But, what, exactly is information marketing and how do you become an infopreneur?

Good question!

Simply put, information marketing is creating and selling information products. When you do this for a living, you get to call yourself an infopreneur. Infopreneurs make money by packaging their knowledge into products they can sell.

Some of the most common infopreneur products include:

• Ebooks
• Workbooks
• Ecourses

What’s great about selling information products is you can do the work once and make sales over and over again, often on autopilot (hooray for passive income!). This lets you create more products which will help increase your income — because the more you have for sale the more opportunity you have to earn.

And, it’s really a great time to be an infopreneur.

Consider this, in the United States alone, ebook sales go well into the billions each year — by 2018, it’s expected to be a nearly 9 billion industry according to Statistia.

Even if you get a teeny, tiny sliver of that gigantic pie, you’d make a good living just writing and selling ebooks. And, thanks to self-publishing platforms like Kindle Direct Publishing and services that let you sell on your own site like Shopify, Woocommerce, or Gumroad, you can easily get your digital products up for sale and in front of a worldwide audience.

But, before we get into all of that, let’s talk more about becoming an infopreneur and why it’s a great way to make money online.

Information Marketing

The most successful infopreneurs often follow a simple formula: They analyze what they know and use that knowledge to solve a problem within a targeted niche.

What Do You Know?

I’m going to bet you have a good bit of knowledge about a lot of different things. And all of this information you possess has the potential to turn into an information product.

If at this point you’re starting to feel self-doubt creep in — that’s okay. In fact, it’s perfectly normal. Many would-be infopreneurs give up before they actually get going because they falsely believe they have to be an expert to be successful or hold some kind of credentials to be taken seriously.

Let me reassure you, this just isn’t the case.

Most infopreneurs have real world experience. That is, they’ve been there, done that and now they’re showing others how they can do it, too.

What really matters is how you will take what you know or have accomplished and use it to solve a problem within a niche.

Finding a Niche

Here at Work from Home Happiness, you’ll notice a recurring theme in many blog posts and articles — the power of picking a niche. Whether you want to become a writer, proofreader, virtual assistant or, in this case, an infopreneur, my number one piece of advice is this:

Pick. A. Niche.

Information Marketing: Pick a Specific Audience

The power of a niche is undeniable. For one, it gives you direction. When you know what it is you’re tackling, it’s that much easier to get started and follow through.

Second, a niche allows you to easily find out where your customers are. And when you know who your customers are and where they hang out, you can effectively market to them which translates to more sales. Cha-ching.

And, last but certainly not least, picking a niche will cement you as an expert in your particular field, even if you’re not one (yet). Before you know it, people organically gravitate to you when they need help solving a niche-related problem.

Which Niche Will You Pick?

Ideally, your niche is something you have experience in. This allows you to write naturally and knowledgeably about the subject and deliver solid, actionable advice that gives your audience a lot of value. Your audience will reward you with positive reviews and this will naturally generate buzz around your information products.

But, your niche should also be profitable. One way to easily determine if a niche is profitable is to make sure there’s a common problem or pain-point people within this niche experience. If so, you know you’ve got a solid idea because you can take your experience and use it to help people in your niche solve this problem.

Always remember, when it comes to information marketing, people will buy things if it will help them solve their problem. Period.

The best thing you can do as an infopreneur is identify a common problem and create an information product that solves it.

Identifying Problems that You Can Solve

Pretend you had poor credit that was preventing you from getting a mortgage. So, you did a whole bunch of research to learn how you could raise your credit score, remove errors from your credit report, and improve your rating so you could qualify for a home loan. And in a year’s time, were able to raise your score over 100 points to qualify for a home loan.

You think, hmm, since I have the real world experience, I’d like my niche to be personal finance. But, what problems are people experiencing in this niche?

• Do they want to know how to save money?
• Are they interested in credit-improving techniques?
• Is eliminating credit card debt important to them?

These are all valid questions and possible pain points. But, if you want to be a successful infopreneur, you need to know that your product will address a real problem before you start creating it. If it’s not a common problem or pain-point within your niche, nobody will buy what you’re selling. And, to put it frankly, it sucks to create something only to find nobody is interested in buying it (been there, done that).

So, now it’s time to research your projected niche to figure out what people are struggling with so you can use your knowledge to help them solve that problem!

Google

Where do most people head online when they need to solve a problem? Google, right? They navigate over to Google, type in their problem or question and browse through the search results.

So, it’s definitely a good idea to use Google to your advantage to see whether or not you’ve got the potential to earn money in your niche.

