How to Start a Business

Rory Carruthers 0:06
Happy New Year. Welcome to a new episode of the big picture business podcast. Yay.

Dominica Lumazar 0:14
First of all, if you’re not watching this you should be because Rory is looking pretty cool. I love those glasses. They’re fabulous. Bend down a little. What does it say on your hat? there? We got nice. He’s got he’s happy new years hat on. I’m pretty envious, just saying. But Happy New Year’s week everybody. Listen, 2020 has been weird. We know this. And we are headed into a brand new year. And so when we were thinking about what we wanted to talk about for this week’s episode with a hot, no brainer, we’re going to talk all about how to start an online business, how you can start making money right away in the New Year 2021. All right, we’re going to be talking about things that maybe you’ve never really thought about before, even if you already have your own online business, Rory Why don’t you tell the good people what what topics

Rory Carruthers 1:06
we’re going to cover, we’re going to talk about how to make money doing what you love, how to get started, with no website, how to set yourself up from the very beginning to earn passive income. And we’re also going to step by step walk through some of the affiliate marketing opportunities that are out there, what we’re going to look as, we’re going to look at something that you can monetize right away, but we’re also gonna look at like this really legitimate businesses we’re not, we’re not talking about like, Oh, you can make $100 a day, you know, clicking links online, or, you know, reading blog posts or things like that, like, a lot of that stuff is just scams, it doesn’t actually worked out, these companies are taking advantage of people. You know, on occasion, some of them are legit, but the majority aren’t, and a lot of people are because it’s, it’s kind of click Baity stuff, they’ll make these videos on YouTube and be like, Oh, you can make $100 a day. And here’s how you do it. And they show some like, really ridiculous thing. And when you look at it, you’re spending all day working just to make $100 a day, maybe if they actually pay you what we’re looking at sharing with you are some ways that you can actually earn income and build a legitimate business. And we’re gonna look at it from a few different angles, so that you have some ideas and opportunities of things that you can do,

Dominica Lumazar 2:28
right? So the first thing that I think is so important is you have to identify what you actually love to do. And then to see, could I monetize it, can I actually make money from that maybe you love doing website design. Maybe you love making DIY videos, or showing people how to do certain crafts, maybe you really enjoy leaving reviews, there’s so many different ways to turn what you really enjoy doing. Like, think about your free time, there’s so many different ways that you can make money online immediately, truly just out of doing what you love to do. So first up, you got to find your niche. And you have to identify what type of business you actually want to go into. Maybe you’re really into being a virtual assistant, maybe you like writing, you want to be a blogger? Are you a consultant? Do you know how to do something really well that you feel like you could do some consulting on?

Rory Carruthers 3:20
Are you going to be the front person?

Are you going to be a support person? Yeah, a lot of businesses that need help. They’re, they’re doing well, but they need, they just need manpower really behind it, man, woman power, right. And that aspect is a huge opportunity for you. Because there’s a lot of businesses where they’re like, you know, I just need someone to help me manage my emails or manage my calendar or, you know, send emails off to people, you know, and sometimes that’s a virtual assistant. And sometimes it’s a contract job, where you’re doing that for people, some sometimes they need content written for the website, they’re, they’re too busy, because they’re the front person of their business, and they’re interacting with the public day in and day out. They’re on calls all day long, you know, closing deals, they need people to create the content that brings in those leads for them. Right. So if you have some type of specialty, you’re a great writer, you know how to do some graphic design, you you really enjoy social media. I mean, there’s a lot of companies that need someone you know, to run their social media. So there’s opportunities there to be a support person, if you’re going to be the front person, like Dominica and I are and you’re building out things like podcasts, it takes time to to do that, you know, to become that. So, you know, we usually recommend say how can you support another business to get going and you know, either as a as an agency or a freelancer in some type of work, so that you can get income coming in right away. And then if you want to become the front person Step into that, and, and then start developing your own content and your own brand and your own systems of how you do things based on the success that you’ve been able to help other people create.

