The Foundation Effect (Building Businesses That Run Themselves Book 1)

Well, it turns out bookkeepers do. These are people who know the ins and outs of accounting and can help business owners track and maintain accounts, pay bills, file reports, keep track of project budgets, and monitor payroll. You can do this sort of work for entrepreneurs and small business owners from anywhere in the world.

If you can understand the ins and outs of expat bookkeeping, for example, you could be in demand. Also, keep an eye out on the various tools there are available. Being a Xero or Quickbooks superuser can give you a bit more flexibility in offering your services or even teaching a course on it. Graphic designers who can make everything from infographics to ebook covers can find tons of remote work available if you know where to look.

There are sites like 99 Designs where you can offer your services and bid on jobs, or, if you go a niche route like book cover design, get in with some of the popular Kindle groups and forums around the web. Find someone who does whitepapers, copywriters, or B2B writers. Make a deal that they will refer you to their clients if they need graphics, or team up on a package deal, for a white paper, for example.

A couple of these referral partnerships can be what you need to start getting your business off the ground. Are you good at something? A language, math, photoshop? Consider teaching that skill to others online and getting paid for it. Now, doing this sort of thing is easier than ever. While I do generally recommend setting this sort of thing up on your site, tools like Udemy make it easy to create and market your course without a lot of the back end hassle. All you need is Skype to get started.

Set up face to face calls with your students and charge them by the hour or lesson.

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There are people all over the world who are willing to pay to learn the skills that you already have; you just have to find a way to reach them. Photography is another in-demand skill. There are a couple of routes that you can go here depending on your skills and what you like to shoot. A lot of travelers will go with travel photography. Photographers get a small cut each time their photo is used.

You can also niche down too. Specific industries allow you to take images from everywhere. Agencies often look for photographers and can serve as the middleman between clients. Check out Contently as a place where photography is in demand. You can check out ours right here!

So you probably realize the potential that comes with creating a YouTube channel. Look around at all of the niches. People do product reviews, movie reviews, and unboxings. They perform their songs. Make art or informational videos. And talk about favorite tv shows. The best channels make videos that look easy, but it takes some skills to film and create good videos that keep people watching. You might even be a Patron to a couple of projects right now.

Basically, people sign up at levels that signify a specific dollar amount, you provide content, that ties into those levels. For more creative types that are in small niches, this could be a good approach to get your feet wet and test the market. But by no means does that mean your online career aspirations have to fall within one of these options.

Your best bet is going to be the business you create that combines your skill set with something you actually enjoy. Any of these ideas getting some thoughts bubbling? It just goes to show that you have the opportunity today to really work from anywhere. There are thousands of different online businesses you can create, often it just takes a little bit of creativity and the ability to stay focused long enough to get it off the ground. The ideas listed here are just a starting point. Other members of our community are killing it with app development, e-commerce, theme design and so much more.

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I chose the 10 above because I think they represent a good combination of interesting, marketable, and attainable. I think web design and web development have the potential to be two totally different things, but they dont have to be. For this site, I had one person design it, and another code it. Well in my case I do web design, but I love to help bloggers, so im thinking about creating a small design studio online. I work on Genesis so I know how to code, design, hook, copywrite and help people to become awesome online!

My ideal situation would be to find a few steady clients that need my services.

So I wouldnt totally write it off. For instance, SEO, social media, app development etc.

• Startup Marketing: Your Ultimate Strategy For Incredible Growth.
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Often those people are looking for development and design work and wont be too crowded with other people with the same background as you. Have any good info on working with Odesk and Freelancer? Like, ways to get ahead of the countless others on there? What I love about these businesses is that they all can overlap with each other. I started out messing around with blogging. As I figured out how to get more traffic that led to an understanding of SEO.

I then transitioned into SEO writing to make some extra money. This led to not only a lucrative Copywriting gig, but also a freelance SEO client. Learning one skill has direct applications to other parts of the business — and as you go on and acquire more skills, the business grows because of it. Great list here Sean: This is definitely a good resource for people who want to get started provided they follow through with the action needed to get going.

Would you say that some of these can be done together? Like say having a blog that documents learning one of these and providing the services via a different page? Absolutely they can be. I think no matter which one of these you choose, starting a blog is a good idea. It gives you a way to apply some of these skills SEO, copywriting etc , gives you the potential to build an audience and connect with new people, and can be a great source of leads for the business as well. Definitely good advice to focus on one step at a time. Thank you for your quality information. Hey Sean great info, i really liked your location rebel guides.