Now, remember, picking a niche is one thing, but picking a narrow niche is another. You couldn’t simply write an ebook, create a course or workbook about personal finance.

Why not?

Because it’s just too broad. It’d be impossible to cover every aspect of personal finance to please all audiences. And, if you tried, you’d probably abandon the project early on after you realized what a massive undertaking it really is.

So, while your general niche may be personal finance — we need to narrow it down more, a lot more. Google can help with that too.

Keyword Planner Tool

I love freebies, especially helpful freebies. And the Google Keyword Planner Tool is one of the most useful free resources when you’re looking for a profitable niche.

If you don’t already have one, you need to create a Google account to access the Keyword Planner. Navigate over to adwords.google.com to get started.

Your page should look something like this:

See the big button that says, “Create Your First Campaign?” Don’t click it. If you do, you’ll be stuck in a sequence that will eventually require you to put in your credit card information. Instead, head on over to the Tools link where you’ll be able to access the Keyword Planner tool.

To make it easier to understand, I’ve created a 12-minute quickstart tutorial on how you might want to use the Keyword Planner Tool to help you nail down a niche. (This is my first screencast ever, so please be nice Give it a watch if you’re not familiar with Keyword Planner. If you are, no problem, skip on over to the next section to learn about other places to help you check whether or not you’ve got a profitable niche on your hands.

Is This a Potentially Profitable Audience?

In the video above, we learned that people want to check their credit scores for free, learn how to fix bad credit, and understand their options to secure a home loan when they have bad credit.

So, is this a profitable niche? Should our pretend information product cover these topics?

Here’s three questions we need to ask first:

1. Did we discover a pain-point or a problem within our niche?
2. Are people looking for solutions to these problems?
3. Can we use our existing knowledge to offer a solution to this problem?

Yes. Yes. And yes. Of course, this is a made up example to illustrate how to go through the process of nailing down a niche — but these are the steps you should take to help you create a narrow and profitable audience, one that has a problem you can easily solve with your knowledge.

Further Validation

If you wanted to validate this idea even further, I suggest visiting places where people actively discuss problems related to your niche. Reading real user questions, comments and answers can give you another level of understanding than the Keyword Planner Tool can provide.

Some great places to check include:

• Reddit
• Quora
• Niche Forums
• Niche blogs
• Facebook Groups

All of these online sites have tons of user-generated content. Looking through this information can take time, but it’s well worth it. It will help you validate your profitable niche idea and likely give you topics to cover in your information product that you hadn’t yet considered.

Another place I like to check is Amazon. Let’s say you decided to write an ebook about repairing your credit. Head on over to Amazon and type credit repair in the search box. If you find plenty of titles listed and see that people are actually buying these books, that’s a good sign!

The fact that other people are having success selling info products in this niche means you can find success, too.

We can see that not only are people creating and successfully selling ebooks in the credit repair niche, but that it’s such a popular subject that it has its own dedicated category in the Kindle Store.

Don’t Neglect Your Research

I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, taking the leap into information marketing requires a lot of work. But, when done right, the return on investment can be huge! After all, there aren’t a whole lot of chances to create something that only requires a time investment upfront but can lead to financial independence down the line. That’s why it’s important to do your research and know you’ve landed on a profitable niche before you put any time into creating a product.

The point of this post is to get you to put your information marketing hat on and start coming up with potentially profitable niches that you can turn into actual products. You don’t have to (and shouldn’t) create your first information product overnight, but you should start laying the groundwork — today! I know getting started is the hardest part, but picking and validating your niche should help you confidently go into the creation process knowing you’ve got a great idea.

And, remember, don’t get caught up in shiny object syndrome! Earning real money online requires real work. Commit to information marketing and you can make something out of it. We’ve all been guilty of starting something with great enthusiasm only to abandon it midway before moving on to the next project that will ultimately get abandoned, too.

picking a profitable niche can take a lot of work, but it’s worth it! When done right, you can set yourself up for success and end up with an information product that sells.

Remember:

• Pick something you’re knowledgeable about
• Identify a pain point or problem the audience faces
• Figure out how you can solve that problem
• Validate whether or not people are actually searching for it (Google, Quora, Reddit and forums are your friends!)

As always, if you need any help, I hope you ask. You can leave questions in the comments or reach me directly: ashlee@workfromhomehappiness.com

[convertkit form=4883465]

[wpipa id=”3277″]

The post Information Marketing: Nail Down a Niche and Start Creating Your Own Income as an Infopreneur appeared first on Work from Home Happiness.

