Business Model No.3 – Offering a Service
9 Dec
When it comes to making money online, most people tend to neglect the easiest and most natural way ever – offering a service.
We’re all good at something. True, some skills aren’t particularly useful online, such as cooking or playing soccer. But that doesn’t mean that each and everyone of you can’t master at least one skill that has a valid demand on the Internet.
Basic freelancing jobs online are:
- writing
- providing SEO services
- web development
- designing
- miscellaneous (like Fiverr)
Service No.1 – Become a Writer
It’s fair to say that people with English as their mother tongue have an advantage on the international field if they choose writing as their online career.
On the other hand, it’s not that hard to obtain the necessary skills with enough determination and willingness to learn, even if you happen to live outside of the English speaking countries.
Plus, no one is forbidding you to focus on your national market – that’s another thing that’s often neglected, most guys are trying to prove themselves worthy in the US/UK/… And they fail to see possibilities right on their own doorstep.
Benefits Of Writing
Wide Field of Implementation – using the power of words to sway people to do anything you desire is one of the most profitable things these days. You can do almost anything with excellent writing skills:
- affiliate marketing
- blog
- product reviews
- ghost writing
Chance Of Personal Branding – this is your chance to become famous. You can develop your very own style of writing, e.g. a favorite phrase or a saying.
Every good writer has some patterns that the fans can identify very quickly, this is also a part of the personal branding. Fear not to use latin terms (such as vice versa or et cetera), they can distinguish you very well if not overused.
Good Revenue – remember when we said that you can do almost anything with writing? It’s hardly a surprise that the better you are, the higher your revenue can be.
How much do you think you can earn if a big marketing name comes to you and ask you to write a sales letter that is expected to make tens of thousands of dollars? It won’t be $10 for sure…
Dangers Of Writing
Massive competition – it is blatant that the writing market is always saturated with poor and/or average writers. You need to practice (a lot) before you can even think about rising above your rivals in terms of:
- excellent grammar
- rich vocabulary
- coherent texts
- spry flow of text
Providing low quality content - there is basically only one thing you need to focus on in the writing area; it’s your reputation. As you can easily imagine, if you produce an article your grandmother would be ashamed of, you can bet that the word will get out. Fast.
Failing in delivery of your promises – let’s forget writing for a moment here and see the bigger picture. You must give only such promises that you can hold when it comes to your business.
That’s exactly why we’ve told you about changes on Darthopia, that’s exactly why we will keep up the current number of posts unless the both of us lie unconscious in the hospital… You get the idea.
Writing Resources
Service No.2 – SEO Is Gold
Search Engine Optimization is a small piece of the online marketing puzzle, but one that can’t be ignored. Although it’s technical stuff and it’s understandable that not everyone is a tech fan, sadly it’s not an excuse to neglect SEO.
What’s more, there is a real gold mine awaiting especially outside the English speaking countries.
As progress is a bit slower in the other parts of the world, providing SEO (+ maybe social media) services to small companies can yield an insane amount of money – companies are not individuals, their financial borders are elsewhere and they may not hesitate to pay you hundreds of dollars per hour, if you offer something extremely valuable in return.
Another good news is that you can get a basic understanding of SEO in 20 hours of work, even if you hate tech stuff. You can then gather experience on your own projects and voila – you turn out to be a perfect external worker.
Do not underestimate the significance of SEO in the nearest future.
SEO Resources
Service No.3 – Web Development
We’re getting more and more tech stuff, aren’t we? To tell you the truth, the beauty of science and technology lies in their complexity – the one who understands his bit makes money.
You may think that with the easy Blogger and WordPress sites, the traditional job of a website developer is near extinction. That’s not true for several reasons:
Should you decide to engage in web development, the first thing you need to do is to overcome your fear and anxiety when it comes to technology (if you have any).
You need to understand that there will be a lot of learning involved, you will make a lot of mistakes and you will hardly become a great developer over night.
Web development is like any other business opportunity – the harder it is, the less people will do it and thus the more revenue grows on this tree. It’s only the matter of going through the hassle and collecting it.
Web Development Resources
Service No.4 – Design Rules the World
Designing has a questionable honor in our list – it’s the only one that can’t be done by simply anyone from the street (both members of Darthopia crew included).
However, in case you have at least a small bit of designing blood in your veins, you may want to consider becoming an independent designer – simply because people will always want pretty things.
Designers can focus on different areas:
- logos
- business cards
- websites
- computer modelling
The list is virtually endless, it depends only on your imagination what micro-niche you can come up.
The best thing about designing is that you don’t need to provide the actual service online – you can simply use an online platform like an advert site or your own blog to make yourself visible to customers and then e.g. make them a business card.
Design Resources
Service No.5 – Miscellaneous Services a.k.a. Fiverr
You might get very surprised if you knew what are people willing to pay for. One of the best ways to truly find out is to visit the most popular site for misc services out there – Fiverr.
The whole concept of this portal is quite simple:
You can post a gig offering virtually anything. Seriously, unless you brake some basic rules (it would be unwise to offer burning a US flag for $5), there are no limits other than those of your imagination.
Just to give you some examples, here are a few gigs in the range from serious ones to some that may raise an eyebrow or two:
You can think of Fiverr customers in two basic ways:
- bored people paying for amusement
- desperate people looking for help
Both are profitable when approached properly.
Another great thing about Fiverr is that you can brainstorm several gigs, put them on and then forget about it until someone requests your service, so there is no need for your constant attention.
One last note here – there are several sites claiming to be “Fiverr clones”, who are in fact very similar sites, but with one major difference: they lack any serious traffic. Here’s a screen from Alexa ranking comparison:
Traffic Comparison
That’s right, the blue line is Fiverr and the rest of invisible lines are its “competitors”.
Conclusion
Hopefully, you now understand that making money online isn’t necessarily dependent on your business abilities. You can also go down the good ol’ employee route, it’s just a matter of identifying your strengths and focusing on them.
Thank you for reading!
From above five services SEO service is having more demand in market because of very less person who are experts in SEO filed.
I think I first saw this blog through WF. It’s a great effort and I appreciate the kind words about Fiverr.
Charleen Larson recently posted..6 ways to add personality to your Fiverr gigs and make more money
I must say offering SEO service is a very good business model. I am into this business ;)
- Ian, OOm
Hey, just happened across your site. Great article, with some sound suggestions for offering services as a way to earn.
You made a really good point about ‘Fiverr’ clone sites. I have seen a couple and wondered about them, but really if there is not much traffic then likely not worth the effort.
With the Writing Resources you gave, I have not come across Contstant Content or Stack Exchange before. Looks like a couple of good resources to keep in mind.
Cheers,
Lynne recently posted..HostGator Review For Best Web Hosting
hi
thanks for this post. I really appreciate it that yo took the time to actually discuss about offering good services. It is very rare that people actually took the time to offer good service and just concentrate on building massive seo.
This is a great post about offering services. Service No.2 is what I like most, providing SEO services and I’m related on this using social media sites.
Martha Pulaski recently posted..Chevy Radio Controlled Model Cars
I often tell people the same thing. Offering a service that you can do is the way to approach making money online. It is easier than trying to manufacture a product.