How to Properly Invest in Your Online Business

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase.

The big question is, how badly do you want to succeed in your online business? Seriously, just take a second and think about it.

Tough question I believe, but very important.

Here are some guiding questions:

What is your vision for the next year?
Would you like to stay “employed online” working for people or would you like to establish systems that will make you the “employer”?
Do you want to always earn by actively servicing orders or do you want to start making some passive income?
How much do you want to earn in the next 6 months?

Why am I asking this? Well, this article is not for everybody. If you do not want to grow your business to a level where you are earning decent, residual income and hiring others instead of being hired, then there is no need to read this.

Now that I’ve established that you who is reading on is serious about your online business, let’s go on 🙂

In my previous post, I wrote about free methods of investing in yourself. In this one, we’ll talk about the paid methods. The good thing is that these will take you far if you do them well.

What is Investing in online business?

Simply put, investing is putting your money somewhere with the expectation that it will come back with a profit. So, what is investing in online business? How do you do it? What are the best products to invest in? It follows that investing in online business is putting some money on an online product, service or training with the aim of making a profit.

Brief Background

I do not want to go far before giving out a brief background of myself and my online business.

I started like anyone else: broke, clueless and afraid of scams. The fact that I was broke meant that I could not afford that course, service or training that different blogs and “gurus” would want me to do. I therefore opted for the vast free information that I could find on the web.

This worked for a while and I grew my online business to the tune of earning more than 100k per month.

But, I hadn’t learnt about the precautions to take and I ended up losing over 300k at once (story for another blog post).

I then decided to start things right. I looked for the best writing sites, started earning again and decided to spend a little cash every few months to buy a training course on something I would want to do.

I can say that I still earn a decent income with much less effort than those days (slightly less than 100k per month but I’m getting there). Best of all, I know all the loopholes thus can’t be conned again that badly.

At the time of writing this, I work 4 hours a day and am able to pay my bills purely from online income.

How do you invest in online business?

There are different ways that you can invest in online business for a profit. I outline some of them below:

1. Invest in Equipment

My first computer was a snail. It would take around 10 minutes just to start. Each function would have its fair share of time taken. Even typing itself to write a blog post like this would take ages.

I realized I was losing lots of cash just due to the slow speed.

I therefore decided to invest in equipment.

But, I was broke, clueless and afraid of scams, right?

Yes, I was broke and couldn’t afford that HP Pavillion/Dual Core/ Windows 7/320GB laptop I wanted and that I’m now using.

I therefore decided to rent a good laptop. I simply did a status update on Facebook saying that I am looking for a good laptop with great features and I would pay 6k per month for it.

Apparently, there were many people on Facebook who were busy from morning to late in the evening and were not using their laptops. I got 3 offers of superfast computers with brilliant features and chose the best.

I managed to increase my income by more than 50% just by renting an incredibly efficient computer.

Are you a writer, graphic designer, web designer? Take your time and invest in good equipment and you’ll be shocked at the percentage profits you’ll start making.

I consider myself blessed since eventually a friend gave me a laptop as a birthday gift! But, at the end of the day, my investment in equipment had already worked wonders.

In my old computer, I’d take two hours to write a 500 word article and earn between $1 and $3 since I was starting out. I now take one hour to write a 500 word article and earn between $5 and $12.

Recommendation: Buy or rent a good computer – at least a Dual Core machine with 2 GB RAM.

2. Invest in Knowledge

“Hey Walter, there is a freelancing site known as Freelancer.com”

That’s all a friend told me to get me to start earning online. I had no clue about what Freelancer was, what bidding was or how one could be conned online.

You can clearly see the results above – I was conned off more than 300k and had to restart my business from scratch.

The first training course I bought was AffiloBlueprint by the Affilorama group. Even this blog runs on AffiloTheme which was a bonus of this great course. A few weeks after finishing the course, I got my first $900 in one week, practicing what the course taught.

Let me add a note here that I don’t earn $900 every week, just that first week but I earn $300 and above every month from affiliate marketing. Remember that’s real passive income. Most of my income still comes from active freelancing – writing articles for clients.

AffiloBlueprint is what I consider the World’s Best Affiliate Marketing training. Even if you now search Google for “affiliate marketing training” I believe Affilorama will be the first result! Try it, I’ll wait.

Here is a review I did on Affilorama.

