EP26 — How to Make 10k/month in Less than a Year

Coders' Startup - Business and Marketing Advice for Programmers

To watch the video recording of this episode, click here

In the last episode of The Coders’ Startup, we dug into a Facebook post all about how one entrepreneur was feeling very alone and isolated. No one, even his closest friends and family, seemed to understand his goals as an entrepreneur.

(Listen to EP25–Part 1 here)

Carter and I addressed some tactics for dealing with this type of discouragement. When the people who care about you most don’t seem to appreciate what you’re doing, it can be hard to persist onward.

In part two of this topic, we’re going to address the practical side of this issue. How does one actually go from $0 to $10,000 per month by starting their own business? Well, luckily, Carter and I have some insights we’d like to share with you.

Let’s dig into it.

Using Paid Traffic to Your Advantage

I put Carter on the spot in the beginning of this episode, and asked him how he would use paid ads if he were starting a business (one with aggressive growth goals) from scratch.

His intelligent response was full of great information. He said that first, he would sign up for all of the paid accounts — Google PPC, Facebook, YouTube ads, etc. — and would claim their free certificates.

Just by signing up for accounts, you can probably leverage about $500 of free PPC. Instead of just winging it, develop a game plan to spend these credits wisely (more on this below).

Then, Carter said he would use a Leadpages click funnel, and from there, would start to build an email list before anything else. If he did have some extra money to spend, he said he might try to hire a copywriter, or at least talk to one for ideas on the best way to write ads.

Another great way to figure out what kinds of ads might work is to look at what your competitors are doing, and see if they’re doing it well. There are a few tools out there that can help you research your competitors paid ads. What Runs Where is a good example.

Start small. Allocate $5 per day toward paid ads and then start breaking down your analytics. What’s your conversion rate? What’s your click-through rate? There are so many things to measure. If you know your numbers, the sky is truly the limit. Mastering PPC is all about knowing the formula, tweaking it, and then finding that point of traction.

While paid ads are certainly the quickest way to start making money, they take a bit of time to learn. Both Carter and I highly recommend taking a course on the topic before you dive in head first. An e-course, or even just some in-depth research on PPC, will ultimately save you time and money.

Rick Mulready’s course on Facebook ad is a good place to start. You can find more info on that on his website, here. And another great resource is Amy Porterfield’s course. Find that here.

Hustle, hustle, hustle

If your goal is to start making money with your own business, you have to get started!

Create your product. Get to work and make it. The faster you can get to market with a product, the faster you can start making money.

If you want to be even faster, sell someone else’s product. Find something you care about, something with good reviews, something you’d enjoy learning about, and then sell it.

If you do choose to go this route, make sure to give away your own promotions and bonuses around that product — make it unique so that customers have a reason to buy the product from you. For example, if I were selling someone else’s course around Javascript, I would give away some supplemental videos and tip sheets to put my own spin on it, and attract my own customers.

When it comes to deciding what type of product you want to sell, Carter brings up a good slice of wisdom … It takes the same amount of effort to sell at a $1,000 price point than it does at a $30 price point. If your goal is $10,000 and your product sells for $10, you need to sell 1,000 products to reach that number. It’s not impossible, but it does take a lot of time, energy, and possibly, money.

Find that sweet spot — the balance between reasonable price point and a number of customers you’ll need. Settle on something that’s ambitious, yet still reachable.

Start Getting Leads

Another way to go from $0 to $10,000 quickly? Start generating leads. And for this piece of the puzzle, it’s all about establishing an email list.

If you can get about 20% or 30% of people who land on your squeeze page to sign up for your email list, you’re golden. If you’re grabbing more than that, congratulations! You’re doing a lot of things right. If you’re below that threshold, don’t panic. But know that it’s probably time to start split testing. After you run some tests, land on a formula and a design that works better so you can start building your list.

Once you’re starting to get leads, it’s time to start thinking about, and implementing, your sales funnel. I won’t beat this topic to death here because we’ve already done two episodes on this topic (EP19 and EP20). Read those, and ingrain in your mind the importance of a sales funnel.

When you have your sales funnel up and running, you could think about adding another product to the mix to increase your opportunity for a sale (or hopefully, multiple sales). This is what I’ve done with my Java Programming business. As my business grows, I’m going to keep adding courses that are all related, that all appeal to my customers. That way, I can keep putting customers through the various sales funnel. By doing this, the average dollar amount for a lead begins to exceed the amount paid for it, and your ambitious growth goal becomes more tangible than ever.

You’re Not Alone

I wanted to end this post and episode with an affirmation — you are not crazy. And you are not alone!

No matter what your friends, family, and co-workers might say to you, you’re not crazy, and what you’re doing is exciting and worth pursuing. It can be done, it has been done before, and you are more than capable of achieving your goals with the right amount of grit, hustle, and dedication.

LINKS

https://www.whatrunswhere.com/

www.mcarterjohnson.com/

http://rickmulready.com/

http://www.amyporterfield.com/marketingresources/

The post EP26 — How to Make 10k/month in Less than a Year appeared first on The Coders' Startup.