Let’s talk about how to make consistent money online and how you can bring that into your world on a daily basis.
When I first started my online business, I got caught up in what I call ‘busy' work. Those are the things we love to do where we feel like we’re making progress by ticking the boxes and crossing things off the to-do list. It keeps us busy and makes us feel good.
I used to write a blog post a week when I started my online business. Then I would do up to four guest blog posts a month on top of my own stuff.
I was posting on social media, sending emails out to my list, and thinking about what to put on YouTube. There were lists as long as my arm that I had to get through and that just wasn’t enough… I then decided to change the brand on the website!
Out of all of those things, nothing directly led to making money. None of those things actually impacted my income. Hello busy work! ?♀️
You can have as many to-do lists as you want as long as they directly result in a sale or directly lead someone to an opportunity to work with you or pay you for your services.
This is not about being super salesy or spammy at all. It's more about figuring out what your version of asking for the sale looks like.
Table of Contents
How Are You Making Money?
At the end of the day, when you run an online business you have to answer the question, how am I earning money?
What does that look like in your business? Are you selling services or products?
Then go further and break it down to a granular level.
- Set a financial goal–the amount you’d like to earn weekly or monthly.
- Decide how you are going to get there in a 30 or 60 day period.
Having a financial goal is great, but if you don't know what action steps you have to take to get there, what’s the point?
We are taught to set goals, but not necessarily how to get to the goal.
That’s why new year's resolutions very rarely work. Unless you follow that up with intentional steps towards your goal or resolution, it's just another pie in the sky thing.
So be careful when setting goals that you also set up the action steps needed to get you there.
How?
It's as simple as reverse-engineering the steps. Start with the end goal and work backwards. At least that's what I do. It makes things a lot easier for me.
So if you want to hit $5k months, you have to sit down and go, okay, what does that look like?
Your Offers
Pay attention to what offers you have. What are your products? What are your services? Know what that looks like in detail. How much time does it take for you to do them? Are you delivering them live or are they pre-recorded?
If you're offering a service or you're a coach, think about how many of your offers you can do in a month.
Next, you need to look at your pricing. Are you pricing things appropriately?
Really, at the end of the day, pricing is up to you. There's no right or wrong way to do this. But again, if you have a whole bunch of offers priced at $5 or $7, it might be a struggle to hit $5k if you've only got 100 people on your email list.
Be realistic and drop the drama because this has nothing to do with emotion in any way, shape, or form, but more to do with how, how are you going to do it, how are you going to reach that number?
Be a bit detached about the process otherwise, all you'll do is focus on the numbers.
This is a fundamental thing that I see a lot of people not understanding and they wonder why they're not making money.
Most often, they don’t know their numbers. They don't know what this looks like in their business. I know that I'm saying that a lot, but I want you to understand that if you don't have this in place, how will you make money?
Again, if you have the goal defined, great, but what are the steps? Like, really, what are those steps you need to take to get to your goal?
Let’s Get Granular About Making Money Online
For example, let's say your goal is to earn $5k a month.
And let's say you have 500 people on your email list, and you have three products priced at $7, $47, and $97.
Let's work with some numbers so that you can work out what that looks like.
#1: Conversion rates
The average conversion rate in any online business is between 1 – 5%.
Industry experts say for every person that you have on your email list, one to five people per hundred will buy from you. This is the industry conversion rate.
I like to use the middle number of 3% when working out my own income predictions.
READ: Deliverability rates
READ: Benchmark rates
Let’s crunch some numbers…
With 500 people on your list and a 3% conversion rate:
500 people x 3% = 15
So out of the 500 people on your email list, 15 people are likely going to buy (if you're providing a solution to a problem they have right now).
However, you haven’t taken into account your email open rates…
#2: Email open rates
When you're sending an email to that list, industry averages for open rates are around 15 to 20%.
So out of those 500 people on your list, only 15 to 20% are going to open your email.
500 people x 20% = 100 people
When only one hundred people are seeing or opening your email, and the industry average conversion is 3%, then only 3 people are buying out of 500.
#3: Resend to unopens (your secret weapon)
When you resend to unopens, that might add another 7-20% to your open rate. So let's say it's now a 27% open rate.
So 500 people (in your total list) minus 100 (who have already opened your email), leaves us with 400 x 7%, because that's about the average open rate on a resend.
400 x 7% = 28 extra people saw your email.
So if a total of 128 people are seeing your email at a 3% conversion rate, then that is 4 people. That’s 4 people who will likely buy your thing.
So based on our example, if your goal is $5k a month, you have 500 people on your email list, and you have three products priced at $7, $47, and $97, then the numbers look like this:
4 people are buying each offer, so you’ll need to sell:
- 357 sales at $7,
- 106 sales at $47, or
- 52 sales at $97.
Or a combination of the three.
When you start to look at numbers and understand this you start to go, huh? I might need some more people on my email list if I want to get to $5k!
And if only four people are buying each time and you only have 3 offers, you have a few options to hit your $5k goal:
- Add more people to your list
- Add more offers
- Increase the price of your offers
- Ask for the sale more often
So what's your plan going to look like? You now understand that on average you're looking at a 3% conversion. Then you'll figure out what you're offering and whether those price points are going to help you get there.