Dominica Lumazar 5:11
Exactly, you’ll gain so much knowledge just out of approaching it in that way. So I think that’s really valuable. And then once you’ve gotten to that point where maybe you do want to step into the role of being the front person, then it’s time to really do some market research and see if what you want to personally do is viable, we have to check for viability. So when I say research, you’re looking at the your competitors, direct competition, you’re looking at other similar niche market brands, there’s so much that goes into that process. So make sure that you do not skip that step. It’s very, very important.

Rory Carruthers 5:45
Yeah, I mean, one of the most simple ways that you can tell if if a product or a service is going to be viable, is that are there people looking for it? Mm hmm. You can you can go on Quora, you can go on that website, answer, Reddit, answer, answer the public. You can you can look up but you know, what are people? What are people asking? What are they saying they need help with? You can go and Facebook groups, different groups that are related to maybe the topic of the business that you’re wanting to start? And just look at it and say, Okay, well, you know, what are they asking? Where? Are they needing help? Where are they getting stuck, if they’re getting stuck somewhere, and I have a solution for it? Well, you know, maybe I can reach out to them, and help them. Mm hmm. I see this a lot where, like, I’ll give you an example. So say there’s a Facebook group, and it’s all about, you know, people writing a book, well, you know, I could go in there. And I could say, I could look and I maybe I’ll find like 10 or 20 people who are just struggling to get their book cover done, I can reach out to them. And I could say, you know what, I know how to design book covers, and I saw that, you know, you’re looking for someone, you’re kind of struggling with this, I have a few ideas for you, here’s a mock up of an idea that might help you. And if you’d like me to, to finish it, and you’d like to hire me to, to create this and, and work with you on it, then I’d be happy to do that. Right. So like, sometimes you have to put in a little bit of legwork to make this work. But remember, you’re building a business, you don’t just wake up one day, and then you have a flood of people wanting to work with you, you have to start building relationships, you have to build connections with people. I mean, that’s really one of the biggest things that I could say is that the the relationships you build are is what’s gonna allow your business to get off the ground? Hmm, absolutely. Especially if you’re doing it with very little to no advertising or, you know, investment. Yeah, you know, you have to build those relationships. And, and, you know, and there’s different levels. So like, you know, people who might, you know, might be stuck there in a Facebook group, you know, you might be able to, to drum up some business that way right away. For people who are really well established, and you’re wanting to level up and work with them, what you’re going to do is, you may actually do a project with them for free to show them the value that you can offer them, you know, and usually this is once you’ve already established yourself a little bit so that you know that what you’re offering them is something that would be really valuable to them. Definitely. And and you may spend, you know, months building that relationship before you ever actually work with them, or even ask them to work with them. Mm hm. So there’s different levels to what you’re doing. But the thing to keep in mind is you can get started right away, there’s tons of people who are just starting their businesses, who gets stuck in places. And if you have a solution that can help them move forward in their business, you know, a lot of times they’re willing to pay to to get that help, and to get that expertise that they don’t have, because they want to focus on what they’re good at.

Dominica Lumazar 8:51
Right? I’m glad that you’re talking about Facebook groups, because a really powerful tool that I’ve been using a lot recently, is if you’re involved in a Facebook group, let’s say like a, a woman’s Leadership Network group, let’s say, and you are a website designer, and you really are looking for some new clients, there is a very handy little eyeglass tool, you can click on in any group, and you can search keywords. So you can just search like, you know, website design, for example. And you can see Has anyone recently typed that in a comment? Because there’s some of these groups have millions of people in them, right? So it’s hard to keep track every day, you know, who’s doing what we’re commenting about. So that’s a really convenient tool. So if you have a service that you really want to offer, maybe you’re a photographer, you know, and someone’s looking for engagement session photos, then you can type that in into the keywords and find exactly what a potential client could be. Now another thing that I want to mention too, is Facebook. As we know Facebook is so powerful, be thinking that when you’re getting started, it’s important that what you have as your Facebook profile photo, your cover image, the most recent posts that are available to the public are something that’s representative of you like it’s you know, it is it is professional, it’s not you taking shots with your cousins, you know. So like, be be aware of those things. If you are actually reaching out to people on Facebook or social media in general, the number one thing they’re going to do is they’re going to look at your pictures, they’re going to say, Well, what is this person all about, but even want to be associated? So be very mindful of that. And if you have, you know, pictures like that, fine, that’s fine, make them private, just don’t make them. So yeah, just quick pro tip there, protect yourself before you even go there.

