eCommerce, Youtuber, Side Hustles
Over 10 Million in Online eCommerce Sales
Youtuber with Over 80,000 Subscribers
10 Years Experience as an Affiliate Marketer/Digital Marketer
Side Hustle Extroardinaire
My name is Johnny, although you may know me better as Rules For Rebels from my Popular Youtube Channel. I'm a full-time self employed Side Hustler, Solopreneur and Indepreneur.
My passion is helping fellow Entrepreneurs grow their business. I love helping new Entrepreneurs explore opportunities and find their direction.
Web Design
eCommerce, Youtuber, Side Hustles
SEO to many people seems like this big mystery and this very technical skill, but in reality it's just using content to drive traffic. Years ago there was a lot more gamesmanship to SEO. You could essentially lazily trick your way into the search rankings. If you're curious to learn more about this look into Made For Adsense or MFA as it was called. Essentially people could throw up poorly written one page web pages with keywords stuffed in and get to the top of Google. Over the years algorithms and AI have become much more advanced, they can tell if something is readable and written in a quality manner. It's also much more about user engagement and if people are actually finding that content helpful. SEO these days is less about backlinks and on site page structure and tags and more so just about creating quality content. Sure it will help to learn a bit about SEO. Learn about H1 and H2 tags, link structure, how to get backlinks, but don't spend too much time getting hungup on the ins and outs and just create quality content. If you're a business trying to drive traffic try to think of questions a potential customer may have or ask and write content that addresses those questions.
Message Development
eCommerce, Youtuber, Side Hustles
So this is going to be a two sided marketplace? That's one of the huge challenges of anything with two sides whether it be an OfferUp style cone or a dating site. You can't get men without women but you can't get women without men or in the case of a selling platform you can't get sellers without buyers but you can't get buyers without sellers, it's kind of a catch 22. Pretty much everyone from Tinder to Reddit to all other types of sites wrestled with this problem. Most of them used bots to fake activity. Probably didn't provide the best user experience but was at least good enough to lure in some users and from that point it was just organic growth. Not sure what type of marketplace or site it is but try to get friends and family on there, maybe provide some incentive for signups through an affiliate marketing type situation. I'm actually doing some affiliate stuff for a new cryptocurrency exchange and they are paying $25 per sign-up, that's a little steep, especially for a startup but you could do something on a smaller scale.
Entrepreneurship
eCommerce, Youtuber, Side Hustles
This could go one of two ways. I've had some employers hire me because of Entrepreneurial things I've done and mentioned on my resume and CV, and I've had other potential employers who either felt threatened by it or thought I wouldn't be committed to their business and would run off and start my own thing. I think at startups and/or smaller businesses where positions tend to be less structured it's viewed as an asset that you can be a jack of all trades, your comfortable working in a fast paced and changing environment, in a more corporate atmosphere where they want you to do your job and only one specific duty it may not be seen as an asset. You could potential tailor your CV to include or leave off the Entreprenurial stuff depending on whom you're applying with. I thought Mary above had an interesting approach, mentioning you worked for the company and leaving off that you were the owner depending upon the position and company you're applying with.
Cryptocurrency
eCommerce, Youtuber, Side Hustles
I for the life of me don't understand how that game got so popular. I remember early on people were making good money off breeding and selling kitties. Last I had been aware that game had kind of died out because Ethereum transactions got bogged down and expensive and it wasn't really worth the transaction fees to play. Furthermore the whole concept to me was just kinda dumb. A parody game called cryptotitties came out shortly after, same concept just with boobs instead of kitties. I think it got popular because it was the first dApp out there and because crypto was incredibly hot at the time. I've been kind of out of the crypto space for the past 6 or 8 months but I would think the popularity of that game has died off
Sales
eCommerce, Youtuber, Side Hustles
I would work with local businesses where you can actually go into a business cold and sit down with someone. Anyone who owns a business is constantly getting hit up by Google Ads calls, people trying to sell SEO, merchant processing, etc. I think seeing someone face to face will instill more confidence and also seperate you from everyone else trying to sell them services. Personally I might suggest focusing on dental offices. My girlfriend works for a dental office so I have some insights into their industry. At least in my area, ie Chicago suburbs, dentists are clueless about marketing, building websites, advertising, etc. They all seem to go to these same conferences in Texas and they all share the same bad knowledge with each other. Her dentist is paying something like $250 a lead to 1-800-Dentist and the leads are absolute crap. That money put into even a short video ad which would do wonders to rank on Google as well as could be used in FB ads, Youtube Ads and other formats would be so much better spent IMHO. I'm actually looking into starting kind of a full service marketing agency specializing in working with dentists ie building websites, handling their social media and PPC advertising, etc. I think video could be very powerful with them, especially since many people are fearful of dentists so showing a dentist in a more human way, personalizing them, showing a bit of their bedside manner I think would go a long way in converting video viewers to clients.
