A freedom lifestyle business gives you time, money and geographical freedom. But how realistic is it to build a profitable online business, ditch the day job, and start living your dream life?
After reading Timothy Ferris’s The 4-Hour Work Week, I became inspired to find a method of building a lifestyle business which would give me complete freedom – both financially and of time.
While working on an eBay business I realised that all my time was being sucked away and it wasn’t giving me the freedom I had hoped for. I was posting items, dealing with customers and spending all my time finding products to sell. I knew there had to be another business model, which would give me more freedom. So I ditched the eBay business and started trying to sell my own ebooks online.
An ebook had originally put me on to the idea of the eBay business. But I realised that if I could sell an ebook, it would be an automated sale. I could create the book once, and sell it over and over again online. This, I thought, would give me complete time and financial freedom.
Freedom Lifestyle Business..Failures
Sadly, my idea didn’t work according to plan. I built the website, the ebook and even created a payment page using Paypal. It was all set up to start taking money, delivering my ebook and it was all hands free! The only problem was nobody knew of my ebook! I couldn’t get any traffic to my website, so I put myself on a marketing course to learn how to get website traffic with the intention of selling my ebook.
But I discovered a different (and better) business model instead. This business model is called affiliate marketing and it allows anyone to earn money from the internet through referring customers to other people’s products. While my ebook was up for sale at $10, I could sell a $100 affiliate product and earn $40 per sale. So I ditched my ebook idea and started learning affiliate marketing instead.
Freedom Lifestyle Business
I tried a few other ideas before finding affiliate marketing such as Google Adsense (advertising on content), Forex marketing, buying and selling on eBay and of course the ebook idea. But affiliate marketing seemed the best and after one or two sales the income outweighed the tiny amounts I was earning through Adsense. I knew affiliate marketing was the freedom lifestyle business I was looking for! So I got to work, learning how to build affiliate websites and advertise them through paid ads, blogging and anything I could do from my laptop!
After a lot of problems and sporadic results at best I almost quit several times. But my life was such that I was constantly struggling with low paid jobs, low self esteem and troubling debts. I tried a number of courses which promised me an easy ride, but none of them delivered on their promises!
But I had made a few sales online and I knew I just needed some bigger success and I could quit the day jobs.
Freedom Lifestyle Business – A Chance Meeting
In 2014 I found a mentor and joined his community. Here I found help and support and real world people. This was unheard of before and the coaches I had previously found were nowhere to be found when I needed help the most. I desperately wanted success with an online type of business, I just didn’t know what I was doing and I was really struggling.
I had paid for numerous courses at this stage and was sceptical and fearful I would be joining a scam, or that it wouldn’t help me. But I found I was able to join webinars and seminars and even live events in London and nearer where I lived in the UK.
Within my first few months I was able to make my first high ticket digital sale online. It was a real break though. With high ticket affiliate products you can make much larger commissions per sale.
Instead of trying to sell thousands of products to make a few dollars on each, sell one or two high ticket items and make the same amount. Because I didn’t know this previously, I felt I had wasted so much time trying to sell low value affiliate products. Still, the perseverance had paid off and I am glad I didn’t quit like so many do.
Lessons Learned
A freedom lifestyle business was what I wanted. But when I started out I had no idea what to sell or how to do it. Today, experience has taught me a few key things which you may not already know:
- To use an existing business model and just learn how to market it.
- To choose high ticket affiliate products to sell – more income for the same amount of work
- Using subscription affiliate products gives you a recurring income from each sale you make
- Choose a product “suite” rather than just selling stand alone products. A product suite is a range of products offering high ticket, subscription, low ticket and mid ticket items.
A lifestyle business is with the grasp of anyone with the drive and commitment to see it through. You don’t need your own products to sell or any previous experience. But you do need a string desire to succeed in this space. There’s plenty of competition online and it’s not cheap advertising. This means you can spend a lot of time and money and still get it wrong. This is why so many affiliates quit and give up on the dream of a freedom lifestyle business which can give them total autonomy, financial and geographical freedom.
Mindset
Most people who start businesses fail within their first three years and with affiliate marketing it’s no different. Around 95% of affiliates give up and drop out of the business which means to succeed with a lifestyle business model you need to put yourself in the 5% camp who never quits!
Having the right mindset about building an online business helps and most people simply aren’t equipped with the business building mindset required to get profitable. Even with the tools, mentors and coaches behind you, it’s a tough journey and you should expect some times to be tough, like with anything worthwhile.
But with the right direction, business model, coaches and mindset you have a much greater chance of succeeding with an online business and building a freedom lifestyle business.
Employee Vs Entrepreneurial Mindsets
As an employee for much of my life I brought some of the wrong kinds of mindsets to my online business. There’s a whole bunch of new mindsets, attitudes and behaviours I had to learn in order to build profitable online business.
Trading time for money in a job is very different to building an online business for many reasons. In a job, you only work the hours you work. The rest of the time is yours. But in a business, unless you get your business profitable, you don’t get paid. It’s absolutely your responsibility whether you get paid or not with an online business because you’re the one who benefits.
Since affiliate marketing is a performance based business, you don’t get paid unless you make sales. Although this can be daunting, it also means there’s no limit to what you can earn. Plus you can detach your time from your income, by selling products automatically as an affiliate. With a job, you always have to sell your time.
This is why I believe affiliate marketing is the best business model if you’re looking for more time and financial freedom.
If you’re ready to get started with your own online business you can do so here.
