I Solved Online Business (So You Don’t Have To)
The framework that changed everything for me
Congratulations on deciding to read this because this post is going to change the way you approach online business completely.
Today, I am not telling you a system or a process that will instantly make you rich but I promise you what I am about to break down in this post will make your mind so clear that you will be delighted and filled with a newborn energy.
This took me years to understand and realize as an entrepreneur, and I will give it all away today for FREE.
Block all the distractions, take a deep breath, and pay very close attention to everything that I am about to tell you.
What skills to learn?
What niche to choose?
What services to provide?
How to get high-paying clients?
Today I will answer all these questions on a fundamental level directly or indirectly so you don’t need to beg for answers from every other freelancer you find on the internet.
So now that you are ready, shall we begin?
Let’s go!
THE FUNDAMENTALS
You see, on a fundamental level - Every person on this planet wants to thrive and survive.
Now if you are helping a person/business survive you are working with broke people in that case you will barely survive yourself!
So what do you do?
You help people thrive!
How can you help people thrive?
Make them more money
Help them build leverage (social media following) - indirect money
Save their time
Help them improve their relationships with themselves and others
Help them improve their health - mental or physical
This is a broad spectrum of how you can help someone and how you can thrive as a result of it.
Once you are clear about this - the next step is learning skills.
“Learning skills is the getaway to a better life”
Without skills, no human can thrive!
The world doesn’t reward incompetent scrolling junkies!
So you will have to learn skills.
50% of people can’t even decide what skill to learn, they spend years of their lives deciding what is the right skill - you might be one of those
On a philosophical level - people will tell you all the B.S:
Learn a skill that makes you happy
Learn a skill that makes you curious
All of this is right but I say:
Learn a skill that helps you thrive
Learn a skill that helps you make money
“Passion doesn’t pay bills, ________ does”
If you know me, you will be able to fill in the blank above on your own haha!
So let’s talk about skills and solve your skill issue for once and all.
THE SKILL ISSUE
What skill to learn?
It’s fine if you are confused because there are just too many people trying to sell you on too many skills and it is natural to get confused.
Let’s rank all the non-tech online skills and understand what skills should you learn!
Why non-tech?
Because I don’t know shit about tech.
But before that - Let’s get on the same page
Any skill that you learn today should help someone grow their business on the Internet/social media in one form or another - It doesn’t matter if you are working in a company as an employee or working as a freelancer.
I will try to cover all the skills I can but if I miss some feel free to tag them with the categories mentioned below:
Core skills
Growth skills
Money skills
See the image above!
You will notice that the core skills are very far from the internet and the point is that the transactions happen on the internet, on social media.
Your core skills will help you and others float around on the internet but won’t get anyone direct results.
And if you want to make a lot of money online or anywhere in life, you need to be closer to where the transactions happen - that’s where the real money is to be made.
At the start you will learn core skills and help others save their time which is great - that’s how I started as well but always aim to move towards money skills because that’s where you will make more money.
Imagine if you can make me $100k/month with your skills - will I give you 10% of it?
100% I will - that means we both make a lot of money.
Can you make $10k by just editing videos for me - HELL NO!
And once you get good at money skills and you have helped others make money - you should aim for autonomy!
Autonomy is where you own your product, you own the distribution so you are closest to transactions. That’s how you make the most money!
But if you are just starting - just help others sell their product directly or indirectly!
Let’s categorize all the skills you see on the Internet in these segments:
1. The core skills
These skills mostly save people time and hence should only be provided to rich people.
WHY?
Because rich people value their time more than poor so they will pay you a lot more money for doing the same thing (More on this later)
Here are all the core skills you can learn
Video Editing
Design
Content writing (one of the best core skills you can learn)
Copywriting
web design
landing page design
social media management
AI prompting
Feel free to add more here
You must learn some of these skills if you are broke and have no skills in your arsenal!
Without this, you would just try to find shortcuts and you will fall flat on your face - The world will slap you!
Don’t be an a**hole - just get better at something before you think about making money.
2. The growth skills
Growth skills are the skills that help businesses grow directly on the Internet.
These skills are important skills to learn alongside your core skills.
Without core skills, your growth skills are mostly “A mirage”
So what are some of the growth skills you can learn?
Organic social media growth (Pick any platform)
Paid growth (Advertising)
Personal branding
SEO
Data analysis
CTR optimization
Landing page optimization
Marketing
Understanding Human Psychology
These skills mostly help people/businesses grow on the Internet - get them more eyeballs directly!
Imagine if you can promise me 100k subscribers on YouTube in the next 6 months - will I pay you a lot of money - HELL YES!
Can you ask for the same money if you are selling me video editing for my YouTube - HELL NO!