When you sell designs online, you can live a successful creative life on  your own terms and collect payments over and over again — even while you sleep! How? By signing up at one of the popular marketplaces where you can use your creativity to turn everyday products into individual works of art.

These sites let you sell designs online (for free) and enable independent artists to easily earn passive income.Your designs make it in front of millions of shoppers around the world and the marketplace handles all the logistics for you —  manufacturing, shipping, customer service — letting you do what you do best, create!

1. Zazzle

Perfect for artists, graphic designers, & photographers — get your work in front of 30 million worldwide shoppers when you become a Zazzle Designer. Did I mention Zazzle is free to use?
After you sign up, you’ll pick a store name and set up shop. Choose from hundreds of products you want to apply your designs to including t-shirts, phone cases, greeting cards, and buttons. When you’ve got just the right design, post your item for sale.

Each time one of your designs sells, you’ll get paid a price of your choosing thanks to Zazzle’s “Name Your Royalty Program.” There’s no need to worry about manufacturing, shipping, or customer service — Zazzle takes care of all that for you.

Zazzle is such a large, popular, and reputable designers’ marketplace that artists are earning a passive income while creating the things they love. When you sell on Zazzle, your designs will be placed alongside big-name brands like Paul Frank and Disney. Plus, everything you sell is backed by Zazzle’s 100% satisfaction guarantee ensuring customers will love your designs as much as the products they’re printed on.

2. Society6

You can sell designs online and turn your artwork into a variety of products when you sign up as a member at Society6. You can sell your artwork as prints or on products like shower curtains, mobile device cases, and throw pillows — but you’ve got to become verified first (this is how you’ll get paid).

Once you’re verified, you can create “posts” that make your artwork immediately available for sale. As the artist, you retain all rights to your work even if one of Society6’s retail partners sells your designs on their site.

When you sell your art as prints, you get to choose the profit you make on each sale. When you place your prints on products, you’ll earn a predetermined amount each time something sells. For example, you’ll earn $6.80 for each shower curtain that sells with one of your designs on it.

Easily market and sell designs online when you connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts and start tracking your earnings! Payments are made via PayPal on the 1st of each month.

3. Redbubble

Redbubble (RB) is a global marketplace for independent artists. When you sell on RB, you get to place your designs on high-quality products and sell to a large audience — all for free.

Redbubble coordinates the shipping and manufacture of each design that you sell. They’ll also handle all of the customer service for you, leaving you more time to design and create — opening up even more passive income opportunities. There’s a lot of different products you can place your designs on like posters, t-shirts, and vinyl stickers.

RB gives you total control over pricing using their “Base Price + Your Margin = Retail Price” pricing system. The average RB artist’s margins are 17%, but you get to choose the price that makes sense for your designs.  Join the more than 350,000 independent artists who make money with their art and designs on Redbubble.

Sell Designs Online & Earn Passive Income

What’s great about these three sites is you still own all the rights to your work but are given a new way to monetize your creativity. As long as you keep uploading designs and creating new products, you’ll have the potential to earn unlimited sales anytime, day and night.

Unlike other marketplaces that let you sell designs and handmade items online, you don’t have to worry about collecting payments, manufacturing, shipping, returns, or customer service. Simply sell designs online and start earning passive income — you get to be creative while they take care of the rest.

This post may contain affiliate links. Please see the disclosure for more information.

The post Sell Designs Online & Earn Passive Income appeared first on Work from Home Happiness.

There are so many different remote and home-based opportunities out there. Freelance. Direct sales. Home-based businesses. Work from home jobs. How do you choose?

Well, it depends what you’re looking for and your personal working style.

You can work from home and receive great benefits as an employee for large companies like Hilton or American Express. There’s also plenty of remote positions available at lesser-known but equally amazing startups and other companies who embrace the work-from-anywhere culture.

These positions are ideal for those who want some flexibility but crave the security of employee-based positions.

But what if you want to work from home with just a little guidance while also taking control over your earnings and schedule? Well, then, one of these companies that allow you to be your own boss online is probably perfect for you.

 What do You Mean by Be Your Own Boss Online?

There are several well-known and reputable companies that contract with people, like you, who want to work from home but don’t necessarily want to take on an employee role. This gives you the chance to work on projects you want without having to worry about finding clients. You bill these companies for your time and get paid twice a month as a contractor.

Sound like a pretty perfect work arrangement? Check out these companies that let you be your own boss online.

