If someone were to ask you what the #1 ‘secret’ to making money online was, what would you say?

Any guesses?

Maybe you’d say it’s to find a starving crowd. Or to build and nurture a list. Or to get in on the beginning of a hot new trend.

All of these are good answers.

And all of these are wrong.

THE big secret to making money online is one that crosses all niches, applies to all markets and marketers, and works just about every single time to make REAL money.

It’s how six and seven figure incomes are almost always earned.

And it’s also how YOU can begin earning 6 figures in the next 12 months.

Now then – before I reveal this ‘secret,’ let me warn you that you might have heard it before.

In fact, some online marketers have to hear this a dozen times or more before it really starts to sink in.

That’s because the most powerful techniques often masquerade as something a bit boring. Or tedious. Or uninteresting.

After all, taking a wheelbarrow full of cash to the bank is exciting.

Earning it is often something altogether different.

Ready?

Here’s the ‘secret…’

“Find a profitable formula – and then SCALE it up.”

Yup. That’s it. Pretty simple, I know.

Yet 98% of marketers will never do it. And 97% of marketers will stay broke because of it.

Let’s say you spend time making the perfect product for a super hungry niche. You tweak the offer to get it converting sky high. You bring on affiliates to help you promote. Everything is in place. You launch, you have an extremely profitable week…

…and then what?

For most marketers, they will turn their attention to creating the next product and doing the entire process again.

And because of that, they will leave a tremendous amount of money on the table.

If your offer sells for $19 and you’re converting at 5%, then you’re making $95 for every 100 people you send to your site.

This doesn’t even include the list you’re building and will market to over and over again.

Now then, if you can buy those 100 visitors for $40, you’ve just made a profit of $55.

Buy 1,000 visitors and you’ve made $550.

Buy 10,000 visitors and you’ve made $5,500.

But wait, there’s more!

What if you add a backend product? Just one sale per 100 visitors of a $100 product increases your profit from $55 to $155.

10,000 visitors? $15,500 profit.

You can also add coaching, continuity (membership) programs, etc. for even more profit.

Are you following me here?

Let’s use an analogy: Someone invests 3 months to open a hair salon. They have a big grand opening with lots of customers. And when that dies down, they close shop, move across town and do it all over again.

Yeah, that would be pretty crazy.

Yet that’s what 98% of online marketers do.

They create a product, launch it, have a great week and then start all over again.

And they wonder why they are still struggling.

So what’s the takeaway?

• Invest time in building a profitable, high-converting funnel.
• Test it out and do the math – how much can you spend on advertising and still make money?
• Start by investing small and ramp your way up.
• Don’t forget to build your list – your funnel is your upfront money, and your list is your “go to” money. That is, whenever you need funds or simply want to boost your income, you can go to your list and make them an offer.

What will derail you in this process:

• Getting lured away by the glamour of creating another new product funnel when you should be scaling up the one you already have.
• Fear of spending money to make money. Yes, spending $1,000 or more to make sales is scary. That’s why you want to start small, make sure your entire funnel is working, and then scale up. And up. And Up.
• Your biggest mistake – would be brushing this advice off.

Fortunes have been made simply by creating a profitable funnel and then scaling it up.

FORTUNES.

As in nearly 7 figures made from one ClickBank product…

Per MONTH.

That’s right – 6 Pack Abs at the pinnacle of its success was earning over $11 million per year.

Your results will vary.

Are you doing offline marketing, or would you like a second income in the offline world?

Here’s how to make it drop dead simple and super profitable:

First, build a simple website with a menu card on it. Not the kind of menu you find in a restaurant, of course, but it can look like that if you choose.

Your menu is going to offer all kinds of services to brick and mortar businesses.

For example:

• Local SEO
• Creating lead capture pages and setting up their autoresponder
• Website creation
• Writing blog posts and articles for them
• Repairing their online reputation
• Creating a professional looking video
• Creating detailed reports on their competitors
• Doing social media (this can be a wide variety of offerings)
• And so forth

Give them different prices – some low and some higher, to give business owners plenty of choices.

Now here’s the 21 day trick – through testing, we’ve found that you will actually sell MORE services when you extend the date by which you’ll have the services completed.

Naturally you can do many of these things in 2-5 days.