Some paid online courses that I’ve done or am doing so far include:

AffiloBlueprint by Mark Ling of Affilorama – This is a thorough affiliate marketing training which goes from the basics to the advanced modes of affiliate marketing. It goes for $197 but it’s all worth it J
Blog Post Promotion by Kristi Hines (no longer available) – This is an explosive course that helps you to know how to get immense, lazer-targeted traffic to your blog posts. Sadly, this course is no longer available.
Serious Bloggers Only by Jon Morrow – I did this in July 2017 for just one month (it’s an ongoing membership). This gave me excellent results and totally changed the way I view internet marketing. Jon Morrow is amazing.

For those who don’t know, I also offer an article writing training that is very affordable.

There is also another I bought called 7 Days to Best Seller on Amazon but I never really got to finish that. Yes, there are so many online courses that sometimes you may be tempted to buy and not actually do them. Be very careful with this when thinking of doing online courses.

In fact, only buy something that is in line with what you want to achieve.

Recommendation: Choose one of the courses above or look for a good course that will suit you, one with good reviews and one that will help you earn more money in a smarter way.

3. Invest in Services

There are different services that are essential for anyone working online. The main reason for investing in online services is to ensure you get things done faster, therefore earn more money quicker. Some services that I would recommend include:

Facebook ads: I choose Facebook ads because they are cheaper than Google ads and can give faster results. It is also quite easy to target your ad to your specific audience based on age, interests etc.
Web hosting: If you’re planning to start a blog like this one, then it is always wise to host it on your own instead of depending on free blogging services. It is proven that self-hosted sites sell more and earn more money, apart from very few exceptions. If you chose to self-host your blog, I would recommend HostGator which is what I use to host this blog. Note that if you use my HostGator link I will get a commission, but in return, I will install your blog for free! I will also move your blog from WordPress.com to your self-hosted site for free!
Email marketing: I’ll be writing more about email marketing in future but it is the best thing that’s happened to me. With a good email marketing strategy, you can increase your sales by up to 200%. I personally use AWeber for my email marketing. It is said that email marketing brings in $29 for every $1 invested. Try AWeber here for free.
Freelancing services: Sometimes, hiring a freelancer will help you increase your sales, especially when you have excess work. Yes, you can also be a client/requester/buyer of freelancing services. Hire someone from a freelancing website to do some work for you. I personally hired someone from Fiverr to do my eBook cover and guess what, just by doing a different eBook cover, I was able to increase my eBook sales by more than 500%. I also always hire different people for article writing now and then either through iWriter or just my mailing list.

Recommendation: Pick one of the above services and invest in it. You can buy me a cup of coffee once your online dollars start trickling in.

4. Invest in a system

For you to make it big online, you may want to create a system that works for you. Think of services like ePay-Kenya and PesaPal which run purely online and make millions from their investments.

There are always new ideas of what you can do. Other inspirational sites you can check out include as KickStarter, Eventbrite, Rupu e.t.c. which just realized that there are different needs in the society and did whatever they could to bridge the gap.

Systems will help you make millions. I am personally hoping to create a system in future!

Recommendation: Look for a need in your industry and aim to invest in a system at some point.

5. Invest in your future

What are your future plans? Do you have a family? Do you have an education policy? A life cover, perhaps?

According to a short survey I did, many freelancers get their dollars and spend them all.

Many are in debt. In fact, high chances are that you are one of those in debt. I have my debts too so don’t worry, but make a decision to change things from today.

It’s not like in an employment setting where you’ll forcefully pay NHIF, NSSF, loan repayment, SACCO payments and anything else you’d want checked off. Here, you manage the cash on your own.

I personally have a great financial advisor, Lisa Muthoni. In case you want a free consultation from her, fill in this form and she’ll get back to you if you meet her criteria.

Some of the savings and investments you can make include:

Chama – You can link up with some friends and start a chama, this helps you save up money for future goals.
SACCO – SACCOs are great for saving and taking up loans later at interest rates that are lower than those from banks.
Insurance – Talk to Lisa Muthoni (she is an accredited insurance consultant) for a good insurance package. Some insurances you can take include life covers, investment packages, education covers for your kids, pensions and medical covers for you and your family. Lisa’s number is 0722869586. You can text her for quick feedback.
Fixed deposit account – You can choose to have a fixed deposit account where you just save money but don’t withdraw for a period.
Emergency account – Have an emergency account where you save up money in case of emergencies

Recommendation: Strive to have all the above investment plans and more. Talk to Lisa Muthoni for assistance.

Yes, instead of just helping you to make money online, I’m also helping you to save and invest money online!

Do you invest in your online business? Are you just an onlooker? Are you stuck at offering services for a fee? How do you spend the cash you earn? Let’s talk in the comments section. I urge you to share this post on all the social networks you know. You never know, you could be getting people out of poverty and desperation.