again it will be at your peril.
And the final of the “essentials”, is that YOU WILL NOT BE A MILLIONAIRE OVERNIGHT.
Give up on that unrealistic idea, if you have not already.
Plan to get to your goal (your first million) in about 2 to 5 years. That is realistic and potentially doable. If you managed to do it sooner, then great. But expecting instant success puts extra stress on you that is counterproductive and forces you to fail and lose heart during this growth phase of your business.
Many people who are not at all technical or “tech-savvy” start online businesses for success and do indeed make their first million. Why?
Because, today, we live in a digital economy. You have access to millions of people, who can shop from home or office, any time of the day, and you have the largest potential market of people – potentially.
Also, technology and methodology is a lot easier and simpler than 20 years ago and there are so many tools, tutorials, service providers, ideas, Internet users, business users, classified prints, and online markets that you simply have the potential to reach so many people and offer your products and services.
Success Tips
– Dedicate yourself and a part of your day (say an hour a day) to reading, watching video tutorials on YouTube, learning, testing, experimenting, strategizing, networking, and building online assets (e.g. your twitter or Facebook account)
– Contemplate the required changes in your lifestyle.
– When you go to sleep at night, try falling asleep while you are thinking about your success.
– Wake up early in the morning and get to work.
– Be energetic and excited and remind yourself of your goal.
– Exercise, even if a little, to get you focused and relaxed.
– Don’t overthink everything. Relax. Have fun. Go with what feels right.
– Don’t waste your time or energy on “potential failure”. Accept failure as part of success and necessary. Remove this kind of negative thinking from your psyche and remove mental barriers.
– Use your time effectively and learn, learn, learn.
– Manage your time carefully and plan for achieving your daily tasks.
– Read millionaire stories, once a day for about 15 minutes.
– Keep a diary and track what you are doing and what you have done along the way.
– Use your most productive time on the most essential tasks of the day. When you mind is relaxed, focus on learning challenging things and tougher tasks and when you are tired at the end of the day, spend your time on more fun things that you enjoy during your work.
Finally, let me share some business ideas with you that can quickly get you started and help you find your way through the maze. Soon, and hopefully, you will be looking for ways and patterns to find niche ideas and methods to grow and make lots of money.
Here’s some ideas that work for most people:
1. Consulting as a service, works. Many people need it. Businesses and individuals pay for it. If you build or have a special knowledge (through experience or through knowledge acquired from a specialized book) in a specific area, such as providing businesses how to save money, remove duplicate processes, stop wasting money on things that don’t work, becoming more eco-friendly, smarter marketing methods, more cost-effective promotional campaigns, etc. and a wide range of services that you can offer as a service. You can start promoting your services through a “consulting whitepaper or guide”. That is how businesses/individuals with contact you for help. This can all be done online and you can grow it easily.
2. Freelancing. You can do services for businesses and startups which they need, from business or product introduction videos or online social media posting and campaigning. There are lots of people or businesses or professionals (dentists, chiropractors, lawyers, contractors, and many others) that don’t have the time to engage or do online marketing. You can do this for them. Social media marketing services start from somewhere are $200/month and up to $5,000/month, from anywhere like 2 hours a week and up to 10 hours per week for each client.
3. YouTube-ing. You can produce a video through your laptop, or smartphone or other devices that have a camera. Then promote these on YouTube and earn from the ad revenue. There are individuals that make $50,000 to $80,000 per month (and some a lot more) from the ad revenue of their published videos on YouTube. The subject of the videos, of course, needs to be fun, entertaining, and high in demand (e.g. people earning some $50k/mo from “Gold Digger Exposed” videos, or “Aggressive Russian Wife Belittling American Husband”, or other such entertaining subject ideas).
4. Managing Websites. There are lots of businesses and entrepreneurs that hate to manage their website. Website these days are like your salesperson and business card, combined. You need it, and you need it to be up to date. But it is time consuming. You need to get someone to keep it up to date. Or, better still, put an ad in Craigslist, find a few people that manage websites, then put together a business idea to go to your local businesses and sell “managed website services” and have contractors from Craigslist manage the websites for you while you do the marketing. This can be a good business opportunity.
5. House-sitter or a pet-sitter online directory listing. Call around, find some sitters and do the necessary background check on these individuals. Then promote such a service to individuals who need these services. You can manage everything for the homeowners and pet owners so they know you are watching over them and taking care of their homes/pets. Can build a large network or directory service doing this.
6. Online directory membership service for contractors, or home cleaning, or green cleaning service, or home organizing, or event chefs/catering service. Basically, you build a website that brings people together, the customer that doesn’t have time to go find people and the contractor that needs to work and get business right away rather spending all their time marketing for business. Can grow this business from city to city, and sell each for a chunk of cash.
7. Creating INFORMATIONAL products. A product that sells well online, with little hassle, no shipping or delivery, quick and easy … is Information eBooks. Special niche ideas or very useful knowledge can be put into an information eBook or an instructional video and can be sold online. Some popular information eBooks on legal forms, or saving money on dental work, or getting best insurance quotes, have generated some $100,000 over a few months of online campaigning.
8. Ecommerce. You can sell vertically any product online, through a marketplace or directly to businesses or consumers. Same business principles apply as in the case of traditional brick and mortar, e.g. great customer service, on-time delivery, high quality and high-in-demand products, etc. to be able to succeed. But as opposed to the traditional brick and mortar business, you can sell to your customers globally, at least potentially. You may want to focus on U.S. and Canada, initially until you grow much larger.
9. Blogging. Blogging is like an online newspaper. You make money from Google or Bing ad clicks. Your audience, come to you for valuable information and also see ads. Clicking on ads by your online visitors, earn you money. There are bloggers that make anywhere from $20,000 per month up to $12 million per month. So, this is a sure way to become a millionaire within a few years.
10. Virtual assistants, or project management assistants. Many businesses and individuals need someone to assist them with their projects, remotely. These are usually things you can do online but your customer simply does not have the time to do it himself/herself. This work could include things like, responding to emails, making phone calls or answering phone calls, keeping schedules, writing letters or other website content, or other secretarial services such as typing, legal transcribing, or proofreading. You can also hire staff in a small office as you grow and you can build this up to be a very profitable business.
Finally, here’s a few points that need to be made.
Internet, online businesses, ecommerce, freelancing, and digital economy are not going to die anytime soon. Some would argue, depending on the specifics, these will never die and only grow as the world population grows.
Internet now connects 3 billion people. Ecommerce performed more than $230 billion last year.
Whether you want to any one of the above ideas, explore them, learn, then go all out and make your first million or you want to combine a few of these ideas and build a revenue stream from each – there is no doubt that with creativity, new innovative ideas, hard work, and perseverance YOU can make a million Dollars within a few years.
It’s all up to you and your positive attitude. Good luck.
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