Online business experiments - 10 months - 7 Lessons I can share with you | Issue #05

All that I can tell you, about building a sustainable online business.

Namastey Ji!

Hope you’re all doing good. I started a 52-week challenge on 10th February 2022 to Publish at least one newsletter every week. Here’s the fifth one.

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I have been working towards a solo online business, inspired by creators like Dan Koe, Daniel Vassallo, Justin Welsh and so many other creators that I follow on Twitter.

I spent a lot of my time, energy, and efforts last year learning and experimenting about :

• building funnels, and learning about sales and marketing techniques

• Working on my copywriting Skills to learn to create effective landing pages

• creating different ticket sized products/services in my portfolio,

• trying to build an audience and be active in various creator communities

• building websites using no-code website builders (WordPress, Godaddy website builder, Super, Carrd, etc)

• selling digital products(ebooks, guides, templates, etc) on Gumroad.

But I made only a tiny amount of money from these efforts. Here’s a shorter version of all that I learned in the past nine months as a digital creator :

1. Don’t start projects impulsively - Whenever you have a new digital product idea - sleep on it for a few days before you act on it.

   Also, try to find answers to these questions before you act impulsively :

   
   You might not have all of the answers right away and it’s okay, but you need to work on these eventually and the sooner you have the answers to these questions - the better.
   
   Also, Make only small essential investments into your projects until you’re able to validate your project idea.
   
   

2. Find the core of your work - Work on the core - strengthen it - Don’t waste your time focusing on the aesthetics at the start but instead focus on the components that make your product valuable. Focus on things that make your product unique.
   
   

3. Consistency compounds - Once you have found the core, then build habits and routines around that core.

   
   You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret to your success is found in your daily routine
   - John Maxwell

   
   While we are talking about consistency, I must tell you, I didn’t understand consistency until I started practicing it, taking challenges for a certain number of days, and acting upon them daily. That’s when I understood the power of consistency. I have realized Being Consistent & Trying to master one thing > Trying to get a handful of many things.
   
   

4. Iterate - When you are building or creating something - even if it’s as small as a landing page design/e-mail campaign to be sent out to customers/product design or anything else for that matter - When you are creating something and if you’re amateur at it - don’t stop at the first draft. Iterate.
   Do 7-8 revisions if required. Then compare your first draft to your eighth draft. If you have made efforts - it would look drastically different - in a good way ;)
   Magic happens when you iterate (and It’s even more magical when you occasionally take feedback and use it to improve your work. )
   
   

5. Collaborate and leverage your connections - When you are just starting out, build connections and collaborate with people (who are possibly doing better than you) in your niche. It can turn out to be a great learning opportunity and give you exponential exposure.
   
   

6. Thinking in terms of Processes/Frameworks/Funnels - This will help you bring stability, efficiency, and system to your work.
   Figure out which part of your workflow consumes a lot of your time and how you can optimize it to improve your efficiency and decrease the turnaround time.
   
   

7. Building self-sustaining loosely coupled products & services - Now this might sound complicated to some but the idea is to create standalone products/services in your portfolio that compliment each other but are not dependent on each other.
   The benefit of creating loosely coupled products/services is that if one project grows unsustainable or isn’t generating revenue or you find working on it too much stressful, then you can remove it without disturbing your whole workflow.

   
   

I will keep sharing more such stuff with you in the coming days.
Until then, You can follow my updates on Twitter, Linkedin .

If you have any questions on your mind after reading this, please feel free to respond to this email or leave a comment below.

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👨🏻‍💻 Side Hustle Stories

I don’t want to overwhelm you with a lot of information in a single piece of newsletter so for this week I just have five side hustle stories to share with you :

1. How I Grew My First Blog to 10,000 Views In Less Than 30 Days - The guy learned about NFT, started an NFT related blog where he shared his valuable knowledge and it eventually it took off after Gary vee tweeted about it. The point is selecting a niche that’s gonna play out well in the near and distant future, and working towards it.

2. My former coworker quit her job for crypto - I haven’t joined the Crypto or NFT bandwagon yet, but these medium articles do make me want to learn more about these topics and find out the possibilities that these technologies and concepts can lead to. Have you invested in crypto or got into the NFT space, share in the comments below.
   

3. Fiverr’s First Month Orders — $3.6k - I recently switched from Fiverr to Upwork, but this was an interesting read. If you’re into freelancing, you might want to check this one out.

4. 100%-Passive Income Source That I Use for 2,5 Years - Ever thought about creating a course on Udemy. ( I honestly haven’t but they say it has a huge audience reach. Hmm 🧐, so if you do this, you can leverage that audience. I should put this one on my to-do list.)

5. What My 4-Hour Workday Looks Like as a ‘Full-Time’ Writer - Building a routine when you’re a solo creator is difficult, I liked reading how the author has created a routine that fits her lifestyle. If you’re a solo creator, working from home - this one might interest you.

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That’s all for this week! I will see you again sometime next week!

It takes me about 7-8 hours a week to read, curate, and write a newsletter issue - if you found this newsletter valuable and want me to keep bringing you more valuable content every week - consider supporting this newsletter.

Also, I would love to know your thoughts about the stories and essays I share with you. So Feel free to reply to this email or share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Sincerely,

Rahul Tyagi

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