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Updated: October 3, 2023

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Start a Bridge Business

Here’s something that took me years to figure out. If I had known this earlier, I would have saved a ton of time and earned way more money in my early years of working online.

👉  It’s generally a BAD idea for your first online business to be something like affiliate marketing, ecommerce, or SaaS.

Those types of businesses are pretty complex and usually take months or years of effort before they become profitable.

(For example, it took me 20 months working full-time on my affiliate marketing business before I had my first $10,000 month. And that was with 8 years of prior experience working online.)

A better way to start earning online is with a bridge business: something that gives you a decent income relatively quick, while also letting you develop skills and know-how that you can leverage later.

Say you want to get into ecommerce. It’s tempting to spend a few thousand dollars on a fancy Amazon FBA course and believe you’ll be earning $20k/month by November.

But that almost never happens 😭

More likely, you end up spending $10k on the course + inventory + ads… and a year later you’ve barely earned anything back.

If you really want to get into ecommerce, a better way to do it is via a bridge business.

That’s where you try find freelance work or a remote job helping out an established ecommerce business. Maybe you learn some copywriting and offer to beef up their ad copy. Way easier and faster to earn a living that way than trying to build an entire ecommerce business from scratch.

Working with an established business also gives you valuable insight. You get a good sense of what skills and resources you’ll need to build something similar. You gain an appreciation for how much time and effort goes into it, and what the day-to-day of a successful business looks like.

And you can develop valuable contacts and maybe even find a mentor or two.

Check out this article for a breakdown of the different types of online business, and how they compare to each other. Understanding that framework will save you a lot of time, money, and frustration 😎

About The Author
Niall Doherty – Founder and Lead Editor of eBiz Facts Born and raised in Ireland, Niall has been making a living from his laptop since quitting his office job in 2010. He's fond of basketball, once spent 44 months traveling around the world without flying, and has been featured in such publications as The Irish Times and Huffington Post. Read more...

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