Rory Carruthers 10:33
Yeah, and social media is a great opportunity, because you can set up profiles on all these accounts, and it doesn’t cost you anything to at least get them set up, you know. And so that gives you the opportunity to tap into the people who are in on those platforms, and say, say, you know, you’re looking through and you see, someone makes a post on some influencers page. And it’s like, you know, let me know, your biggest business struggles, right? And then you see all these people who are like, I’m struggling with this, and this and this, and this, well, you could dm them, right? And just be like, you know, actually know how to help you with that. I’d love to, you know, chat with you for a few minutes. See if I could help help you get past that maybe, you know, provide a solution for you. Hmm. Yeah, a lot of people are open to that if if it is really a something that they’re struggling with, and they need a solution right away.

Dominica Lumazar 11:27
Correct. Something that’s, that’s so so important to remember, is if you do have a website, or you have a link tree, or you’ve got something that does have like your brand, and product information or service information on it, don’t just go spamming your link everywhere. We hate that I receive hundreds of those messages a day. And there could be something so quality in there, but guess what, I’m not going to take the time to go through that because it didn’t it, it doesn’t allow to have that that personal connection aspect. So take the time to make a message. If you are going to send a link to something like a calendar, take the time to be personal about it first, you know, like, Hey, we’re part of the same group, I saw you needed help you needed some photography, headshots, whatever it is, here’s how I can help you. If it’s of interest, let’s chat, you can leave it at that don’t even put the link right away. And then they might come back and say, hey, yeah, maybe at some point, and you can say Awesome. Well, you know, if that’s something you want to do in the future, here’s a you know, link to my calendar, I really look forward to working with you. But don’t just be like, here’s a link, because it’s not going to work just

Rory Carruthers 12:28
Well, I, I see this on LinkedIn all the time, like, connect with you. And then they’ll have some auto message that sends out it’s like, you know, three pages long. And you’re it’s like, it’s like, I can help you do this. And I do this and this and this and sign up on my calendar to book a chat. Right. It’s like, it’s way too intense. It’s way too aggressive. If you’re gonna build a relationship with someone you don’t offer marriage right off the bat on the first date. Right. So you’ve got to, you know, you got to date your prospects.

Dominica Lumazar 13:03
Yeah. And, and do do your research. Yeah. And,

Rory Carruthers 13:07
and, and just, you know, spend a little time just getting to know them, like, ask them, like, send the message, just, you know, ask a question. Yeah. You know, look at their profile, and figure out something about them. Hey, I saw you You really like Gibson guitars? I play guitar as well. What’s your favorite model?

Dominica Lumazar 13:28
Mm hmm. Start that familiarity? Yeah, yeah, it’s important to find a way to connect for sure. So social media, in general, fantastic way to build your brand. We talked about that in the previous episode, which is all about how to build your personal brand. So if you haven’t checked out that episode, highly recommend you do that. Because this will absolutely help launch your brand online, once you have that basic information and understanding. But social media is a great way to help build your brand for free. Like Rory said, all these platforms are free. It’s incredible. Just utilize it to your advantage. keep it consistent.

Rory Carruthers 14:03
Let’s talk about you know, like how to take your business online and some of the other free opportunities out there.

Dominica Lumazar 14:09
Yeah, do it.

