How Jobs Impact Us

I used to proudly claim that I hadn’t changed, because I became a blogger and never bowed down to the man. I have no colleagues as a blogger meaning that there was no one for me to become ‘more alike’, but this in itself can have an effect on you. And likewise, working from home and earning passive income has probably had some impact on me too. Blogging/optimizing changes you just like any other job, only it changes you differently. Once I was self-aware enough to recognize this, I set about finding out what had changed about me. Here’s what I came up with…

Care Free

I would say that compared to my other friends, I am more carefree and less restricted. While my friends have to work 9-5 jobs and get very stressed if they stay out too late one night, I can remain flexible and free to work when I choose and where I choose. If I’m honest, this has also led me to somewhat resent those people who aren’t free to hang out because they have work the next day. I guess it’s fair to say that I’ve become somewhat detached from the ‘real world’ and regular routine.

Opinionated

Writing online regularly has also made me somewhat opinionated. Sure, I’m opinionated in my views on employment (and self-employment), but I’ve also become very used to expressing myself a lot online and sharing my opinion. This undoubtedly crosses over into my daily life, as I tend to wax lyrical about pretty much any subject that I get the opportunity to talk about.

Independence and Confidence

You also get a lot of confidence from working online. Once you’ve made money yourself – completely yourself – you realize you’re capable of anything. This helps you to feel more successful and generally means you get used to ‘being the boss’.

And with that comes increased independence too. You don’t rely on anyone, and you have countless projects to pass the time when you are alone.

An Unusual View of Money

In some ways, being an online entrepreneur has made me stricter with my money. The money I’ve earned has been entirely down to my own effort and is a reflection of my success, so I feel more personally affronted when I spend it. On the other hand though, I also think of money now very much in terms of overheads and profits. Spending a little money on a friend is just another ‘overhead’ and I can earn it back by working a little extra hard for a while.

These are just some of the ways you change when you become a blogger or a digital marketer. Of course, the precise changes partly depend on who you are to begin with. Either way, expect to grow and change and to get more from the experience than you necessarily bargain for.

But while this is true, there are certainly some business models out there that come pretty close to being perfect and probably the best example of this of all is dropshipping. Why is dropshipping so special? We’ll find out but before we do let’s discuss some of the issues with some of the other more popular online business models.

The Problem With Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the route that most internet marketers will take when trying to make money from a blog or a social media channel/mailing list. The idea is simple: they promote someone else’s product and then they get a profit.

The problem is that these products are almost always digital products. In order to make the most money, that’s pretty much what you need to sell.

While this has big advantages for the manufacturer, it has some significant downsides for you. For starters, the appeal of a digital product is much smaller than that of a physical product. Try and sell a digital product to your Grandma for instance and you won’t likely have much luck. The same goes for trying to sell digital products to your Mom, your Dad or even your friends! If they do happen to buy from you they’ll most likely be some of your only customers.

The other big issue with most affiliate marketing products is that you’re sending customers away from your site. They’ll be more likely to remember the company that sold them the product versus the blog that sent them there, and this prevents them from buying multiple items through you.

The Problem With Selling Your Own Product or Reselling

So you could sell your own product, sure. But then you have to manufacture it, spending thousands of dollars and potentially wasting your money if the product isn’t a hit. Many of us don’t have the money or the knowhow to go this route.

So you can resell instead… only this way you still need to take a big risk by spending lots of money on inventory. You have to find a way to store all that product and then you have to deliver it and worry about damages and returns. It’s a huge amount of admin and not much fun…

Enter Dropshipping

With dropshipping, what you’re doing is selling a product through your own store as though it were your own item and then letting the wholesaler worry about fulfilment and delivery – as though it were an affiliate product.

This has all the benefits of selling an affiliate product because you can sit back and let the orders roll in without having to worry about the hassle of shipping it to your customer. But it also has all the benefits of selling a real product as a reseller or manufacturer – you get to keep your customers on your site and improve your brand awareness, while also selling real, useful products.

Best of all, some companies will even offer ‘white label’ dropshipping services. This means you can actually print your logo on the product and claim it as your own.

The next time you are considering what online business to start, seriously consider dropshipping!

You can take your skills and experience and turn them into income with time and persistence. Here’s what you need to do.

