Micro Tutorial
How to Make $100,000 Online
Make six-figures yours with no boss and no “real” job
How does making six-figures sound? Does it sound even better if you could break $100K all on your own, with no boss or HR department setting your maximum take-home pay?
Many entrepreneurs hit the six-figure mark thanks to online ventures. Let’s start with where to look for $100,000 opportunities online and then explore real examples of normal people making their dream income independent of an office.
What kind of businesses can help you get your first $100K?
Any scaled-up online monetization could earn you $100K. Most often we see Amazon FBA, e-commerce, SaaS, and well-run affiliate or Adsense businesses cracking six-figures in earnings.
No matter which monetization you choose, there are two ways to go about building a six-figure online business: starting from scratch or flipping an existing one.
Starting from scratch is self-explanatory. It takes time and dedication to get up and running and a bit of skill to create an online business that will either earn $100K or is performing well enough to sell for $100K.
Flipping entails buying a business, improving the performance of it, and selling it for more than you paid. For example, you might buy an affiliate business for $65K, then increase its conversion rates and add in new revenue streams like advertising, letting the earnings climb until the business can be sold for six figures (we’ll get into the math in the next section).
How much start-up capital might you need?
Let’s focus on the flipping approach here, since it’s easier to understand how capital input leads to profit.
It’s important to note that we don’t recommend buying a sub $50K content site without a broker, unless you’re pretty experienced, because the potential for scams is quite real. Brokers eliminate that issue through vetting.
The other risk is that these businesses get all their traffic through 1–2 money pages, which means the whole business is reliant on the rankings of a handful of keywords in the under $50K level, which is worrisome.
An FBA business sub $50K level would be okay, as it wouldn’t carry the same kind of risks.
To understand what this all means, we’ll set up a hypothetical scenario of buying a business to flip for $100K.
If you buy a business at a 30x rate for $65k and make around $2160 a month, you’ll earn $25.9K annually. Let’s say you increase conversions by 30%, increasing your earnings to $33.6K annually. You hold that business for two years, and, after accumulating two years of profit (2x $33.6K = $67k), you decide to sell the business.
Because of the new increased monthly value, your business would demand a higher multiple (33–35x). At 35x, your business would sell for $98k. Now you’re looking at $98K (sale price) + $67K (two-years profit) = $165K (total earnings/profit). Once you subtract your initial start-up capital — the original $65K cost — you have $100K profit over two years!
How much time will it take?
Whether you choose to start a new business or flip one will determine how much time you will need.
By flipping a business, you have an already-profitable asset, meaning you can skip all the time spent building the business up. How long until you sell the business depends on how fast you can improve the business to reach your goals.
We’ve seen sellers buy, flip, and sell in a matter of months, but most sellers hold an asset for a year and a half to two years before cashing out.
If you start from scratch on an Amazon FBA business, for example, you might not have to wait as long as you would have for a content-based business to start earning; in fact, you could make a sale on your first day of launching the business.
But with an FBA business, you’re going to be on the hook for investment into inventory, so all the sales you make have to catch up and surpass your initial investment to be profitable. According to Jungle Scout, 67% of sellers on Amazon were profitable within their first year of selling and 22% of respondents were profitable within the first three months.
Amazon sellers can realize healthy profit margins and leverage Amazon’s logistics for rapid growth. Jungle Scout’s study noted that 12.2% of respondents made $100,000–500,000 in profits. This data means that sellers can tap into the power of Amazon to reach their goal of making $100,000 in sometimes as little as a year.
Real Deal Examples
Don’t forget, there’s no one way to make six figures online.
Revisiting the starting-from-scratch versus flipping scenarios, here are real deal examples to help you out.
For those who want to start from scratch:
- Doron made $100K selling his affiliate website with us after he built it from the ground up over a year and a half. He laid out a step-by-step guide on his process to reach profitability and maximize his sale.
- We are seeing SaaS businesses in increasing numbers on our marketplace, and it’s not uncommon for them to break six figures. One SaaS business sold for $106,000 in just two days.
- This dropshipping expert sold his business for $130,000 and is a solid example of what is possible when you scale and build properly.
For those who want to know how to flip a business for six-figures:
- In this flip, Felipe doubled his investment in just two years and walked away with $345,000. His story serves as a powerful example of the incredible ROI in online business.
- Doron has sold on our marketplace a few times now and, in this instance, he flipped an affiliate site for $136K in a matter of 16 months. He shares the nitty-gritty details of the flip in this case study.
- Acquiring a business with a flip in mind leaves you with many options for growing your asset. It helps to add content to your new site in order to keep the site relevant on SERPs and to see an increase in growth. You could also explore adding ad revenue to your asset to raise the valuation and get a higher sale price.
Now that you have a solid idea of how to make $100K online, it’s up to you to figure out how you’d like to make your six-figures happen. If you’d like to buy and flip check out our marketplace for options or you can make your $100K through selling your online business.