Rory Carruthers 14:10
Okay, so, you know, we’ve talked about utilizing social media. But what we haven’t talked about is some other websites that are out there, and some broader ways that you can utilize products and services, you know, a lot of what we do, and a lot of our clientele that we work with, you know, they create products and services that are very geared toward online, but there’s a lot of things you could even also do offline, but you have stuff to take it online to do your marketing. Right. So an example is, let’s say, you know how to clean gutters really well. You could create a small business around that

Dominica Lumazar 14:48
good money in that. There really is.

Rory Carruthers 14:51
So what do you do? Well, you could post on craigslist, that you are, you know, looking to help people with it. And there’s lots of people who say search on Craigslist and places like Craigslist Angie’s List, and like next door and, and TaskRabbit, where they’re looking for people just to help them with some of the everyday stuff especially like think about this, think of how many people who are in their, you know, 6070s 80s, who just can’t climb ladders anymore, they’re too scared to because if they fall, it’s going to be a really bad situation for them and they want to hire someone to do that, well, you could build a whole business around them. And then what you do, like you look at, you know, we’ll get into some passive income stuff, but how you can really turn that into sustainable business for yourself. Yeah, but we’ll get that into that in a minute. You know, some of the other things I wanted to look at is like, you know, if you if you are doing stuff like that is website design, or you know, maybe you’re an audio engineer, you know how to edit audio books, or, you know, edit, maybe you know how to edit videos really well, you know, maybe maybe that’s your skill, what, you know, whatever the thing is graphic design, or

Dominica Lumazar 16:02
digital product or service,

Rory Carruthers 16:03
yeah, digital product or service. I mean, there’s, there’s places like Upwork, where you could create a profile doesn’t mean, it doesn’t cost anything to set it up. They take a little bit of a cut, but you know, it’s worth it. Because you’re getting business fiverr. It’s another fiverr is another one. I mean, you can even do that with with Craigslist as well. And if you’re, if you have products that you sell, you know, maybe you’re really good at building like craft things, or maybe you build desks, right? You could put them on Etsy, Facebook marketplace, eBay, right. There’s all these opportunities. If you if you know how to to, you know, to sell stuff on Amazon, you could you could do Amazon Marketplace, right?

Dominica Lumazar 16:45
Yep. Yeah, Amazon takes a pretty big cut when you’re just getting started. So it makes sense to not sell one z, two Z’s on Amazon. But if you’re if you have plans for mass manufacturing of a certain product, then Amazon can be very lucrative, it really can be. So there’s many different ways and different platforms, you can sign up for online. Today, like right now, but listen to this episode first. So right after you listen to this episode, you can go sign up for these things. But be aware that that yes, the cost of of running business online, like the overhead to do this, these, these platforms will take a specific cut from what you’re doing. So price your services appropriately so that you’re actually getting what you need, knowing going into it, what the cuts going to be on the other end of it. So that’s important to keep note of, let’s get into a little bit about how to get started with no website at all. And this

is a question that I know I receive a lot with people who are just getting started, where they don’t know how to start a website, what the steps are to start a website,

Rory Carruthers 17:44
the thing to remember is that you don’t actually need a website to get started, you know, a lot of what we just shared with you with like doing stuff on Craigslist, and in Fiverr and Upwork. Most of the people who are providing services, they don’t actually have websites, they’re just they’re using that as their website. You know, I I’ve hired people for for work off of Craigslist, and TaskRabbit and stuff, you know, help with moving helpers, yard work, you know, trim trees, things like that. They don’t have websites, the majority of them, you know, I’d say like 80 90% don’t, you know, if you look at Craigslist, what they’ll do is though, what they’ll though, they’ll put up some images of some reviews that they’ve received in the images, or they’ll put them in, in the text in the in the post that they’re making. Right? Right. And that just gives you a you know, like, Oh, this person knows what they’re doing, they’re not going to come over and like scam me, right? You know, or rob my house. Right. So the more the more things that you can do to prove that you are trustworthy and credible, the better it’s going to be right. And and one of the keys is that if you provide a service and you do a good job, you’re going to get repeat business, especially if it’s something that needs repeating. You know, whether it’s hauling trash away, you know, if you have a pickup truck, and you’re like I needed, I need to make money, well, you could haul truck, you could hold people’s trash away, you could take that stuff, you could sort through it, you could repurpose it, you could resell some of it, you could take it to the dump for people like there’s all these other things that you could do and charge people for that they need help with. So they’re just not willing to do