But if the client believes you’re working on it for 3 weeks, or even a whole month, the perceived value is much higher and you will sell more.

Yes, human nature is a funny thing, isn’t it?

Now then, before you panic and think you can’t provide all these services, realize that all you need is to visit Fiverr.com.

There you’ll find people who can do all of these things for you, for cheap. You will need to pay more than $5 for most of these, but that’s okay because your profit margins will still remain sky high.

Typically, you’ll pay $5 to test the gig out, and then somewhere between $50 and perhaps as high as $200 to get your job done.

Meanwhile, you’re selling services for $300 to $1,000, depending how much work it involves.

You are the ‘middle man or woman’ getting the orders and then having them fulfilled.

So how do you get the clients?

All of the usual methods can apply, of course. Also, LinkedIn and Craigslist can be great places to get clients with a little practice.

Also look at potential client’s social profiles and websites to get an idea of what they might need, and then contact them directly via email or even phone.

And if you’re ready to take it to the next level, you can also put together a mailer that incorporates your menu and send it to likely prospects.

This is perhaps one of the easiest businesses you can start and almost immediately begin making money. Because you are outsourcing all of the work, you can focus solely on getting clients, making them happy and gaining repeat sales.

And by the way – once you choose a method for client acquisition, you can outsource that as well.

Then your only job will be to send orders to your outsourcers and send the completed work to your clients.

Not a lot of work for a $5,000 or more a month income.

Good. Actually, great! Here’s what you do…

Start a blog. From day 1, explain that you know nothing about (your new topic, such as cooking) but you’re on a quest to learn (a specific outcome or goal, like how to make the world’s best pancakes) and invite the reader to make the journey with you.

Now start reading about your topic. A lot. Buy and use the products in your niche. Write about what you learn, and tell about your experience with the products. Recommend the good ones.

Once you’ve got a dozen or more blog posts, start asking experts in the niche for interviews. If you’re too shy or nervous at first, you can start with email interviews and work your way up to audio interviews.

You become the researcher / reporter, and you let the experts handle the heaving lifting.

In 1-5 years? Now YOU’RE the expert. And you never had to lie about knowing stuff you didn’t know when you got started.

In fact, you got to be honest, truthful and yourself the entire time. And you’ve built a tremendous rapport with your audience who very much feel you’re just like them.

When you use this formula, your readers will trust you and they’ll act on your advice, whether that’s to buy an affiliate product you recommend, buy your own products or eventually let you coach them.

Blogs are going under faster than you can count.

Yet more and more people are reading blog posts, watching vlogs and so forth.

So what’s happening?

Previously, a person could monetize a blog with Adsense or other ads.

But more and more people are using ad blockers, which means less and less income for bloggers using this monetization method.

And because they don’t have another way to make money from their blog, they quit blogging.

Enter YOU.

Because you know how to monetize a blog without ads – by promoting great products to your readers and subscribers.

Choose a niche that has lots of hungry people eager to spend money, and start blogging.

It might take some time to get good at it.

And it might take some work to get your traffic numbers up.

But if you choose your niche wisely and persevere, you’ll find this is perhaps the best time in the history of the internet to be a blogger.

I saw a great piece of advice on Quora the other day about blogging.

Someone wrote in and asked if they had missed the blogging boat – could they start now, or were they too late?

They received all kinds of advice, but this tidbit from Jeff Sauer was the best:

First Jeff advises him to take action immediately and get a free blog on WordPress.

Then Jeff says…

“Write a post.”

“Write another.”

“Write 50 more posts.”

“Then delete the blog.”

“You will no longer be concerned about starting a blog. Instead, you will have an understanding of the commitment ahead.”

Jeff then advises to start a new blog on a domain name the blogger will own forever. Take note of mistakes made on the previous blog, and don’t make them again.

Now write 100 more posts.

And eventually you will become a good writer.

Now then…

You might be wondering WHY I like this advice so much, and here’s the reason:

It’s telling the reader to DO something, over and over and over again until they get GOOD at it.

And it’s showing the reader how to overcome fear by simply doing, and doing again.

Will it take you 150 posts to get good at blogging?

Probably not.

But if you’re willing to make that kind of commitment, then it’s just a matter of time and practice before you become truly great at what you’re doing.

So go ahead. Create a throw-away blog just for practice. Use a pen name.