I am looking at working freelance and travelling however i work in financial services and much of what i do is data sensitive. How feasible is it to work from public wifi spots and still have sufficient security or should i look more towards long term leases with wifi or coworking spaces? Great post, just what I needed to read today.

David Malan also gives an amazing introduction to programming in general. That course are available here. I would also add elearning as an option in there as well. We all have a skill or talent we can share. Providing services by means of online classes and webinars are an easy to get up and running option. Sean is basically talking about exactly this in 5 Info-Product Creation. This is why Sean recommends freelancing first.

Guys like Noah Kagan and Ramit Sethi typically recommend the same thing. And maybe website admin. Will be sharing this with my peeps. I think one of the toughest things for people making the move to solopreneurship or at least starting a business on the side first , is finding the path of least resistance. Sean, I tried looking up your first post on Location , but, was unable to click on the oldest post listed. I am wondering if you would mind sharing the link to it here?

I am curious as to what your thoughts were at that time in writing that post and the direction of this blog and how it has changed course. I think it would be helpful to me. Found his first post here: In the end you give them a report on all issues found so that the people that hired you can fix their issues before they become liabilities. The learning curve is high as it could take a year or more to learn the techniques needed depending on motivation and prior knowledge of web technologies.

The time investment depends on the tester and the quality of the service they want to offer thorough manual testing, point-and-click automated scanning, etc. One huge downside is managing legal liabilities and getting the paperwork right. Interesting how the majority of these are related. Are there any of your members doing day trading? I have contact with a few traders that trade the markets location independent.

This is exactly what I needed to read. Thanks so much for the info and the honest and friendly tone! Great post as always and timely for me. That said, do you have any insight or wisdom to offer in regards to registering a freelance business as an LLC vs. Had to share it on our own site. Liked the one about blogging because of the lifestyle it allows as you are living proof of it. This is a great low down of what you can do. You have to consider your own abilities as well. For example, podcasting is never for me.

I love to watch people who are doing it successfully but I cannot imagine doing it myself. Another example is that some people are great with words and others love to speak with codes. You need to decide which one you are first. Are you good at creative work or are you good ad writing? This brings us to the next point. If you are good at one part of your business you can concentrate on that area and employ or contract others to do the other part.

For example, I know coding but terrible at designs. So, whenever I need a website I contract it out to someone who is a lot more imaginative than me. It may take a while to find your thing but it is a process you need to go through first before you fully commit to earning a living online. My question is, if I am someone who is looking to start a freelance SEO and Copywriting business, how long would you say it would take before seeing a good income from this?

I have always felt my writing skills were above average History and Literature major , and since joining The Foundation my knowledge of internet marketing, copywriting, and SEO have sky rocketed. Just curious on your thoughts on how long this might take to get up and running? It totally depends on how much time you have to devote to it. Great list complete with great resources.

Working on this part of the online market can really introduce you to a lot of the possibilities out there. You can do a lot more than just SEO, but it s a good starting point! Thanks for this great list. A lot of options to create and make money off of those creations.

I think the main key is choosing one to start and sticking with it. Patience is always key. Your rating system is genius- it gives you a quick insight.

I can tell I will be referring back to this post. Keep up the great work! All I had to do was befriend people within the travel space over the course of 2 years, offering to help them in any way I could. I am investigating extra business activities right now, and the other 9 you list Sean offer a starting point … thanks man! All of this sounds really awesome! I need your help. If you want to own the majority market share, your initial launch strategy and messaging must appeal to innovators and early adopters.

The laggards will follow. The gist of the book is that, if you want to inspire someone to take action, you must begin by explaining why you do what you do. Not what or how.

Apple challenges the status quo with everything they do — MacBooks, iTunes and iPads are just how they do that. While Apple talk about pushing humanity forward and challenging the status quo, Dell talk about the size of their processors and RAM. Is it any wonder why people queue for hours to get the latest product, while Dell receive nowhere near the level of advocacy, despite their products being very similar. Does your messaging communicate why your startup exists? Do you know your why? If not, this is an important step that I would not advise skipping over.