Dominica Lumazar 19:27
something really quick before I forget, because I’m a branding nerd. Okay, if you have been mulling over a certain name or a brand idea, it doesn’t cost very much money to sign up for a domain name. You do not have to have a website built immediately at all. But if you intend on continuing on with a specific name, or a brand idea for yourself, please go buy the domain name or make sure it’s available. Because the last thing you want to do is to get, you know, let’s say a year or two into something and you realize oh my gosh that this name is It’s actually already taken, what do you do? So look at that ahead of time. And, and secure it for yourself so that you know that if you wanted to build a website, you could write so. me Yeah, exactly.

Rory Carruthers 20:10
It’s meant for yourself. And that’s the key is you can buy the domain name without and not have a website like some, for example, when, when I launched my book business, I didn’t, I had the domain name for, for my name. And I didn’t have the website up at that time. And in so in, in four months, I was able to, without a website, build a six figure business. So you don’t have to have a website. Okay? Just remember that you don’t have to have a website, it’s not a pre requisite, more and more now, people are gonna look you up online. But and you know, and we talked about that in other episodes of, you know, where, you know, when you’re looking to, to really, you know, present yourself well online, but you don’t have to do it in the very beginning. You can, especially in certain, in certain instances, if you’re not trying to be the front person, then then you don’t necessarily need a website start with.

Dominica Lumazar 21:11
Yeah, and I think that so many people have a challenging time getting over that hurdle, where they it’s like the perfectionism thing, right? I’m I, I’m a total perfectionist when it comes to my work. And if things like aren’t perfect, I definitely have like a, oh, let me just one more tweak one more this one more that. But I’ve had to learn to let it go. And just to put it out into the world and see what happens, or else nothing would ever get done. So don’t let something like having like not having a website, get in your way of starting a new online business right now? Because you totally can.

Rory Carruthers 21:47
I just want you to think about this. Okay. So you know, we’ve, we’ve had people in our, with our music, come up, come up to us and be like, you know, I was, I was like, I was thinking of killing myself for like, months before I heard your music and your music. I heard your music, and it gave me hope. And it changed my life. You know, we’ve had, we’ve had people who’ve come up to us, with our businesses. And, you know, they’ve said, you know, you’re the information that that you’ve provided that you’ve shared, you know, it’s helped me create six figure business seven figure businesses, right. You know, think about even just like the simplest thing, like, You’re, you’re providing a service, like, let’s go back to, you know, cleaning gutters.

Dominica Lumazar 22:35
It’s such a great business. Seriously, if you have like, the physical agility to do that, ah, I would totally be out there cleaning gutters, they make money.

Rory Carruthers 22:48
But I want you to think about this, okay. Because what if you just kept putting off starting that business, when you could have prevented, you know, someone who’s in their 70s from falling off the ladder and breaking their hip?

Dominica Lumazar 23:01
Yeah. Right. You’re solving a problem. Yeah,

Rory Carruthers 23:04
or a potential problem. When you’ve been doing this a while you start to realize that, that the things that you do the things you put out into this world, you can be precious about them, and never share them. Mm hmm. But think of all like, I think back if like we never released our music like, and like someone killed themselves, because we didn’t release our music like, and we found that out somehow like that, that would be horrible.