Write for the sake of writing.

And each time you strike gold, sharpen and refine the post, and put it on your public blog.

People might think you’re an overnight success.

But you and I will know it was simply a matter of practice, practice and practice.

Because that’s how you reach success – through dedication and unwavering perseverance.

Okay, so you’ve hopefully got your core business online, or you’re about to put one online. You have it up and running, making money…

…now what?

First things first – figure out how to make MORE money in the business you already have.

How do you get more customers?

How do you sell those customers more stuff?

And how can you charge more for what you sell?

This is basic and should always be your focus. The more value you give, the more money you typically make. Give more value and you can charge more and sell more.

But what about the ‘fun’ part?

That’s a matter of trying stuff out.

Buy new stuff on Warrior and JVZoo. Read the case studies. See the new techniques someone’s dreamt up.

Pick and choose stuff to try and then just try it.

Don’t devote a week to it – it might not work.

But devote a day or two and see what results you get.

That new thing that everyone is doing? Pick a topic (or whatever needs choosing) and outsource it. Or if you can do it yourself in a day, go for it.

Is it promising? Keep going.

Does it look like a loser? Good – you just found something that doesn’t work for you.

Either way, if you always look at it as experimenting, as having fun, as trying new stuff and seeing what happens, then you’ll never take it too seriously.

You won’t get stressed. You won’t bang your head against the desk when you realize the last 24 hours taught you nothing more than how NOT to do something.

Because you’re having fun.

And when you do strike on a winner, sha-ZAM!

Rinse and repeat and you’ve got another money making avenue in your online business.

Smart marketers are not limiting themselves to the English market.

Instead, they are taking their best selling products and getting those products and the associated product funnels translated over to French, Italian, Spanish, etc.

Here’s how to do it:

Unless you’re really sure you want to invest the money, do NOT go with a professional translation service because the cost will be too prohibitive. Not to mention their translations can be too dry and boring to be effective, especially on the sales material.

Instead, find someone on Upwork or Fiverr who is fluent both in English and the language you’re translating your work into.

They must be fluent enough to thoroughly know the slang and colloquialisms of that language.

Have them translate the product, the sales letter, the emails, the squeeze page, etc.

Also have them translate a month’s worth of PPC ads to bring in new subscribers to your funnel. You’ll want a month’s worth because it can take you that long to test and tweak your ad campaigns.

Then retain that person with a small monthly fee to handle all customer support emails for you.

Rinse and repeat with another language.

No Products of Your Own? No Problem…

Negotiate with product owners for the rights to sell their products in other languages. You might pay them a flat fee, or a percentage of sales after your initial expenses are recovered.

You could build an entire business doing this one thing – getting licensing rights to popular products and translating them to various languages.

And if you’re fluent in another language, then you don’t even need to hire a translator if you’re willing to do the translation yourself.

Your very best products – the premium stuff making you the most money – is worth even more than you think it is.

Let’s say you’ve got a successful membership site. You’re charging $20 a month and you’ve got 300 subscribers.

That’s $6,000 a month you’re bringing in, before expenses.

Obviously you’re doing well with that, right?

So what do some marketers do?

They make an info product teaching how to do this very thing. How to set up the site, how to get the outsourcers to create the content and how to get subscribers.

And they charge maybe $9 or $17 for a WSO or JVZoo offer on this product.

That’s one way to go.

But there is another method – one that generally makes more money with less hassles, and it’s this:

Making a premium offering.

Let’s face it – there are significant advantages to attracting $500 customers over $10 customers in the online marketing field.

A $10 customer tends to be skeptical. They need a lot of convincing because they’re pretty sure nothing works.

That’s because thus far, they haven’t met with much in the way of online success.

And when they buy your $10 program, they often need help.

A typical query: “How do I take payments?”

You: “Have you heard of Paypal?”

Your customer, “Sure, but could you walk me through on how to set that up?”

A $500 customer, on the other hand, tends to be on an entirely different level. They’ve likely already experienced online success, which is why they can see what you’re offering works.

They don’t have as many questions. And they know that any basic answers they do need (like how to set up a website, or Paypal) can be found online, rather than expecting you to do the work for them.

It’s paradoxical, I know.

A $10 customer needs $100 worth of your time. Or more.