LiveOps

• Type of Work: Mostly inbound calls
• Payment: Per minute of talk time; Base plus commission; Strictly Commission
• Cost to Start: $65.00 for a background & credit check

LiveOps offered so many work-from-home Independent Agent positions in 2015, that FlexJobs named it the number one company to watch for online and telecommuting jobs in 2016. Pretty impressive, huh?

What is an Independent Agent? Independent Agents contract with LiveOps to provide services to LiveOps clients. Typically, this means answering incoming calls and/or placing outbound calls to customers (it’s mostly inbound calls).

Generally, the types of calls LiveOps Independent Agents handle involve:

• Inbound sales
• Insurance sales
• Insurance claims
• Healthcare
• Roadside service
• Customer service

After you become an agent, you get to see the current contract options and choose which one is perfect for your skills and interests. As you become established, you can contract with multiple clients and grow your business.

Even though you’re an independent contractor, LiveOps is very supportive and wants to help their agents succeed. Agents can even interact with one another through their official LiveOps Agent Community Facebook Page.

So how exactly does this allow you to be your own boss online? Well, you get to schedule yourself in blocks of time as little as 30-minutes, take calls during your self-scheduled blocks, and bill LiveOps for your time when you’re done. That’s it. Payments are made every two weeks via check or direct deposit — your choice!

NexRep

• Type of Work: Sales and Tech Support; Inbound, outbound, and email customer service
• Payment: On average, the equivalent of $15.00/hour with talk time, bonuses, and incentives
• Cost to Start: $25.00 for a background check

NexRep Agents get to work from home without having to commit to standard workdays or 8-hours shifts. Since you work as an independent contractor, you get to choose the hours and days you work. Instead of receiving a paycheck, you send out invoices for your services and are paid twice a month.

In addition to the flexibility and autonomy that comes with working as  NexRep Agent, you get to be your own boss online and work as much or little as you’d like.

The average agent makes about $15.00/hour (some of the best agents earn up to $25.00/hour!) while taking calls like:

• Outbound sales
• Inbound sales
• Customer support
• Virtual receptionist
• Beauty consultant
• Customer care

You need to pass certifications before you can work on certain contracts. And, since you’re in charge of your own time, you can optimize your schedule so that you’re working during peak hours — no sitting around waiting for work or sales opportunities.

Arise

• Type of Work: Sales and Customer Support
• Payment: $9.00 – $19.00/hour depending on performance
• Cost to Start: Cost to incorporate, Background check, Certification (total $200-$500)

When you partner with Arise, you get to support Fortune 500 customers as an independent business owner (IBO). Becoming an IBO will require you to incorporate. The cost to incorporate varies by each state, but will likely cost in the neighborhood of $100. When you incorporate, it really allows you to take the reins and be your own boss online.

As an independent business owner contracting with Arise, you get to create your own mini call center and perhaps even have agents work for you under your corporation. If you have an entrepreneurial spirit, partnering with Arise can offer you the chance to develop and grow your own home-based business.

Arise even has a Premier Partner Program that you can work your way up to which offers additional incentives and unlimited earning potential. Arise pays independent business owners twice a month via direct deposit. You can expect to earn anywhere from $9.00 to $19.00 an hour depending on the contracts you work on and the incentives offered.

What You Need to Know About Going Solo

As a home-based independent contractor or independent business owner, there are a number of notable benefits like:

• Flexibility
• Work-life balance
• Autonomy
• Increased earning potential
• No commute

But remember, when you get to be your own boss online, you are your own business. This means you are completely in charge and will need to set yourself up for success by providing your own:

• High-speed internet
• Computer
• Headset
• Landline

And as an independent contractor, you are responsible for paying your own taxes on money earned. But for those who are looking to start their own legitimate home-based business, the startup fees and monthly expenses are much lower than what it would take to build something entirely from scratch.

So, if you’ve always wanted to work from home but shy away from the traditional 9 to 5 routine, consider one of these opportunities that let you be your own boss online.

The post Work from Home and Be Your Own Boss Online appeared first on Work from Home Happiness.

My grandma always said there was no such thing as easy money. Back in her day, I suppose this was truer than it is today. She and my grandpa worked tirelessly, sometimes several jobs each, to support their brood of seven children.

Did they live comfortably? Yes. Was it easy? Probably not.

Fortunately, by today’s standards, money can come easier. I’m not talking about get-rich-quick schemes or winning the lottery (although the latter could happen — fingers crossed!). I’m talking about passive income.

