Thread by @bowtiedopossum

Alright. So you want (actually need) to start an online business. There’s four revenue models that a first timer is left with taking.

1. E-commerce
2. Affiliate
3. Display
4. Newsletter

I’m obviously leaving out a lot of models because they’re less suited for the beginner.

Beginners should NOT enter the following models until they’ve built up their “digital muscles”. I know there’s crossover with the above…

Lead generation and data collection (to sell).

*E-commerce*

Your can either sell your own product, resell, drop ship, or strike a deal to sell someone else’s product.

Creating your own product has the most upfront cost and risk but carries the best margins.

Reselling can be really profitable but only if you can get the quantities needed to scale.

Some people buy from the clearance racks then turn around and sell on Amazon/EBay.

Others will strike deals to buy truckloads of product from CPG/retail. (TJ-Max of E-commerce)

Drop ship ceases to be profitable when you lose customer’s trust (reviews) by making them wait 4 weeks for their product to be shipped from China

If you go this route, make sure to use a local/fast delivery method. Order your own items occasionally to see what your customer sees

Striking a deal to sell another company’s product can be very rewarding if you know what you’re doing. It has all of the ease of drop shipping without any of the hassle.

A real company is standing behind you doing the shipping and customer service.

You’re delivering them customers and you get a check without the hassle.

This is essentially an agency model that is rewarded on performance instead of % of ad spend.

Do not go down this route if beginner or intermediary.

*Affiliate*

Affiliate is broad and encompasses a lot of different partner types that you probably don’t realize are affiliates.

Most people are familiar with Amazon or a Bluehost affiliate.

A few that you may not realize are affiliate partnerships are.

All coupon sites.

Many browser extensions.

Discount “perks” from your favorite CC, bank, employee portal, membership of any organization (AARP), etc.

Essentially, if you have an audience/brand, you can monetize it with affiliate.

*Display*

We all know what Display ads are. If you decide to go down this route, either go down the news route or arbitrage route.

News route is just sensational headlines and pumping out content as fast as possible. Find some cheap native writers and become a content farm.

The arbitrage route is those clickbait articles at the bottom of every news site.

They’re buying cheap traffic with the hope that you’ll click on enough slides of the “50 things Brittany Spears doesn’t want the world to know!” to make a profit.

Difficult to execute but absolutely prints money when executed properly.

*Newsletter*

If your reading this tweet, you probably follow @BowTiedBull and need no explanation.

However, think about the dynamics here. Zero incremental cost, scales infinitely, and can be outsourced to a team.

If the newsletter is tied to an industry instead of an avatar..

Then it doesn’t have to involve you after the initial traction. It’s easy to put $50-$100 monthly on a corporate card and justify it as “industry research”