Dominica Lumazar 23:29
Right? For those of you that don’t know, Rory and I, we do music together, a band is called Forever Yours, you can find us on iTunes. But the first EP and the first album really was dedicated to Suicide Prevention Awareness. We started we started a whole movement called the you are enough, you are enough movement, which is pretty powerful. And we’ve through that through through our music, we’ve been able to connect with some incredible people. Yes, who have shared their story. And so if you’re wondering, like, where, what, where did the left field? Where did this come from? Yeah, we’ve, we’ve are we’re very blessed to have had these experiences and met these people and to have touched lives in a way that’s been very important. So yes, like, like we’re saying doesn’t have to be music, right? It doesn’t have to be something like that at all. It could literally be, you know, cleaning someone’s gutter to help them prevent whatever, you know, negative scenario, right? There’s

so many different ways that we can touch lives and reach out to people and be helpful. And it all goes back to solving a problem

Rory Carruthers 24:29
and just putting it out there. And yeah, that’s why I was saying it’s like, if you if you spend six months trying to figure out how to put your business together. I mean, that’s six months worth of people you could be helping

Dominica Lumazar 24:43
Yeah, exactly. Not only other people but yourself and putting them back yourself to write your family and learning and growing. Yeah, so don’t let Don’t let these small things hold you back. Yeah, yeah. So let’s talk about how to set yourself up from the beginning. To earn some passive income, and in my experience, the most wealthy people I have met in my life, so far never put all their eggs in one basket, so to speak, they have so many different business ideas and different ventures and there’s, they’re super diversified as far as what they do. I’m not saying go out and do that right away. But it is important to be thinking bigger picture of like, hmm, how can I diversify what I really enjoy doing and look at it at a few different angles and see how we can possibly monetize it. And one of the things that have been so good for my business is making sure that I know my reoccurring income. So as as a business owner, I mean, sometimes things are like month to month, literally where I don’t know what I’m going to get a month from now, because a new client could pop up, right? Like I got my baseline covered, bills are covered things like that, and I have my my clients that I’ve walked in for a certain, you know, a month, six months a year, like I know, ahead of time, what I’m going to be getting from those reoccurring services that I’m providing, however, I do a lot of website design, and I’m not designing websites, you know, every single month, a new website for the same client. So I had to think of different ways, how can I make sure that the customer acquisition is reoccurring for me? So I started offering like search engine optimization services, and making sure that the websites are updated regularly every month. So that’s a whole other thing. So it’s these smaller, the smaller services that are keeping the customer, like I end up having, you know, these customers for life, they stay with me for life, because I’m doing their updates for them, and the edits and adding pictures and things like that. So it’s it’s great to be thinking ahead of time, how can I turn this customer into reoccurring income and not just a one off service? And you can do this in so many different businesses, right. So, think, think about this, you know, Dominica is talking about, like a service space, you know, online option of doing something, but but we’ll go back to gutter cleaning, okay? Well, you may not be coming out every month, because most people don’t need gutter cleaning every month, but they might need it quarterly or two times a year, or once a year. And if you have some type of package deal or a discount that you offer for scheduling it in advance, that’s recurring income. Now, yes, you have to still go out and do the work. But you know that money’s coming in?

Rory Carruthers 27:42
Right booked in advance. I mean, you could if you own a carpet cleaning company, what do you do? Well, you say, let’s get you on a schedule every six months for me to come out and clean your carpets, and you get a 25% discount or whatever, you know,

Dominica Lumazar 27:57
right? It’s it’s guaranteeing that six months down the road, happy customer, everyone, you know, everyone’s happy with the result, you get the money. It’s already in the books. It’s great. It’s a great way to schedule things out for yourself, too. So you know what to expect?

Rory Carruthers 28:10
Yeah. And then the other side of it is, you know, diversifying is okay, well, now you’ve built up this, this gutter cleaning business, we’ll stick with that.

Dominica Lumazar 28:20
I love it.

Rory Carruthers 28:22
Okay, well, you’ve, you’ve got that business going, it’s going well, and you’ve created a system of how to get clients. Well, what else could you do? Could you bring on more people, and you know, pay them a little less than what you make so that you make a profit off of the work that they’re doing? Could you expand into maybe Gardening Services, maybe you can provide other types of treatments that go well, with gutter cleaning, such as moss removal, pressure washing, like, you know, you start looking at these ways, how do you how do you diversify, but you could even take it to another level. And you could say, well, I’m going around to all these homes that that need gutters while earning gutter cleaning, some of them are going to need new gutters.