Now, don’t get me wrong, you do have to work initially to get passive income rolling in and keep up on marketing efforts to maintain it. In fact, you probably have to work that much harder if your ultimate goal is to earn money while you sleep. But once you do, you the reap the rewards of endless revenue streams that keep paying you over and over again for doing the work once.

If you are serious about creating residual income opportunities, read on. There are passive income ideas that allow complete beginners to set up avenues of incoming money with absolutely no money upfront.

Before You Start Earning Passive Income

Full disclosure: You don’t just wake up one day and decide to make passive income and then have money start rolling in. You work for it. Hard.

You will, in fact, invest a lot of sweat equity into creating passive income. If you’re not willing to put in the time, energy, and effort to get a passive stream of revenue flowing, it won’t be worth your time.

The only way to residual income success is to create a product or outlet that actually generates revenue. Doing this requires plenty of planning and many hours logged (for free) before launch.

If this sounds okay, or dare I say exciting, you are on your way to earning passive income. Now the question is, what kind of passive income ideas will work for you?

Online Passive Income Opportunities

In the real world, there are traditional ways to earn residual income like buying property and renting it out or smart investing. But today, there are plenty of online passive income ideas that give you the opportunity to have money rolling in day and night.

The best part is, online residual income doesn’t cost nearly as much as, say, buying a rental property. In fact, several passive income ideas come with zero out-of-pockets costs. The only thing you’ll need is time and the desire to make something out of nothing.

Write an eBook

You don’t have to be a well-known author to write a money-making eBook. If you can put together coherent sentences free of obvious grammar or spelling mistakes, you can earn money writing an eBook.

This is a great opportunity for the passive-income beginner because, one, it is free to do and, two, you can sell your product on big-name sites like Amazon and reach a global audience of millions.

If writing an eBook sounds like a good fit for you, great! There are a number of free valuable resources to help you get started. I suggest heading over to author of the 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss’s website. He provides real world case studies illustrating how people have had great passive income success just from writing eBooks.

For a practical how-to guide on the art of actually writing your Ebook, check out How to Write an Ebook by Amy Lynn Andrews.

Sell Stock Photos

You don’t have to be a professional photographer to make money selling photos. Chances are, if you’ve got an iPhone or  Android, you have a photo or two sitting in your gallery that is worth something.

For hobbyists and amateur photographers, microstock sites offer a platform to sell the pictures you take for profit. How does it work? Plenty of businesses, companies, and bloggers use microstock sites to source images for their blogs and marketing campaigns. They pay these microstock sites for a license to use these images.

Photographers can upload their photos for free. The microstock site will take a percentage of your earnings each time your image sells.

The best part is, you can take one photo and sell it over and over again. The Penny Hoarder has a quick-start Beginner’s Guide to Selling Stock Photography. For a more comprehensive look on what it takes to earn serious money selling photos (I’m talking quit-your-day-job-type-income) stop by Everything Microstock.

Create an Udemy Course

What are you good at? Can you juggle? Do yoga? Play the piano? Math whiz?

Whatever it is you’re good at, people will pay you to learn it. Udemy is becoming a favorite go-to spot for people who want to learn a new skill quickly and at a reasonable price.

This is great for those looking for passive income ideas since Udemy creates the perfect platform for you to sell your knowledge via an online course.

Forbes wrote up an interesting article on How to Create a Money-Making Course Online. In it, you can find out how the average Udemy Instructor earns $7,000 from one course. Some instructors can create a course in a weekend while others may take a month or two. But, keep in mind, even if you make one course in your spare time every two months, that is an average of $42,000 a year in passive income — not too shabby.

The best place to start if you want to create an Udemy course is Udemy itself. They have created their own course on how to be a successful instructor. Not only is it full of information that will set you up for passive income success, it’s completely free.

Establishing passive income is the goal for many but far fewer people actually succeed in doing so. If you’re willing to put in the work, you can reap the rewards. Remember, success often won’t come overnight but if you keep at it, you can eventually establish residual revenue streams.

For additional passive income ideas check out:

How to Earn Passive Income Online Writing for Revenue Sharing Sites by Free Work at Home Guide

15 Ways to Do the Work Once and Keep Getting Paid by Real Ways to Earn Money Online

Passive Income: The Most Effective Ways To Start Generating Passive Income Online Quickly. Proven Methods. (Passive income, multiple streams of income, make money online Book 1)

The post 3 Free Passive Income Ideas appeared first on Work from Home Happiness.