A $500 customer generally doesn’t need help. But even if they do, you don’t mind spending the time with them because they’ve paid you good money.

So to get back to my original point, don’t sell your knowledge short.

Packaging your know-how and experience into a $10 product may lead to more frustration for you than anything else, even if you do have a great upsell.

Since, in this example, you’ve got a membership site that’s doing well, you could:

• Offer to build them a similar but non-competing website, complete with 6 months of content
• Offer to coach them one-on-one on how to build their site themselves (far more valuable, since they will then own the skill)
• Work with membership site owners to get their subscribers up to a certain level

And so forth.

And for any one of these things, you can easily charge $500 – $2,000.

Get 10 customers, and at $500 each you’ve just made $5,000.

To make that same money selling a $10 book or program, you’d need to sell 500 copies, assuming you make all the sales yourself without affiliate help.

Now then, how about getting the best of both worlds?

Create the inexpensive product and sell it without any personal coaching. Make this clear – they get the information, but you’re not holding hands for 10 bucks.

If they want personal help, you can offer that as an upsell.

And if they’re truly serious, you can offer one of the above three options at full price as well.

Of course, the $10 and $500 is arbitrary. You will set your own prices as you see fit.

For example, setting up a full membership site with six months of content is obviously worth a great deal more than $500.

As long as you’re not setting up direct competitors to your own membership site, you can do this every single month if you like.

Using this method alone, you can easily double your income.

And membership sites are just an example. This works no matter what you’re doing online that is making you good money.

…how could you do it?

We’ve come up with not just one, but potentially 4 different ways to make a million dollars in 12 months.

Not an easy task, but it’s certainly possible.

And if you only do 1/10th as good, that’s still $100,000.

First, before anything else is even considered, you need to find a very important reason WHY you want to make a million dollars in 12 months.

The stronger your reason, and the more often you play out that reason in your head, the better your odds of achieving your goal, regardless of which method you choose.

Now then…

Method 1: The Chris Sacca Method

Chris initially became a millionaire by leveraging $10-20 thousand dollars into 12 million dollars by taking advantage of a flaw used by online trading brokers.

When the market crashed, Sacca found himself $4 million in debt. He negotiated to have it reduced, and then paid off the balance in no time.

So how did he earn his next millions? That’s the method we’ll cover here.

Of course, if you do happen to find a flaw in online trading software that you can take advantage of, terrific. Otherwise, you might try copying Chris’ second method:

Sacca created a fake company, complete with a great looking website and business cards.

Frankly, your company doesn’t have to be fake, it can simply be new. Make sure you choose an impressive sounding name like the Sadlias Group.

Now get tickets to every networking event in your field. Go to these events and network like crazy, making contacts with entrepreneurs.

Look for people who want to change the world, and find ways to help them make that change.

Introduce yourself and – get this – offer to help them out for free.

That’s right, for free. Do you want to stand apart from everyone else at that event? Do you want them to remember you, contact you and work with you? Offer to help them for free.

Using this method, Sacca became one of Twitter’s first four investors.

Even if this method doesn’t make a million in a year, it will make your life interesting, exciting and highly relevant. You’ll find outstanding mentors to help you along.

And you’ll make contact with investors who can back you when you decide to start your company for real.

Take notes along the way, so when you do make your first millions, you can write your tell-all book letting people know the inside story of how you did it.

Method 2: Day Trading

This is a great way to make money fast. And it’s an even better method to lose money even faster.

You’ve got to be good. You’ve got to know what you’re doing. And you’ve got to leave all emotion and ‘gut instinct’ behind as you follow proven, trusted methods that work.

Frankly, it can take you 2-3 years of daily practice just to get good at this.

Then again, you might have the capability to make a million in the first year. It is completely possible, just not highly likely.

If you choose this method, invest in the best education and hundreds of hours of practice trading.

Your best shot: Start with $10,000, margin it to $30,000, and find 180 trades that will return 2% or more in 1 to 2 days.

Easy? No. Doable? Possibly.

Method 3: Sales Funnel

Build the best sales funnel you can – everything from a free product to get subscribers onto your list, to a $10,000 product you sell to your best customers and everything in between.