Dominica Lumazar 29:09
Hey,

Rory Carruthers 29:10
right, well installation, what you could what could you provide there? You could also take it even to another level and say, Well, you know, I I’ve got this extra money now. Where can I invest it maybe in real estate, because I know what to look for. Right? May you know it’s like, it can go on and on so you can grow your business. And then and start to diversify what you’re doing to higher and higher levels like it just like we’ve done with different aspects of our businesses from you know, going from, you know, social media management to website design to, you know, in my case build starting with books and then to building out the funnels and doing SEO and all that type of stuff. So let’s also now look at okay, because we’ve we’ve done some offline stuff that we’ve brought online. And we’ve talked about different ways of starting online businesses, but what about ways to when you don’t have a product and you don’t have a service? How do you make money right away?

Dominica Lumazar 30:15
Well, drumroll please, because this is pretty exciting stuff. Let’s talk about affiliate marketing. But first of all, we have to establish what the heck is it. So affiliate marketing is the process in which an affiliate, meaning you Rory, myself has the ability to earn a commission from marketing somebody else’s product or service. And it’s a great way to make money immediately. If you like a product or brand or service, there’s so many different affiliate programs out there, you’d be so surprised, you could go to any of your favorite products or brands online, scroll all the way down to their website, the very bottom of it will likely say sign up for affiliate here or become an affiliate today, there’s

Rory Carruthers 30:58
so many affiliate programs for they’re part of an affiliate network, which we’ll talk about in a minute. But what’s great about affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to create a product, you don’t have to create a service, someone’s already done that. And they’re saying, just send me some customers, I’ll give you a portion of that sale. And sometimes it’s 10%, sometimes it’s 50%. Sometimes it’s 100% of certain needs certain sales just so they can get more clients in the door. Like, they’re just looking to get for you to bring the people in. And, and that can be driving traffic to their website, it can also be a more personal relationship where say, you know, say you know, some people who who need someone to run their social media ads, right? And you know, a person who does that, and you make that introduction, and then you get a commission for making that instruction. Alright, so how do you get started marketing other people’s products and services. And what it comes down to is building relationships, if you’re going to go and do more than one on one type of situation where you’re making a referral to someone, but like we talked about, there’s a lot and I mean, a lot of companies out there who have affiliate programs that you can sign up for, like Dominica was saying, scroll to the bottom of their page, and you’ll find a link. And if you can drive some traffic to their website, you know, put, you know, maybe you make blog posts, and at the end of the blog post that talks about the product, there’s a link with that affiliate link, maybe you’re making a YouTube video talking about the product, maybe doing a review of the product, and or service, right. And or software, we haven’t really talked too much about software, but software is a huge one, especially online. All these you know, software companies are looking for more customers, and they pay pretty well.

Dominica Lumazar 32:58
They do. Yeah, and and one of the ways that y’all listening can support us is on our website, we actually have our own affiliate links to all the best products and services that we use. And you guys can get that like right now. It’s all this incredible software. But those are all affiliate links. And now when we say affiliate links, I know that when I say that with my clients are like, what does that mean? It’s literally a link where it’ll be like, you know, www dot, whatever the print the product or brand name is slash series of numbers and letters. And it’s unique to you. So it’s being tracked for every time somebody clicks on it, purchases something through it, all of that goes right back to you, because it’s being done through your unique ID and that is what an affiliate link actually means. Sorry, Rory go ahead.

