I started looking for autopilot business ideas after working for some time on an eBay business strategy. The eBay idea, (I thought) was pretty clever, and involved finding cheap items on eBay that were badly listed. I then resold them and made a profit on the difference. The problem was it wasn’t a scalable business. I could purchase more valuable products and increase my profit with a larger mark up. You can read about the strategy in this article.
But I was stuck to my laptop all day answering customers questions. I had to physically post things out too which meant I was physically trapped by this business model and it didn’t give me the freedom I was looking for.
I knew the internet offered something better. So I looked for autopilot business ideas which could work for me whether I was at the computer or not. Here’s the short version (click on the image below).
Autopilot Business Ideas
The eBay business model came originally from an ebook I purchased from eBay. The purchase of this ebook stuck in my mind and I realised that it was an automatic transaction. The seller had created it himself and just set up a listing. He could also sell the same book over and over again with no printing or postage costs. So I decided this was an awesome autopilot business idea! See also how to sell ebooks on your own website.
I went to work and created an ebook about how to become a stuntman! Since I had joined the British stunt register some time earlier I though it a good idea to write about what I knew! I also created an ebook about being a TV Extra but despite a lot of website building and learning some online skills I didn’t sell either book!
I realised that what I didn’t know how to do was market my websites which sold the ebooks. So, I put myself on a marketing course online to learn how. Once joining a course, I soon realised there was a better business model than selling my own ebooks. It was a business model called affiliate marketing.
Autopilot Business Ideas – Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is now my favourite of all the autopilot business ideas I looked at. What struck me about affiliate marketing was that you can sell almost any product available on the internet. I even learned how to sell the course I had bought to learn about it!
My ebooks were priced at $10 and I got 100% of the profit. But the course I promoted offered a lot more value and to a larger audience. It was priced at $100 and I could earn 40% commission. So for each sale I earned $40. This was four times what I would have earned selling my own ebook!
So I quickly dropped my ebooks and worked on the affiliate model strategy. Using paid marketing I built an email list and started making sales. I was just about to start scaling up my efforts using a larger advertising budget when I got my advertising account shut down by Google, and I couldn’t get it back!
No matter what I did, Google wouldn’t let me have another account. So I looked for more autopilot business ideas that I wouldn’t need a paid advertising account for.
After joining another course, I found a strategy. It meant I could still work online and automate an income by blogging! It was Adsense!
Autopilot Business Ideas – Google Adsense
Google Adsense lets you automate an income from anywhere by putting advertising on online content which you own. You can use Adsense from a blog, or upload videos to YouTube and monetise through using advertising. There’s many Adsense alternatives you can use too, but I used Adsense (and still do).
Adsense pays you a portion of advertising revenue collected by Google from advertisers. When someone clicks on your advert, (on your content), the advertiser pays Google for this advertisement and Google pays you a small percentage. This is usually a tiny amount (less than a dollar) but with a large volume of traffic you can make this a nice passive income with enough content.
Despite building a lot of content, Google Adsense didn’t pay enough to make it worth my while in the early days. It was only years later that I had enough content to make a regular passive income from it. Even, then it wasn’t enough to pay the bills!
Adsense is great if you have lots of content, or a willing to create a lot of content. But it’s a “slow burner” if you’re starting out. Plus, Google has pulled many accounts over the years and people have lost their livelihoods. So it pays to diversify.
Affiliate Business Models That Pay The Most
This takes me full circle back to affiliate marketing again. After experimenting with Adsense, I realised that affiliate marketing was going to be a better earner. I jumped on another affiliate marketing course in 2014 after finding a video online by a guy called Stuart.
Here he is on a pedalo in Mauritius. Watch the video here.
Stuart Ross teamed up with Jay Jubassek in 2010 and created an online mentoring program called the Six Figure Mentors. I was sceptical, of course, since I’d already been here before and failed several times. But I was struggling getting work as a stunt performer and fed up of the other jobs I could get (office work, HGV driving, hired hand etc.)
So I took a leap of faith and joined the community.
The Six Figure Funnel
The SFM Mentors uses affiliate marketing as one of their business models. Although they also teach marketing for other businesses and import exports business models too. Many members also have their own marketing businesses as a result of the education they received from the SFM.
I was interested in their affiliate marketing model because I was looking for autopilot business ideas. What was different about The SFM’s business model was that it had multiple earning strategies in it.
Most affiliate products only pay you once. When I promoted products from the likes of Amazon, for example, I only earned for each sale. With the SFM’s business model, you can earn recurring commissions for affiliate sales. With recurring commission affiliate programs you can sell once and earn an income for potentially a lifetime. Each sale therefore gives you an income rather than a single commission. Other earning strategies using this business included:
- High ticket digital products – earn up to 40% commissions on products valued up to $20,000
- Multi-tier commissions – earn from sales made by your referrals
- Subscription products – (recurring commissions from previous sales)
- A built in sales team – closing sales on your behalf
- A product range – a number of products you can promote to existing customers.
See SFM Digital Business System for more on this model. Get started here to join the SFM.