Think about this: To earn a million dollars, you can sell any of the following:

1,000,000 products for $1 apiece

100,000 products for $10 apiece

10,000 product3 for $100 apiece

1,000 products for $1,000 apiece

100 products for $10,000 apiece

10 products for $100,000 apiece

1 product for $1,000,000

Look at Dollar Shave Club and you’ll see they’ve chosen the first option on this list – selling a $1 product to millions of guys.

But if you have an effective sales funnel, you can take those $1 customers and upsell them to your $10 offer, your $100 offer and so forth.

Once you start selling $1,000 products, it no longer takes massive sales to reach that magical million dollar mark.

Things to remember – focus more on what people WANT than what they need.

Sell them the way they want to be sold.

Make the entire experience fun and easy for the customer.

Whenever possible, find ways to make your messages go viral, even if there is no immediate pay off.

Your primary goal is to get as many qualified people onto your list as possible.

Your next goal is to move them up the sales funnel by always giving them great value for the money.

Do these two things and your final goal of making a million will take care of itself.

Method 4: Sales

If you’re already good at sales, or you can acquire sales skills fast enough, AND you have the right product to sell, then you can make a million dollars in a year.

Obviously you want to sell very high ticket items with high commissions to scale your income faster. And of course already having a sales background will be a tremendous help, if not a necessity.

If you want to take this route and you’re willing to invest 2-3 years, it becomes much more likely you will succeed.

Spend the first year becoming great at sales. Study sales techniques, get a great mentor, work in sales 10-12 hours a day.

And during your first year, find out what kinds of products pay the most in commissions. Make contacts in those industries and get yourself a job where you can make the most money.

Then spend your second and third years making that money.

It will take plenty of hard work, but it will be worth it.

Method 5 – ??

These first four methods should get you thinking.

And maybe, just maybe you’ve got an even better idea.

Like creating the next social network, winning the lottery, doing a one million dollar deal… there are plenty of ways to make lots of money.

The trick is to pick the one that works for you, and then work it tenaciously until you succeed.

It’s true… One promise is all it takes, and being precise pays.

Which of these two products would you most likely buy:

“How to sell stuff using Facebook ads”

Or…

“How to make 461 affiliate sales totaling $8,384 in commissions in the next 72 hours using $112 in Facebook ads”

The second one, right?

How about these two…

“How I lost weight”

Vs

“How I lost 93 pounds in 6 months and went on to win 2 bodybuilding championships at the age of 42”

Of course, it’s the second one that gets your attention.

Why is that?

Because the second titles are exact and precise, which is exactly what people buy.

Vague isn’t interesting. It isn’t sexy. And it doesn’t make sales.

To be clear here, we’re not just talking about having great titles. That’s crucial of course, but so is this:

Base your products around just ONE main promise.

Compare these two:

“The complete, no-holds-barred, definitive encyclopedia on Facebook Marketing”

Vs

“The 3 step formula to selling almost anything on Facebook and making a profit within 24 hours, guaranteed.”

The first one presumably covers everything you could imagine about Facebook marketing.

The second one makes a single, precise promise.

Guaranteed, the second one will outsell the first one 10 times over or more.

Choose one thing and cover it in depth. This is what makes sales.

It’s easier and faster to make this type of product.

It’s simple to explain in your sales material.

And it’s a no-brainer for the customer to grasp.

They know exactly what they can expect, which makes it far easier to get the sale.

And best of all…

…let’s say you’ve got a book/program/software that covers or does a whole range of stuff.

If you break that product down into ‘one promise’ products, you will have more products to sell, and you will sell more of each product.

You might want to read that last sentence again, because it is a million dollar piece of marketing advice if you understand and implement it.

Make the title of your product a single promise.

Then go deep, not wide.

Rinse and repeat.

Using this method you can crank out a product a week instead of a product every month or two.

Frankly, if you work on this full time, you can do even better than that.

And you’ll actually sell more of each product.

Paradoxical, maybe.

But it flat out works.

One last example:

You’re building a WordPress plugin that does everything but the kitchen dishes.

Stop.

Break that plugin down into several small plugins, with each plugin delivering on a single promise.

Your marketing just became easy as pie.

Your sales letters and videos will practically write themselves because it’s now so simple.

People will better understand what you’re offering.

And you will sell TONS more.

Okay, I’ve harped on this enough.

One promise products – be specific – go deep, not wide – rinse and repeat.