Find People Who Are Already Successful

You need to surround yourself with people who have already achieved some level of success in art or music. There is a social aspect to both art and business and you can’t get to either alone. Make a great effort to be on the inside of success instead of on the outside. People are generally more than willing to share how they became successful. Seek out those people and heed their advice, because they’ve already put in the long hours and found what works and what doesn’t.

Don’t start at the top with the most successful artist; go a little more modest and local, and join groups or clubs of other artists so you can learn from and support each other.

When approaching these other artists, be very purposeful. Don’t express that you’re a fan (even if you are), but do be respectful of their work and curious about them to help put you on a more equal ground. Think about how you make friends. You find things in common to discuss. Do that with the artist you’re hoping to learn from. You have a common interest so it shouldn’t be hard to strike up a conversation.

Create What People Want

No, don’t be a sell-out, but you’re not going to make money if you only create art that others are not interested in. Find the audience you want to reach and create works of art that you think they’ll want to buy. From time to time you can think outside of the box more and get ultra-creative, but you need to create things that you know people are going to want even if it’s not your favorite piece of work.

Complete Your Work

Having multiple unfinished pieces of work is not going to make you money. You might have a creative process, but if you never finish your work, then you can’t ever expect to sell anything. Make it a goal to finish what you started before you start on something new. Perhaps taking a step back is going to be important from time to time, but don’t step too far back. You can’t sell what’s not finished.

Get Your Work Out There

You have to begin to make a name for yourself. Get your work out there in the public. This might mean giving things away to become known. Encourage others to share your work freely in this manner just to get your name out there. You need to promote your work as well. And remember, if you can’t give it away for free, then it might be time to re-evaluate your work and figure out what’s wrong with it that people are not interested in it.

Take Criticism

You can’t grow as an artist if you can’t take criticism. Listening to what people are telling you about your art and taking action on it will get you to a much better position of being able to sell your work. At the same time, understand that you also can’t please everyone. Don’t change your work too much to conform to the critics.

If you know it’s good quality work and plenty of others that you know and respect agree that it’s good work, then don’t bend over backwards trying to change something. Pay no mind to critics who are clearly not a fan of yours.

Buy Others’ Work

If you see work that you like, buy it. Don’t pirate it; purchase it. Show support for your fellow artists and respect for them. It will come back to you if you do right by your community.

Appreciate Your Customers

You can offer a little extra something to those loyal customers who keep coming back and buying more. Think about how any other business works. Take for example a laundry detergent company. They might give out coupons for “buy one get one free”. That keeps people coming back for more. You can do similar things, like offering one-on-one time if someone purchases a certain product, or providing signed copies. Customer appreciation is important to any business, even when your business in in the arts.

You can make a living as an artist. You have to be willing to put in the work to do it, though. It is not something that will happen overnight, but you can turn your skills and experience into income.

However, when you remove all of the window dressing and break the strategies down to the basics there are only three that make up nearly all of the online entrepreneurial ventures that are out there. Which one you choose will depend on your personal preference, your unique skills and where you see a hole in the market.

Service Providers

The first of our three top online strategies is providing some type of service. There are many occupations that provide a service where someone can become an entrepreneur. Graphic design is one good example; freelance writing is another.

Whenever you are doing a service for somebody else and they are paying you for it (while not the employee of another person or company) you are an entrepreneur.

Affiliate Marketing

Another big boom in Internet entrepreneurship is affiliate marketing. With the creation of websites like Clickbank, affiliate programs offered by leading retailers like Amazon and the big profits that can be potentially earned, affiliate marketing is one of the most popular entrepreneurial ventures today.

With affiliate marketing, you find the customer, send them over to the seller to buy the product and the seller pays you a commission. Of course, you have to find the right product not to mention have a solid plan for getting in front of people, which can be difficult.

Info Product Creation

Rather than being the person that receives the commission when someone buys a product from someone else, you could be the person that they are buying the product from. You could create an info product of some kind that you’ll be able to sell to the Internet at large.

One of the more popular ways to do this is by publishing Kindle content on Amazon, but the products on Clickbank are also part of this strategy.

Combining Strategies

Of course, you don’t have to just stick with one. You can combine two of the above strategies or you could combine all three if you like. There are no rules when it comes to entrepreneurship. If you can create something that sells without working for someone else and be successful, you are an entrepreneur.