This is part of a series of posts of my experiences online. Click here for part 1
Following my stint of freelance writing online, I periodically came across websites and blogs teaching you how to make money online, especially around late 2011. Unfortunately, much of the information seemed so hard to read and didn't cover the basics properly
In October 2012 however, I was introduced to a membership site which teaches you how to build an online business, via a friend's blog. I was immediately impressed by how clear and easy to understand everything was here, and immediately because a paid-up member. I spent every evening working my way through the videos and I very quickly learnt about the process of building an online business and the tools available to do this.
The basic process is as follows: You first decide on a profitable niche (examples would include weight loss, body building, dating, and of course making money online). You then create an opt-in page, which asks visitors to sign up for a free gift in exchange for their email address. Once they've opted in, you now have their email address, connected to an autoresponder, where they will receive a series of pre-written emails from you, some of which will be promoting products whereby you get to earn a commission when someone purchases from your link. This is called affiliate marketing.
My Asperger Syndrome Online Business
Naturally, considering I have Asperger Syndrome myself, and that I present talks to help others understand it and thus regarded as something of an expert, and that it fits in nicely with my talks, I decided that I should create a product that be of interest to people with Asperger Syndrome who want help socially. So that is what I did. I wrote an e-book entitled The Social Maze (no longer available online), I wrote up one e-book around 20 pages long as my free gift in exchange for an email, then I created a longer version of the e-book that I would sell for $17 (£10) as a one-time-offer. Anyone opted in for their free gift would be redirected to my one-time-offer sales page. I wrote up around 30 follow-up emails that were automatically sent to anyone who signed up, some of which contained links to affiliated products on ClickBank that I thought were vaguely related to my Asperger niche (i.e. social anxiety), given that there was hardly anything on the market directly related to my Asperger syndrome.
I can vividly remember working tirelessly when setting all this up, particularly on new year's day 2013 when my fingers started to ache through all the writing. Frankly I don't know how I found the work ethic and mental stamina to do all this - I think I was basically fighting my way out of my boring office job! My aim was to get my product online by the end of January and make my first commission by the end of February. I achieved the first bit as I remember launching the ebook on the 30th or 31st of the month. However I didn't make any sales until around June that year.
Success?
I definitely learned a great deal of useful information through this membership site, not only about how internet marketing works but also on building websites through wordpress, stuff that to be honest I would be quite rusty on today.
I learned how to set up a google analytics account to monitor traffic to my ebook opt-in page. The main way I got visitors to my page was through an Asperger syndrome web forum, where I was able to include my opt-page web address as part of my forum signature (not all web forums allow this but this one did). I started to make occasional sales of my ebook, plus the odd commission through affiliated products, and I these mostly came via the forum. However, I wasn't making any profit, because my sales weren't enough to cover my costs of my web auto-responder subscription and other related costs.
In hindsight, I should have celebrated my successes more - every successful online entrepreneur will recall their first ever small commissions. However I couldn't see how I could make anything like enough sales to get close to my goal but in many ways I was on the right path, and felt the need to look at other ideas.
The membership site taught me a lot about how to start an online business and in understanding the process and the tools you need to succeed. What the membership site didn't really teach was how to market effectively, to generate sales and build a customer base.
Want some context to this blog - click here to find out about me
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