Hey, fellow Digi-Preneurs…I hope all is well lol. You have remembered or forgotten last year that I have been toying with the idea of doing a Podcast and the name I settled on calling it was “Digi-Preneur FM”, it’s for my community of online business owners. Even if you have a brick and mortar store, you should be thinking about having online components for the business. Moving on, one of the big questions circulating right now is “when is a good time to start monetizing?”, especially when you are just getting started.

Now, this is a great question because it really depends on what you are doing as a business, that will dictate how you go about monetizing when getting started.

I was able to start monetizing with Droid Island, much earlier than I could have monetized with my Keron Rose brand. The difference is because of the type of business Droid Island is vs Keron Rose.

Droid Island is a platform I started educating on the smartphone industry in the Caribbean. I built myself, started blogging and attracted traffic. I was able to open a brick and mortar store to sell the products but was quickly able to transition to selling the products online.

Since I was constantly educating on the mobile devices, the follow-up questions were always, “hey…what is the best device for me and where can I get it?” So since I was able to source the products and deliver them, I was able to monetize through selling products. I could have done this from when I had gotten started and something I encourage people to do.

If you are blogging and reviewing products in your respective niche, here are a few ways you can monetize from out the gate:

• Selling the products via your website (You can carry physical stock or dropship products)
• Affiliate marketing
• Ad revenue on your website (selling ad space or use Google Adsense)
• Youtube (Takes a while to start monetizing but you can monetize)

Starting out in a product-based business is much easier to monetize because you are going to be talking about or selling other brands. If you are the creator of your products, your goal will be to create content that educates and brings awareness on how your product can solve problems for the end-user or give your audience some form of pleasure.

You can start building your website for less than $100usd, heck, even cheaper depending on what platform you decide to start with. If money is super duper tight, if you are talking about products and creating videos on social media, you can at bare minimum take orders for products via your DM’s.

You can also send you affiliate links to people asking your products in your DM’s. You can even go as far as setting up a free Linktree and putting your affiliate links in there to your most recent products that you have been talking about.

That is still a great starting point if you have no money to invest in whatsoever.

Have fun in building that audience around something you are passionate about or a daily problem you are trying to solve.

---

Monetizing For Infopreneurs

Now monetizing as an Infopreneur looks completely different and this is something I am personally a bit more critical on, especially in the Caribbean.

In Canada/US/UK/Aus, the mindset for monetizing information is all about building your portfolio and leveraging your results to get clients. We aim to do some free work first to show that we can get results and that our information is good.

Here in the Caribbean, we have completely skipped this process. Everybody is trying to monetize information and yet have shown no form or results, nor have they built any portfolio but they want to charge prices that are comparable to their US counterparts.

So while I am not here to knock anybody’s hustle, you as the client must be more aware than ever and search for any coaches/marketing/branding experts portfolios/body of work. You must analyze the people they have worked with and gotten results for and ask yourself if their clients have gotten results that you would like for yourself.

For my Infopreneurs, build your portfolio FIRST and use that as leverage.

At the beginning of this blog I mentioned it took me longer to monetize with Keron Rose. That’s because I started teaching about all of the lessons I have learned with Droid Island and using my success with Droid Island as proof of concept.

Droid Island has been able to work with some of the biggest companies in the Caribbean and so my methods of doing things in my business have been proven and can work for others in some form or fashion. I also focus on teaching the technical skills on building your online business and not trying to sell you the old “let’s make 10k in 2 weeks” model.

So for Infopreneurs, when is the best time to start monetizing?

• Take 2 months to work with 2 – 3 clients for free, get the results and leverage those results to earn bigger paycheques (Most Important).

• Use affiliate marketing and get commissions off of books and courses you took to build your brand up. It’s easy to show people “Hey, these are 5 great books or courses that helped me” and get affiliate commissions off of them. Most course creators offer commissions.

• Create digital products “ebooks, webinars, etc”. Offer some freebies, in the beginning, to build your audience and then mix up some low-cost options as well to sell. People will always pay for good info that helps them get the desired result but it’s best to show that your info is proven

• SELL YOUR SKILLS – If you know how to cook, create ebooks, teach graphic design, you name it. You can monetize your skills. There is a difference in trying to sell yourself as a marketer and what you are offering is helping people grow to 10k followers but you only have 300 followers and teaching people how to create social media graphics.

• You can also curate experiences. If you are just getting started and are not viewed as an expert. Create events, bring in experts in your space and you can start building your brand and still carve out a niche for yourself. I can’t bake…but I would sure do an event where I bring in a chef who teaches us how to make quick healthy meals for busy executives working from home who can’t cook lol. (You see the niche and experience I created for that niche?)

---

You don’t need to rush into monetizing, however, we all got bills lol. So there are ways to monetize when getting started out. It really comes down to your niche and the angle you decide to take.

It’s easier to sell products and create free content but monetize off the sales of the products.

If you are an infopreneur and wanting to productize your information or sell your services to get clients results…build your portfolio and show that your information is solid.

If in the process of building the portfolio, curate experiences for people by bringing in other experts to speak on topics, use affiliate marketing, sell ad space on your platforms…do a variety of activities while building that portfolio and then turn around to leverage it, in order to get higher-paying clients.

I hope this gives you an idea of how to get started monetizing, especially if you have been affected by Covid 19 and looking to start a new business but don’t know when you can start making money.

The Digital Age presents many monetization methods…get familiar, get creative and use as many methods as you can to create your various revenue streams.

Start with your passions, a daily problem you face or one of your skills and turn that into a business!