Is this a good plan?

offer the e-book for free, and then go for the upsells later

Thanks, I think this might be the best model...is facebook ads a good way of getting emails? What other ways would you use.

Other good methods of getting emails would be making videos on YouTube (Slideshow, Hired Actor, Face-to-Face etc.), Posting in related Facebook Groups/Creating a Page and adding friends, Putting a link in related forums signature links, Making a Pinterest Board, Posting helpful tips on Reddit, Submitting articles with your link in the description, etc.

If you like a cheap source of traffic you can Google Facebook coupons. Another cool way is to get people on Fiverr in your related niche to post your link to their followers.

Hope this gave you some ideas.

-Manny

If you want to earn good income , Online is the first solution, Sell your Own E book and keep relation with the customer, and start selling your product.


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It sounds like a great idea. Especially because you're already making money doing what it is you plan to offer.

You can do a video series like a case study. Offer the first 3 videos for free on your download page and sell the next 4 for $7 or something like that.

That would make a great instant offer.

And you have to make it sexy. Spend just as much time with your copy as you do with creating the product.

Especially the headline.

Just think of where your target market hangs out and market there.

If you make the headline more generic it will broaden the places you can advertise.

Once everything is in place, test it and track your results. Until then, it's all speculation.

Like the sound of the videos, can I hire someone to do that for me?

Solid plan. Giving away the ebook for free is a great start.

The only suggestion I would make is make sure you have a unique hook for your marketing.

People selling/giving away ebooks about making money selling shirts has been done to death.

Put a unique spin on it to generate interest.

Other than that it's a solid plan, but I have a warning for you...

Email marketing is not easy.

People always talk about building a list, but they never tell you how hard it is to maintain a list and keep adding value.

It becomes a job in itself. You have to maintain and add value to your subscribers or they will never listen to you let alone buy anything. Think of it like maintaining a farm. You won't get much value out of it at the start, but after awhile your efforts start to pay off when your crops start producing food for you.

Patience is key. It takes time to cultivate your user base. Don't get discouraged if nobody buys anything from you right away. Build trust and once people trust you and like you, they will follow anything you have to say.

So before you start I would suggest having at least a months worth of autoresponders lined up ready to be delivered full of value. This will help make you an authority to your subscribers and someone they want to hear more from.

I would also suggest creating a website and start a brand...

If you're going to collect emails and spend the time to create all this value...Then you may as well create a website and turn this into a brand.

You might just become the internet marketing version of Marie Forleo, who knows. You wanted to build a real business, so this is a great place to start.

Sure, the plan sounds great.

You can start there and always adjust as you go.

However, the most important part is the follow through and consistency.

Dear Friend,
Your plan is do-able, but I'm sure it's crowded and a lot of people has been doing that for some time. You will need to do something extra to distinguish yourself with others.

Some which can be done is :
1. You will need to engage them using social media, so they can easily reach you and you can have more frequent discussion
2. Perhaps you can send them some free sampling of your shirt (which they will have to pay for the shipping cost), and you can add some custom print out if they need. The famous Om! Telolet Om! seems to be a starting point for this.
3. Keep traffic going to your squeeze page, and make sure that they are in the niche that you are offering.

All The best for you, and Happy New Year!!.
William.

Personally, I think your plan should be driven by the desires of your target market. Understand what your prospects want, what they are willing to buy, how much they will pay, and where they can be found online.

Focus on your intended audience first. A good plan to serve the market may very well end up looking like what you've described ... or ... it may look completely different. The point is, your business focus should be on your prospects and customers rather than you. They don't care about you at all. They want to know "what's in it for me?"

Successful online business is not a guessing game to see if you can "luck into" finding something that sells well. You need to know exactly what is going to sell before you get very far down the business creation path. The Internet overflows with web sites and products that owners created because they thought they knew what their market wanted. But in many cases they were dead wrong!

The best to you,

Steve

Good plan I see, however do you have any plan on advertising your website beside Facebook ads? Ex: Google Adwords, SEO, Social media marketing, PPC,...

Im going the be the honest one here: that's not a very good plan at all.

1) Are you making passive money selling t-shirts? If so then cool, if not then you should not be pretending you are an expert in this by making a book on how to do it.

2) Ebooks have a very low perceived value. Its unlikely you will get many optins. The squeeze page conversion rate will likely be low and you will end up paying much more per optin than you need to (making it harder to be profitable).

3) Assuming you do have a decent ad budget (4 figures) and are able to build a decent list (1k+) .. what is the first thing you think to do with that list? Promote an affiliate offer, which in essence is going to do nothing but filter out all the buyers and give them as leads to a different marketer (that has his stuff together more than you). Not to smart.

Over all this plan is not a very good one. Its unlikely to net you good results and if you are somehow profitable all your really doing is building someone elses business by giving them the 'good / buyer' leads on your list shortly after you get them.

Here is thing that everyone MUST learn who wants to make money online. You NEED something of your own to sell.

Yeah, that's a good plan...
- offer the ebook for free! the guy above me isn't thinking about the market...he thinks this plan applies to his business not yours..don't listen to people liek that.

as long as you have your marketing budget and predictions down correctly you should stay in the green...where are you getting your training from?

Originally Posted by jesha Hey guys, While working a 9-5 job years back I stumbled on selling t shirt slogans online and through hard-work and sheer luck I make a decent income every month that I would describe as passive. The thing is, I have no control over the current model and while i'm grateful for the income, I am blown away by the amounts people running real online businesses are making. Three years ago I started researching various other ways of making money online and got burnt out by the sheer volume of information available. It's only recently that I have decided to try again with a simple plan outlined below. 1) I plan to create an ebook that will teach people how to make a passive income selling t shirts online through sites like Cafepress, Zazzle and Spreadshirt. 2) I will create a squeeze page offering this E-book for free 3) I plan to advertise this E-book using facebook ads 4) I will further build my list offering other free E-books in my niche 5) I plan to start making money by offering affiliate products and up-sells My question is that is this a doable plan? In what areas can I improve it. Should I offer the E-book for free? Is facebook ads a good way of marketing the book? Should I offer the whole e-book or a series of short courses? Should I use a squeeze page, blog or website? Although I have been making money online for a while I consider myself a complete newbie in running a proper online business. Any advise is appreciated.

Yes, you may do so.

But if you can do video courses, that will be even better as they tend to have a higher perceived value and you are comfortable doing them in camera, powerpoint or both.

I will say do one thing at a time.

Start off with an e-book which you can give away for free if you want to.

In my opinion, don't give them the butter for free, if I were you, I will make a content locker and ask them to do a CPA survey (payout $3-$5) and submit their email before they download the course, so in this case you make money instantly and you don't wait the upsells.

I agree with brutecky. Your plan isn't likely to catapult you into a real online business with profits that will "blow you away".

Starting with that eBook idea, you'll be veering down the path of being yet another biz op gooroo - there won't be enough affiliate products just in the T-Shirt niche, so you'd have to spread your net. And getting a foothold in such a crowded market will be difficult with only a sideline passive income business as your USP.

Why do you say you have no control over your current model? If you've been running it for a few years, have you established any kind of branding? Are your designs strong enough to support a stand-alone merchandise outlet?

If it were me, I'd be looking to develop and diversify it to full ownership. It probably stands more of a chance of becoming a real online business.

Do people make free videos instead of ebooks? I think people could make five one hour videos in the time to personally write a 10,000 word ebook.