Rory Carruthers 33:46
Yeah, so, you know, there’s, there’s affiliate network so that you can tap into that have tons of products, and you sign up with those companies, and they and they give you a link and then and then you can go through and click the products that you want to promote. So let’s say you know, it’s product x, well you click that, and they’ll give you a custom link for that product that you can then go and promote and one of the best ways you know, make make some YouTube videos, you know, just, you know, whatever you need to do to get it out there to share it with people. Get it in front of people post it on social media, your email list. Yeah, if you have an email list you can do that.

Dominica Lumazar 34:28
Something that I want to mention though, if you are on an affiliate network, which can be something like Clickbank is a great network that both Rory and I have used before shareasale is great. Even Amazon Associates if you didn’t know this, Amazon has their own affiliate program. You can advertise your favorite products, through your blog posts, wherever you like to put your content. A win is another one. But something that is so important you guys, if you see a product where you were you’re looking at it, you go wow, their commission is like 200 bucks a sale. Make sure you actually like the product. You have to like the product, make sure it’s right for your target demographic, make sure that it makes sense to what you’re trying to accomplish with your business with your personal brand, right? Because if all of a sudden, I go and I sell, let’s say, I found, let’s just say I found a tire company, if I’m selling tires, to like my marketing clients, they’d be like, What are you talking about? It doesn’t there’s no connection there, right? Make sure that you actually go through the affiliate product itself before you decide to sell it. Okay. Very important. Clickbank is probably my favorite one that I really enjoy looking at, just to see what products are selling well, they have their own marketplace that you can log into make your own account, and you can promote many different products through Clickbank itself and keep really good track of all of that. So I think that’s a great place to start, if you’re just, you know, wanting to get started and sort of figure out the ins and outs of what affiliate marketing truly is. And there’s a product for everyone. And these, these products are typically all digital. So it’s not like you’re gonna have to go, you know, all the sudden learn how to do drop shipping or anything like that, like it’s all digital and your hands off, you’re just promoting the link. So it’s a great way to make some additional income and to learn how this process works. So that when you go back to doing your business growth, then you have a clear understanding of how to do affiliate marketing for your target demographic.

Rory Carruthers 36:28
Yes.

Dominica Lumazar 36:31
I’m very passionate about affiliate marketing. I enjoy it a lot.

Rory Carruthers 36:36
We We both have utilized it really effectively, like me, me more so like on the services side, and partnering up with people and saying, Hey, I’m gonna send, you know, some, some of my clients your way because I don’t I don’t do those services, or you know, or my business doesn’t do those, those services. And but they need that help. Yeah. And they’re asking me because I’ve built the relationship. And they asked, and they say, you know, I need this done. And I owe, you know, I know someone. Mm hmm. Right. Yeah.

Dominica Lumazar 37:09
It’s a great tool to help grow your business.

Rory Carruthers 37:12
Yeah. Yeah. So there’s lots of opportunities there. So you know, we encourage you to explore it more, you know, we could probably do a whole episode on affiliate marketing, but we’re giving you a general overview, so that you can just kind of, you know, realize the opportunity to get started with it. But we hope that the information we’ve shared in this episode is helpful. How you get started with an online business helps you get some income coming in. Because we know a lot of people have been struggling a lot lately, we know going into the new year, that there’s a lot of uncertainty of what things are going to look like. So utilize the information that we’re giving you and and implement it in some way so that you know, you can meet your needs and, and build a business off of what your what you want to be doing what you love what you know how to do what you’re an expert at, or even just, you know, something that you do in your everyday life that that you could do to help someone else.

Dominica Lumazar 38:11
Yeah. Well said. And with that, everyone. Happy New Year.

Yeah.

2021 by 2020.

Rory Carruthers 38:27
Hey, thanks so much for listening to the big picture business podcast this week. On the next episode, we’re speaking with Dana and David Hagstrom, where they’re sharing their strategies to help overcome overwhelm their time management plan formula, how to change your course toward success. The three places people get stuck in their businesses so you can avoid them and so much more. New episodes are released every Tuesday. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcast. You can also find us online at BPPpodcast.com, and we have the full video episodes up on the BBB podcast YouTube channel. So check them out. See you next time.new years