Various studies predict we see between 1, — 5, advertisements per day depending on where we live. How do you compete and stand out with your marketing in such a saturated space? Our brain categorises similar pieces of information together, a process known as Gestalt. Because of this, the more of a similar thing we see, the less impact each additional thing has. When Lady Gaga wore a dress made of meat it made headlines all over the World.

When others copied her quirkiness, hardly anyone talked. This pattern has repeated itself millions of times over.

This is not about first-mover advantage; this is about observing what everyone else is, and being the opposite. I believe that marketing should focus on positive ROI return on investment. Another reason for using paid media is to establish a cost-per-acquisition, as this will act as a benchmark to compare all other marketing activity. Paid media channels fall into three broad categories: Similarly to above, Google enable you to purchase banner adverts through their display network. You can specify which websites your banner ad appears on, or bid to appear on websites related to certain keywords.

Reddit is often overlooked as a paid marketing channel. Reddit advertising works by running ads at the top of any subreddit of your choice. Each subreddit has a very distinct community, so it pays to get involved in each one for a bit of time first before running ads. Google Remarketing goes one step beyond the standard display advertising mentioned above. Essentially, when someone visits your website a cookie is dropped on their computer. When they visit other websites, an ad will appear encouraging them to come back to your website.

You can get very smart with this by running different remarketing ads for different stages of your signup funnel. The trick is to get the frequency right and not be overly annoying! In other words, someone visits your website and bounces. While the quality of visitors from StumbleUpon is generally quite low, the cost per click is exceptionally low also, enabling you to buy a large amount of traffic for a low cost.

StumbleUpon is very visual social network where inspirational and stimulating content seems to spread virally. If you a SAAS company promoting an app, it may be a little bit trickier. If you do have this sort of budget to invest, then Twitter Ads do tend to be pretty effective when done right.

My advice would be to promote an amazing piece of content rather than directly promoting your services. View Twitter as a 1: There are a number of content discovery platforms that promote your content alongside articles on major news sites such as the New York Times and The Guardian. While my personal experiences with LinkedIn advertising has not been particularly positive, I know of a few startups particularly in the financial services industry that have achieved great results by running targeted ads to people by their job title and sector.

In my opinion, the problem with LinkedIn Ads is banner blindness. If your startup has produced a compelling promo video, pre-roll advertising could be a powerful paid marketing channel for you. Using TubeMogul , you can pay for your video to appear as an advert before video content on major video networks, such as 4od, and YouTube. The trick, then, is to go down one of two routes. The first route is to get the message out about your service within the first five seconds of the video hoping that people skip so that you can expose your message to a huge number of people without paying too much.

The second option is to make the first five seconds ambiguous and weird enough to intrigue people to watch the rest of the video. If your startup benefits from offering a high margin product and has a good conversion rate, then you may benefit from offering an affiliate programme through a network such as Affiliate Window or ClickBank.

Consider it more of an accelerant rather than a base fuel for your online marketing strategy. Earned media can be thought of as any form of publicity generated by your advocates customers, fans, partners. In my opinion, earned media is the most valuable, cost-effective, credible, and sustainable form of online marketing. The secret sauce of the PR industry is that remarkable things get remarked upon. If you want to earn word of mouth and have the press, your customers, and whoever else talking about your startup, you must give them something remarkable. Perhaps your startup is remarkable in itself?

I struggle to go a week without mentioning Moz. Meeting anyone starts with being in the same space as them, either geographically or virtually. The hardest part in meeting the people you need to meet is booking the ticket and showing up. Over million people search in Google every day. Regardless of what some startup celebrities may proclaim, SEO is not something you should ignore.

However, I will impart a few pieces of advice from my experience working at an SEO agency for several years, and overseeing hundreds of campaigns. Owned media relates to any marketing channel owned by your startup. In the online world, this refers to any websites and social media profiles that you operate. Imagine you created a great story on how your startup just broke a World Record.

If you have a blog with a steady audience of 5, visitors per day, you can post your story to that audience, and rest assured that at the very least, 35, people will have been exposed to the story by next week. Building a blog that converts is hard. Most companies fail because they blog about what they want their customers to read, rather than writing about what their customers want to read.

There are a small number of companies who understand this. Buffer, for example, are a company that offer social media automation software. Instead of going on about their services, their blog contains insights on everything from happiness to writing tips. They write what their customers want to read. My advice when building a blog is this: From there, the results will compound. Five years ago, email marketing was about building your mailing list and sending newsletters or autoresponder campaigns out.

Those days are long gone.