Business Strategy
eCommerce, Youtuber, Side Hustles
What is you're business? Are you going to be manufacturing CBD oil or is this just going to be a private label type of thing? I think finding funding is going to be difficult, especially if you're going the private label route as you don't really have anything proprietary and anyone else could replicate the same thing. I think this business could be started without funding. Try finding a supplier who will allow you to dropship their products, use that to build up some capital and then find a bottler or supplement company who will allow you to private label one of their blends or make your own.
Job search
eCommerce, Youtuber, Side Hustles
Have you ever made any money online in the past? Have you ever started a blog or grown a social media following? I ask to get a better idea what skills and/or experience you may have. If you have none it's possible but it's going to be a long game plan, not something to put money in your pocket in the next couple weeks. There's so many things you can get into from ecommerce to freelancing to creating content and doing affiliate programs or cpa deals. The easiest way to get started will be to start on a platform like Fiverr, Amazon Merch or Amazon Associates, eBay, etc. That way it makes things a bit easier because you have them bringing you some organic traffic. You could also do something offline and pickup free items off Craigslist and flip on eBay or Offerup, clean garages, pickup dog poop, tutor, mow lawns, powerwash, etc, etc, etc. If you'd like to add a bit more of your skill-sets and past experiences it would be easier to give you a clearer direction to go in.
Facebook Ads
eCommerce, Youtuber, Side Hustles
Let me start off by saying my affiliate marketing and CPA strategy is more based on content marketing than paid traffic and paid advertising. That said I do run eCommerce businesses and do utilize Facebook Ads, Adsense, Pinterest Ads, etc. Generally speaking affiliate programs don't pay enough to warrant running paid traffic. When it comes to something like Google Adsense most people will tell you don't run ads unless you're making at least $15 per sale. There's a reason for that because ad programs, especially Adsense, are often cost prohibitive for cheaper or lower cost products. With Affiliate Marketing you have little to no control over the sales process so you're reliant on your affiliate having that streamlined. You also oftentimes can't use tracking pixels to truly know how well your ads are performing as you don't have control over the checkout process. While it's possible to make money running ads, more often than not it's not worthwhile. If you have a CPA offer in a niche without a lot of ad competition and you can laser focus you're targeting it can work but personally for all the reasons mentioned above I choose not to partake.
YouTube
eCommerce, Youtuber, Side Hustles
How to be successful on Youtube is simple, but it's not easy. It basically comes down to a handful of things... 1. Consistancy You need to be putting out content consistantly. Depending on your video topics and niche that can very but at least one video a week, ideally 2-3. 2. Quality Content You need to make quality content. Quality is subjective. You don't necessarily need the best production value, the best video, the best editing, but if you're doing something educational or information based the content needs to have value. 3. Perseverence Youtube is a longterm game. While you may wind up having some success three weeks in, plan on doing this for 1-2 years with next to no results. Unless you go into it with that mindset you won't succeed because you'll quickly grow frustrated with the slow growth and no money. 4. Be Authentic There's way too many people out there putting on this facade of this amazing life they live or all this money they are making. Most of it is non-sense. People appreciate authenticity. Heck there's a reason people watch Youtube either in addition to or instead of television. Just be yourself and be authentic and you'll connect with people.
YouTube
eCommerce, Youtuber, Side Hustles
You never want to straight up buy Youtube views. You can buy a placement for your Youtube video on a particular Facebook Group, Blog, etc, but you never want to straight up buy views. Any views which are straight up purchases won't be engaged people, your simply getting bot views or views from people in third world countries. In addition to doing absolutley nothing positive for your business it could actually hurt your Youtube video's performance on Youtube and in search because your getting very short watch time, your getting non USA visitors and they can pick up on the fact that your getting bot views and will actually remove views, likes, etc from your videos. I've bought Youtube views, don't do it it's absolute garbage.
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