How many people need to see your sales page to buy?
At the end of the day, it is about numbers…
And when I understood these numbers, it made me see the value in offering something for sale every single day.
Offer Variety To Make Money Online
I vary the things that I'm offering for sale and I have enough products and courses to keep things interesting for both my audience and myself. This keeps my audience from getting bored, I can offer different price points, and also serve different segments in my list.
I have lots of people at different stages of business inside my Facebook group, but also on my email list. So I want to make sure that I give everyone an opportunity to learn something new based on where they’re at in starting or growing their business.
My point here is when you're working out how you have to look at things like your email list, you have to look at things like your social media reach too. This is all organic stuff without doing paid ads. You can run paid ads, but not everyone wants to, and those conversion numbers are different.
When you are looking to make money, you need to understand that on average 1-5% of people who see your sales page are going to convert. It's not the full list of 500 people who are opening your emails. It's maybe 128, which is why consistency is key and why I ask for the sale every single day. And when I say, ask for the sale, I mean I give people the opportunity to buy from me EVERY day.
Organic Traffic Numbers
I have an email list of over 7,000 people. I know that when I'm operating from a place of creating a business I love and selling offers I embody, I know what the numbers are. And so at that level, I have an opportunity for more and more people to open my emails. On average, I've got 2,000 to 3,000 people reading my emails out of that 7,000.
Yes, I have higher open rates than 20%, and that's because I've worked at nurturing my email list.
So the 3% conversion rate becomes a lot different because of my open rate.
If we look at like 2,500 x 3% it means 75 people potentially will buy my thing.
At the end of the day, you can't control whether someone buys or not though. Your job is simply to show up and present the opportunity.
It's actually not necessarily about the pricing of your products either. It's more about how many people are opening your emails. How many people are clicking over to your sales page and you understanding that 3% will generally buy, all things being equal.
So when you're mapping things out, you have to sit down and go, okay, well, do I need to add more people into my world?
You want to do everything to stack the deck in your favor as an online entrepreneur. This is why I love the whole asking for the sale, and why I go through the process of launching something every month.
It’s easy for me to do that because:
- I've got multiple things to offer.
- I get to meet people where they're at.
- I want to make sure that I am giving people the opportunity to buy every day.
That is how you hit consistent income months. That is what that looks like in an online business.
Now all of this stuff is organic, which just means that I'm not paying to get in front of people inside my Facebook group or my email list. Those are my organic traffic numbers.
Understand Your Numbers And Make Money Online With Ease
When I'm crunching these numbers, there's nothing to stop me from running ads like Facebook ads or Pinterest ads. However, I generally don’t because I have a large enough platform now that this is sustainable organically.
This has taken me a while to really understand myself. I've never been a massive numbers person, but I actually find comfort in just focusing on the numbers, but not in an obsessed way.
It's about understanding that the average conversion is 1-5%. That means if I want to make $X amount of money, then X amount of people need to see the sales page. And then, whatever happens, goes from there.
It's also about paying attention to my email list.
How many people are new and are still being nurtured? How many people are clicking through? Depending on your own email platform, you should be able to easily track those numbers. I use ConvertKit and can see that information from my broadcast dashboard.
Email is still the best organic way to get in front of your audience, which is why I believe in bringing new people in every day.
You always have the option to run ads if you need to. But at the core, you have to know your numbers and understand that if you want to earn consistent money online, then you need to figure out what it looks like in (and for) your business first.
I'm not saying you need to do it exactly the way that I do it, but you need to figure out what it looks like for you and your business. You may (or may not) be starting from zero, but you have to start where you’re at.
Consider what you're comfortable doing, keeping in mind the core 3% conversion rate on average. Sometimes it will be at the higher end, sometimes lower, so I just shoot for 3% and know it will even itself out.
Sometimes my conversion rate is 4%, sometimes it's 2%. It depends on a lot of things that I can’t always control. It just depends, and again, you can't control people and it's not your job to convince someone to buy from you. It’s totally their decision.
Your job is simply to show up and offer someone an opportunity.
Consistent Action for Consistent Income
Personally, I prefer to take consistent action to earn money in my online business. Every day I offer the opportunity for someone to buy from me versus waiting to launch every 90 days.
It doesn't matter whether you're asking for the sale every day or doing a launch once a quarter, the numbers still are the same 3% conversion. So when you know that, you can plan accordingly. That is how you bring money into your business. And like I said, consistency is key.
Whatever you do, you have to be consistent with it to make money online. Sporadic action never pays off.
Your Action Guide:
So if you want to figure this out for yourself, you need to:
- Sit down and start with the financial goal that you want to achieve. How much do you want to earn per month?
- List out your offers and price points.
- Pay attention to how many people are in your world.
- Using conversion rates and email open rates (including resends), calculate how many of your offers you need to sell every month to achieve your goal.
- Decide if you need to add more people, tweak your offers, or adjust your prices.
- THEN TAKE ACTION!
