Sarah St John is an entrepreneur, podcaster and author. She’s created several startups over the course of her entrepreneurial career, and through her books, blog, and podcast, shows people how to launch and manage an online business on a budget. On this episode of CFO at Home, Sarah and Vince discuss the advantages of choosing an on-line business, particularly when you’re sharing your financial life with a partner, different on-line business models, ways that podcasting can fit into your business strategy, and more.
- Key Takeaways
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- An on-line business is a great way for the more entrepreneurial partner in a relationship to start and refine their business ideas at a relatively low cost, which is less likely to create household tension
- Create a separate budget for your on-line business to maintain discipline and keep expenses under control
- On-line business models:
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- Physical products
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- Drop Shipping -
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- You are the middleman between the wholesaler and customer
- Customer purchases from you, then you purchase from the wholesaler, so you don’t have to maintain inventory
- Best suited for niche businesses
- Products are often coming from international locations (China) so fulfillment can commonly take weeks
- Print on-Demand
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- Similar to drop-shipping in the sense that you don’t have to maintain inventory
- Fulfillment by Amazon
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- Provides Amazon’s scope and reach
- Saves you the cost and time of advertising
- There’s typically lots of competition on the platform with similar products
- Services
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- Setting up a website at this stage is simple, effective ways to drive traffic to your site is of prime importance
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- Social media (based on your niche), FaceBook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn
- Google Ads
- Once you drive traffic to your site you need an effective Lead Magnet to build your email list
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- Free PDF, e-book, etc
- Lead magnets can be created for free using services like Canva or Beacon.by
- Podcasting is a great tool for driving traffic to your product or service.
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- The “Podcast as a business model” through advertising typically requires tens of thousands of downloads to generate any significant income, figures that are only reached by a very select % of podcasts
- Affiliate marketing is a type of monetization that’s open to the average podcaster. You recommend the product or services of another company
- and get a percentage of any sales.