Here you are playing the game of views and attention.
Attention is the new currency and the business that has more attention eventually wins.
These skills allow you to help others get more attention which eventually makes them more money.
Highly valuable!
3. The Money Skills
These skills allow you to help others directly sell more of their products and make more money.
If they make more money - you make more money.
Once you master these skills - there is no upper limit on how much money you can make from one client!
You can remove the ceilings here.
Here are some of the money skills:
Lead generation
Facebook Ads
Google Ads
YouTube Ads
Funnel Design
Email marketing
Sales
Closing
Cold outreach
You will realize without some of these skills you won’t get clients for your business but if you know some of these skills you will never run out of clients and you can use the same skills to get clients and customers to your clients - If you decide to offer that service.
Now you know what skills you need to learn and the potency of every skill you see on the Internet.
Once you understand this - Your search for what skill to learn will end and you will be able to pick the skills on your own.
Don’t get confused!
You can still make a lot of money by just selling your core skills if you are selling them in the right market!
So what market you should choose?
That’s what I am going to be solving for you next.
Now we are going in advance stuff!
MARKET PSYCHOGRAPHICS
The type of people you work with will determine how much money you make as a freelancer!
I know people who have marketing agencies with 50 clients and their package is 50,000/per month
That’s an absolute nightmare to scale a service business this way.
You want to work with the right people!
Who are the right people?
Let me define it for you!
1. The Internet beginners
This is a very exciting market psychographic!
Why?
Because you will find two types of people here:
Brokies who never created content ever before on the Internet
Rich moguls who have multi-million dollar businesses, who now understand the importance of gathering attention on social media/ want to start an internet-first business
Forget about the brokies - Focus on the second segment here
These people have money and they will pay you 10X the money than others for you saving their time.
So, if you just have core skills you need to work with these people because they value time and they have money.
They will pay a lot of money to save time!
These are Founder, Entrepreneurs, established business owners etc
Try to get good at speaking, presenting value, finding these people, and reaching out to them.
Build a relationship with them and save their time.
This is a great market segment to offer your services - especially now when everyone wants to build on social media and get organic attention.
This is a hot booming market right now.
At my company, we serve this market a lot with our Personal branding services and make a lot of money.
Less risk - more reward market.
This market segment is patient and will value your creativity.
They are not always running behind results and have money to invest!
2. The Strugglers
These are the people who have already tried to grow their business on the Internet but have failed multiple times.
This is a gray area!
Be aware of this segment of the market.
This is not a great market to be in because of the impatient state of mind.
They will buy fast because their problems are painful but they will expect you to bring them results as soon as they hire you!
They will expect instant results and will always be on top of your head - consuming all your creative energy!
Exceptions always exist but I will not bet on this market and will suggest you do the same.
3. The satisfied elites
These are big companies, businesses, and creators who already built their reputation in the market and either they don’t know how to monetize or don’t directly care about monetizing.
In both scenarios, there is a lot of money-making potential in this segment of the market.
Examples of ones that don’t care about monetization but want to multiply attention
Big Saas companies - Shopify, HubSpot, Canva, etc - They are already profitable, have big teams, and have big marketing budgets to experiment and get more awareness on their businesses
Big Podcasters/celebrities - They are very big on social media and already making good money but would love to diversify on other platforms or double down the attention on the same platform, because - STATUS!
Examples of ones that don’t have knowledge and opportunity of monetization
Professionals - Dermats, nutritionists, doctors, psychiatrists, coaches. A lot of them have millions of subscribers on some of the social media platforms and starting a community or a course can instantly help them make thousands of dollars a month but they never explored it.
If you can present an opportunity in front of them, you can help them make a lot of money and you can make a lot of money as a result of it as well!
4. The Thriving creators
This is the best market to crack!
A lot of potential when presented with an improvement opportunity properly.
A lot of money to be made on alternate platforms through diversification and launching new products
Tough to crack as they have a certain system/platform already decently working for them
Their problems are not painful but they have resources, money, and a calm state of mind.
I hope you understood the concept of market psychographics and by now you already know which market segment will be the best for you.
SUMMARY
Overall, I would say be very precise about who you work with depending upon the skillset you have.
Work with rich
Aim at moving closer to transactions with your skills
Try to remove the ceiling from what you make from 1 client
Start by saving time/ getting attention for rich people/companies and push towards making more money for people/companies who already have attention.
That’s all for this one
I hope it helped you!
If it did - Keep reading…
You read, I write. If this helped, buy me a coffee. It keeps the ideas brewing. ☕❤️
Thanks in advance!
Z.
Extremely well detailed post... thank you so much!
One of the best article on business I've ever read. Thank you so much for your priceless piece, Zohvib.