If you’ve ever wanted to work at home or, better yet, travel the world and make money as a digital nomad, then you might want to think about becoming an entrepreneur of your own lifestyle. All you need to get started is a love of writing and some knowledge or passion surrounding different lifestyle topics.
Not everyone can become a successful entrepreneur and earn a sustainable online income. There’s certainly a winning formula involved in getting your message in front of the right audience. You also don’t want to create a business that requires you to work 12 hours a day. That would be much of a “lifestyle,” would it?
But, the truth is that there are plenty of opportunities in this area if you approach it correctly. Here is how lucrative this business can be if you do it right and how you can maintain a work-life balance as an entrepreneur of your own lifestyle.
Surely you’ve heard the term “influencer” in the past several years. These are people online that have enough of a following to “drive” traffic to different brands. It’s a lot of work to become an influencer in any business, but the rewards can be fantastic.
According to Mediakix, influencer marketing is a $5-$10 billion industry. And 65% of brands plan to continue increasing their budgets for this type of online advertising.
You don’t need to be Jay Z or Taylor Swift to be an influencer. In fact, consumers will place more trust in people that they see as their peers. As you get a bigger following and more engagement, you’ll have the opportunity to get paid for things like interviews, product mentions, and freebies.
You can start making money right away as an entrepreneur with Google Ads and affiliate referrals. But setting new business and maintaining it can take a lot of your time. How you can manage these aspects of being an entrepreneur and still hold onto a regular life and some of your sanity?
Now that you know the potential, how do you get started and keep your own lifestyle balanced? Believe it or not, it’s surprisingly simple. Here are a few fundamental tips you can follow:
1. Pinpoint Your Passions
The first thing you should do is decide on your focus. You can create a general lifestyle blog or website, but ones that zero in on a particular niche tend to do much better. If you aren’t sure where to begin, think about what areas you are most passionate about. Some examples include:
- Travel
- Parenting
- Bargains
- Interior design
- Food
- Fashion
- Home
- Makeup
You can even combine some of these to come up with some unique ideas. For example, “Traveling with Kids,” “Food and Travel,” or “Interior Design Bargains.”
The important thing about focusing on your passions is that your business will seem much less like “work” than if you just choose some random topic because you think it might get clicks. If you love what you do, you’ll likely be more successful.
2. Research Your Ideas
Once you’ve identified a few of your passions, make sure you can earn some money from them. Will there be enough people with similar interests to generate traffic? Are there products or services that you can promote? If you can answer yes to both, you have a potential winner.
The truth is that most lifestyle niches will get some traction unless they are incredibly narrow. According to HostScore Web Hosting statistics, there are more than 1.7 billion websites online but fewer than 200 million of those are active. The active ones are your competitors, and some niches are easier to competing in than others.
How do you figure this out? You can start with some free keyword research tools and go from there.
3. Create a Schedule that Works for You
One of the biggest challenges of being an entrepreneur is working so much that you neglect other areas of your life. This would be ironic if you were giving tips and advice about living a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle online but failing to do the same.
To avoid this potential trap, set up a schedule for your work and stick with it. Maybe you’ll work 4-5 days per week and take weekends off or dedicated just a few hours a day, every day, to your business.
4. Know Your Worth
When you’re first starting out, you might need to do a few free posts released or other favors, but don’t allow anyone to take advantage of you for the sake of perceived “success.” If you undervalue your work, you’ll continue to attract low-paying opportunities.
Instead of a massive quantity of busywork that isn’t going to pay you much, focus on quality. Be ready to say “no” when someone asks you to sacrifice your time for something that isn’t going to benefit your business or, worse, will cut into your personal time.
5. Automate, Systematize, & Outsource
Finally, to increase your productivity as an entrepreneur, you’ll want to automate and move as much of your work off of your plate as possible. This is your business, so you are still in control, but it shouldn’t tie you to a keyboard more than a few hours a day.
Remember the Pareto Principle?
See which areas of your business you can automate with online scheduling tools. You can also hire a digital assistant to curate ideas, source images, handle PR, and help with social media marketing.
Conclusions
When done right, a business of your own lifestyle can launch you into a new and fulfilling career. More than the monetary rewards, you’ll also make connections with others online and people that share your passion.
Image by StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay