How To Make Your First Dollar Online FAST [Ultimate Guide]

You've probably been on the internet and heard or even seen many success stories.

People going from $0 to $100,000 in a year.

Some even going from $0 to $1,000,000 in 8 months.

And so on.

Although this can be motivating most times, it also sparks up some negativity.

We tend to instantly compare ourselves to successful people.

I would see many people - in their teens, 20s or even 30s living the life I perceive to be perfect.

This puts me in a place of inferiority where I question my ability to achieve my goals.

It makes me think why I haven't been able to achieve the same or similar levels of success.

What we tend to forget is that as humans, we're a lot different to each other than we really think.

We have different beliefs, experiences, tolerances and this intrinsically means that we're going to see different results at different times.

Watching so many videos and hearing lots of stories will lead to what we call 'shiny object syndrome.'

The "situation where people focus all attention on something that is current and trendy, yet drop it as soon as something new takes its place."

This means that we might see one person making $80,000 per month from running their e-commerce business.

This will make us feel the need to do what they're doing because we see others being successful in that field.

On the other hand, we may also see another person making $150,000 per month from their marketing agency.

Once we see this, we make the decision to give the marketing agency business model a try because we see that there are successful people in that field too.

What we fail to understand and balance is the fact that in whatever industry or niche we look at, there will always be someone successful.

If we look at healthcare, there are successful businesses.

Technology - there are successful businesses.

Consulting - there are successful businesses.

Entertainment and media - there are lots of successful businesses.

Even in agriculture, farming, food (industries that aren't very popular amongst new entrepreneurs today) you'll find many successful businesses.

You may or may not have heard of 'Misfits Market,' founded by Abhi Ramesh.

This is a business which sells ugly organic leftover produce to people who prefer to go cheaper.

They collect ugly fruits and vegetables from farms and resell them to people willing to buy them.

The business was started in 2018 and saw explosive growth within its first 2-3 years.

After finding this out, I even had the thought of going out and starting my own business like this too.

It's very easy to jump from business to business and then blame the business for your failure.

We never slow down to acknowledge the real problem - ourselves.

If you're anything like me, you're probably jumping from business to business looking for the fastest way to reach your goals.

So if you're yet to make your first dollar online, this is the perfect article for you.

This is how you can make your first dollar online - Quickly

Stick to one thing until it works

When I started my first e-commerce business, it was because I jumped on a trend that I thought could make me wealthy in the shortest amount of time possible.

All I had to do was find a product, find a supplier, make a site and advertise the product by driving traffic to the site.

It sounded incredibly simple and derailed all the misconceptions I had about business before I started out.

What I failed to process was that 'dropshipping' is only one way to get into e-commerce and frankly not the most effective.

So I quit.

If I hadn't given up so early and actually invested in the business, I probably would have been able to grow a sustainable e-commerce business.

Ever since the e-commerce store, I have been jumping from business to business and guess what...

I haven't been able to see much success with anything.

Then someone I had the opportunity of talking to showed me this diagram below

I had to recreate it on Canva because I couldn't find it anywhere else:

What this essentially shows us is our energy.

Once we exert our energy in many different directions - meaning we are focusing on more than one thing at a time - we will not see amazing results.

This is also known as spreading yourself too thin.

As you could see on the diagram, our energy is being exerted in 10 different directions and so the results achieved are all mediocre at best.

On the other hand, when we look at this diagram below:

We can see that when we focus all our time and energy on one particular thing, in one direction, we see amazing results.

This is what we should be focusing on - especially when we're just starting out.

You've probably heard of the term cereal (serial) entrepreneur.

This is an entrepreneur who undertakes multiple ventures simultaneously.

Being a serial entrepreneur is something that we want to avoid in the near future, especially if you're just starting out.

You won't have the time, knowledge or resources to deploy into multiple things at the same given time.

This is why you want to just stick to one thing and see it through to the end.

If it works, keep doing it, if it doesn't work - it's up to you to know when to move onto the next thing.

Start small - not glamorous

As entrepreneurs, we tend to see a lot of cool businesses out there.

There is so much to do in the world today that it's a lot harder to actually get started than you may think.

Although we have all these choices, it's hard to pinpoint one thing and stick to it.

We're going to constantly be bombarded by posts on social media telling us about a new business and how X made $Y in Z months with that business.

Most of us don't have the financial backing from venture capitals or parents who fund our projects so we have to be resourceful and smart.

We may see a lot of businesses making millions in the fintech industry.

New banking software arising and we just want to get in on the fun.

What we don't see is the effort and capital that went into these businesses, the funding needed to grow them, and the insane budget deployed into their marketing.

This is why we as little fish in a massive see have to start small.

The first real money I ever made online was by selling stuff on eBay.

This, combined with my hours invested working at Amazon, was the reason I managed to save up over $12,000 in 3 to 4 months.

During my work at Amazon, we had a family friend who owned a small gadgets store.

He would come over every week with a batch of products for me to sell on eBay.

We had negotiated a deal where I keep 20% of the profits whilst he take the rest along with the costs for delivery and fees for eBay.

After a month or so, we managed to push that 20% up to 30%.

I was making thousands on eBay whilst also working full-time at Amazon.

The way Amazon worked was that if you worked over 40 hours, you get paid 50% more, and then anything over the 50-hour mark was 100% more.

In the early days, I would work over 50 hours whilst making a few thousand from eBay too.

It felt like I was on top of the world and everything was working out.

Shortly after - it all went downhill.

I got fired, products stopped coming in and I explained this in my YouTube video here.

"You got to move with the cheese" - Dr Spencer Johnson from 'Who Moved My Cheese.'

The point is, you need to find something simple and not very glamorous like starting your own online banking software.

Business is like a snowball, the longer you keep at it, the bigger and bigger it compounds.

You can't expect to compete or even start a business like these fintech companies without any prior experience, knowledge, or funding.

You just need to first believe that making money online is possible - then you can compound it.

Follow a framework

There are many businesses where competition does not particularly matter.

In fact, that holds true for a lot of industries as I've mentioned previously in another article.

Depending on what business you decide to go into, there may usually be a simple framework for you to follow.

When I started my marketing agency, there was a very simple process to follow which pretty much guaranteed success if you just stick to it.

All you had to do was:

1. Learn about the business model
2. Find a service delivery contractor
3. Set up your site and social media
4. Start consistently outreaching in order to get clients 

If I would have kept at this framework for a few months longer, I could have definitely seen success but I wasn't patient enough.

My advice to you would be to find and replicate these businesses which follow a similar structure and grow it.

These are usually the easiest foot in the door for anyone looking to play business.

If marketing doesn't align with your personality, you can do something else.

Depending on your style and personality, there are a lot of things that could be a great fit.

If you're not much of a salesperson, you could always go the non-salesy route which most likely may take a lot longer.

Russell Brunson, in his book 'Dotcom Secrets', mentioned how following frameworks to a T is exactly how he started on his journey to success.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel, you just find something that you can start and follow the playbook.

Of course, like I've discussed before, you don't want to feel like you're living someone else's life.

You want to follow everything to the point where you can adjust and iterate it to fit your style and personality.

Show it off!

This last piece of advice may scare a lot of you.

It still somewhat scares me today.

When we have a business idea, we tend to hold onto it for dear life.

We don't want any crooks to come in and steal our idea - we're sitting on a goldmine.

If I have to be the one to break it to you, I don't mind as long as it's beneficial.

Your idea probably sucks... bad.

See, most ideas are terrible.

At the end of the day, ideas are only that - ideas.

Anyone can draw up a genius plan on a napkin to make a million dollars.

What really matters is the execution behind the idea.

If you're taking my advice so far and going to start a simple business or side hustle that has the potential for scalability, you will want to tell the world.

People like supporting those who are ambitious.

No one is going to steal your idea.

If you've made the conscious decision to start a business - let the whole world know.

You will want to share it all over social media and get people to support you.

If you're afraid to share your idea, it may even be because you know yourself that your idea stinks.

So share your idea, let people know you're embarking on this journey and ask them to support you.

Support is always out there for those who seek it.

If no one knows about your business, no one can support it.

Have you learnt something valuable from this article?

Let me know below!

Message me on social media telling me what you think.

Till next time,
Mohamad