Wheres the big money in IM?

No.

It's unsaturated rich European countries.

Again we have a definition issue: Define "big money". That's been done before, probably not to anyone's satisfaction. But anyway....

Some people can and do promote other people's products just great. And if you have built strong relationships with "your" public or customers who rely on you and your ideas, you can do very well, $100's of thousands a year. Many people are thrilled with $100k+ a year, no matter how they make it.

From my own personal associations, the IMers who've returned the most for the least amount of personal time they input create or co-create products to market. Like, Jason Fladlien.

He started right here on the Forum with nothing but his wit, personality and brilliance - sold other's products but quickly started selling his own. He's now in a whole different league than I will ever be, mainly because I like profiting from marketing to a much smaller but still very lucrative niche. For the general IM niche, constantly coming up with new products is a never-ending job too, even if you have help.

Although many people visiting this site have a knee-jerk response to offers that promise 500K+ a year, the fact remains that almost anyone who works a little every week doing the right stuff (see post by Alexa above)- can have a reliable customer base that rewards them with $50K or more a year anywhere in the world. With truly unlimited upside if you become a star!

Bambi

I agree ....

Solve a problem better than / in a different way than your competitors, your own angle.

and of course ... always focus on quality.

what he said

The big money in IM is at the end of the sales funnel.

Low ticket entry product to build the list, upsell to a product that is more expensive, then upsell to a high ticket item, eg, inner circle, platinum, one on one coaching, seminars, etc.

But i also agree with WillR, 'give enough people what they want and you will get exactly what you want'

So a combination of great product with high ticket items.

Linden

On of the best lessons I've read on this forum, thanks !

Spoken like a wise person who has had many real life experiences.

How do you know?

I think that for most people, exactly the opposite's normally true. Here are just ten of my reasons for thinking this.

I think the keyword here is "where". To use an example, I belong to a professional club. We're always after new members as the club is small. When I took an officer role in July, I had all these plans to leverage the web. Social media, blog posts galore, all the gazillion tricks I use daily to generate traffic. How many visitors did we have to the club before last week? I think about 6. Not a SINGLE one came from my online efforts.

People don't go to anything in person anymore, I figured. We live in a "texting" world afterall.

So, a week ago I decided to look for groups of people in my area...that were used to going to in person meetings. Enter Meetup.com. I started a meetup group and pointed it to our club website. So far...in one week...34 have joined the group. Last "week" we had four visitors. And, this week's meeting I have "8" visitors coming.

Apply this to your online marketing effort. "Where" exactly are your potential buyers? If you want people to buy what you're selling, no matter what it is, you have to get in front of people who are already spending money on similar things. THAT is where the big money is folks. Just took me the past week to remember that very fact.

OK I was obviously messing there.

For me, the money is in getting out of the IM headspace. Learn some skills and figure out what you're capable-confident in doing. Then try to find a way your skills could be really useful somewhere else.

You don't always have to be a super affiliate or adsense wizard. Is there a brick and mortor, or at least a real world business offering a real world service where maybe your services could help. Take advantage of their knowledge and expertise and just help to drive them traffic to it?

You don't need to a form a limited company. Many people are very eager for business. Go to somebody that you can trust that has high value clients and say "if I bring you some new business will you give me a cut of it?". It could be as simple as that. That kind of approach usually takes a bit of a labour of love though and isn't an overnight thing.

Real world business owners aren't, by definition, primarily internet marketers. Why compete with 100 other internet marketers?

There are many many different possibilities. Just look for places where your skills can be applied and be found to be very useful. If you want to make a mint just look for high value items that create a lot of profit without massive overheads.

Just my two pence...

Wish you the best of luck in this super frustrating but massively reqrding (sometimes) business.

Sure it is. How many affiliate marketers can you name that are doing more than $10 million per year? Any? Heck, how many can you name that even do one million per year? Very few.

Compare this number to the tens of thousands of eCommerce sites that make over $1 million per year, and thousands more that make $1 million or more per month. Heck, a little site like ThinkGeek did $17 million last year and they aren't even in the top 100.

I stated it as a fact because it is.

I don't count "import a giant CSV file from a dropshipper into a shopping cart" as a genuine eCommerce site. I'm talking about the people making a serious effort, actually carrying inventory and treating it like a real business, not trying to be passive about it.

Ok, my bad. Missed the IM thing. Was too excited when I see "where's the big money", LOL.

But talking about forex, it is NOT gambling if you know what you are doing. And you can really make it big if you are good. You are a trader so you should know. But that's off topic.

In IM, forex tradng platform can make you some decent cash too.

It all goes back to how one defines "big money" or even "IM", for that matter.

When I read "big money", the first people who popped into my head were Jeff Bezos, Tony Whatsisname from Zappos, and other ecomm giants.

If you take it down to the level of the one-man band (or one-woman band in many cases), or the small team, there are a lot of companies where the top sales guys make more than the CEO and drive way nicer cars than the engineers...

Not always. Passion is good but misdirected passion will still get you nowhere. You still have to be selling something people want or need.

I've looked at the experience of my own clients (about a dozen major brands, and 100 smaller owner-type shops), and U.S. Census data. Remember, I'm basing this on "real" businesses - meaning they identify themselves as an eCommerce business (or an eCommerce extension of a regular brick & mortar businesses), not "underwear entrepreneurs"

According to Census data there are roughly 700,000 self-identified eCommerce businesses in the United States, and published gross revenue among them represented $242 billion, so that's an average of $6,648 per week. Now to be fair, the deck is stacked in favor of established entities (Amazon, eBay, etc.) - but those are MARKETPLACES so much of that is pass-through revenue. If I sell a $300 product on Amazon, Amazon is claiming a $300 sale but it's really only $30 for them.