Your Path to WiFi Money
Welcome to today’s issue of the Opossum’s Substack. There’s a lot of new people on my email list so I wanted to catch everybody up. Today’s email is going to be a little different. This email will be pinned to the top of the Substack permanently. It will be a living document that outlines your learning journey to your first second income.
Think of it as a cumulation of everything in this Substack outlined in a step-by-step format. Action on this document *in order*.
If I were to ever sell a course, this would be it.
But first. Let’s get one thing out of the way. *You have no real excuses*
There is but one real valid excuse to not set up and work towards building your digital real estate. You’re dumb. Like really dumb. Like bottom 10% of the population dumb. If that’s the case, then you have a real excuse and I’m sorry. However, that’s likely 0 people that have found me and are reading this.
I try to get people IRL to just start all of the time. All I hear are excuses. Half of the excuses I’ve dealt with personally.
Trust me. I’ve heard them all. *You have no real excuses*
You have a “I consume too much and don’t create enough problem.”
So now that that’s out of the way, let’s get started.
First, if you don’t understand the urgency of why you need to start your WiFi money, it’s important to read the post titled Why Are We Here. If you don’t know what WiFi money is, read the post on What Is WiFi Money.
Then, you’re going to go to this post on The Basics of Your First Website on BowTiedOpossum.com.
If you’re having trouble deciding what platform to use or what type of business to start, read my in depth guide on Website Platform Choice Explanation. It explains the flowchart in The Basics of Your First Websites in more detail.
Then you’re going to action on it. Not read it and say “that’s nice, but I don’t have time” or “I just don’t have an idea.”.
Action on it.
Are you stuck on the best procrastinating excuse out there? The “I don’t have an idea” procrastination excuse? Fucking lamps. Create a website about fucking lamps. That’s your idea. Now go and create.
Guess what? It doesn’t matter. Either you create a great lamp affiliate site and make a bunch of money OR you learn what the hell you’re doing so when that “perfect idea” does come along, you can actually execute on it.
WiFi Money Paths
Now at this point you have 3 main paths to go down. Ecommerce, Affiliate, or Services Business.
I advise you to read every article in my Substack no matter which path you choose. Starting from the beginning of the Substack to now. Don’t start from the most recent. Start from the beginning. But if you force me to choose…
Below are the best resources you’re going to want to read for any path you take.
General WiFi Money Important Posts
Revenue Models for Online Businesses - This post explores the different ways to make money online. It’s not inclusive but it’s pretty close.
The Basics of Site Speed - Very important if your site is built on WordPress. Shopify theme selection is the most important aspect to making sure your site loads fast for ecommerce.
The Basics of Tracking Utilizing GA, GTM, and GSC - Without good accurate data, it’s near impossible to make good decisions.
The Basics of Google Search Console - Overview to help you understand the basics of how your site is doing in the SERPs. Then read Google’s Search documentation on SEO. Then read their very long rater guidelines when you have a few hours of nothing to do. It’s what they give to an army of people to rate and ensure their algorithm is serving the results that they want it to.
The Basics of Google Analytics - How to get your GA setup correctly.
The Basics of Google Analytics Part 2 - A little more in depth of how to navigate GA and common pitfalls.
The Basics of Google Analytics Part 3 - Understanding the different sections of GA and how to use them.
Brand Building and SOV - How a brand and brand awareness is built over time.
The Marketing Funnel - This post will help you understand the theory of how a brand is introduced to a user and how that user is pushed from awareness to consideration to conversion.
Acquisition Channels for Your New Business - How users are acquired and how the data shows in GA for you to track it.
High Level Website Audit - My process and how I go about auditing a website.
Tools You Should Know How To Use Part 1 - Kind of self explanation here.
Everything To Know About Links - Links are one of the top factors for SEO. If not the top factor. Important to understand the different types of links.
Ecommerce
This is your highest risk reward option. If you have the money, this is the route to go. Yes, you can start an ecommerce business for as little as $1,000.
I don’t advise starting with that little money unless you’re a great organic marketer, you already have built in traffic, or you already have a brick and mortar to attach it to.
Why?
You’re going to need ad spend. Each campaign you’re going to run (and test) is going to take a significant amount of $$$ to optimize. If after product purchase, you only have $1000 a month for ad spend, you won’t even get past the learning phase of the algorithm.
Ecommerce Important Posts
The below are posts that are almost soley focused on Ecommerce. These should be combined with the general posts above.
Setting Up Free and Paid Listing Ads for Shopify - Almost every ecommerce site should be pushing their product to Google’s free and paid listings. A guide on how to set it up.
Attribution Models - True attribution is impossible. Don’t believe any of your tools or agencies. Understand the underlying journey of your users. This will be at the core of how you market.
The Basics of Structured Data - Structured data is what makes most of Google’s SERPs work. Without it, you’re missing a huge opportunity for SEO.
Starter Site Analysis - Looking to buy a “starter site”? An analysis of starter sites that have been bought and what happened to them. Not pretty.
Case Study of a Site Audit - An audit of BowTiedOctopod’s culinary site.
Testing a Landing Page - How to get started in testing different…well anything on your site.
Testing Ideas - Ideas to test as a follow up on how to test.
Shopify Shipping Increase & How to Combat - Dealing with an inflationary environment when shipping costs keep rising.
Minimal ROAS to Maintain Profitability - The one (or more) calculation you need for any ad campaign.
Customer Matching - Utilizing your email list to accelerate your marketing.
Services Business
This is the route you’re going to want to take if you are short on money and don’t have a long timeline. If you have $10k in the bank and only have one stream of income, you’re short on money.
You should do this to get a second stream of income to invest more of your income, invest in writers for affiliate, invest in product/marketing for an ecommerce site.
There’s no great bucket to put info products in this article but starting a service business that transforms into info products is a great path to take.
Services Business Important Posts
The below are posts that are almost soley focused on Services Business. These should be combined with the general posts above.
The Basics of Your First Website - Making sure you know how to setup a website so that it doesn’t become the barrior that stops you from your WiFi money.
Monetizing Your Skillset - Post with HarambeMoney and BowTiedTetra on how to utilize your skillset and market using an inbound and outbound marketing strategy.
Dabblle and Getting Initial Traffic - Analyzing a site that was able to grow quickly without link building.
Comparison of Ranking an Article on a New vs Aged Domain - Domain age and links matter. The difference shown in the data.
The Good Body Business Model - Looking at the history of this business and how they make money based on their traffic and business model.
Affiliate
In my mind, if you can’t afford writers, affiliate has the most upfront time cost. BUT it’s very much autopilot once you get it set up.
Affiliate Important Posts
The below are posts that are almost soley focused on Affiliate. These should be combined with the general posts above.
The Basics of Your First Website - Making sure you know how to setup a website so that it doesn’t become the barrior that stops you from your WiFi money.
Affiliate Marketing Part 1 - Understanding the basic technology, tracking, business relationships, and commission structures of affiliate.
Affiliate Marketing Part 2 - An example of what BowTiedOpossum originally started as and how I picked the affiliates.
Affiliate Marketing Part 3a - An analysis of trade-ideas.com affiliate model and their biggest affiliates.
Affiliate Marketing Part 3b - A continuation of the previous post. Mostly focused on trade-ideas.com’s biggest affiliates.
The Basics of Structured Data - Structured data is what makes most of Google’s SERPs work. Without it, you’re missing a huge opportunity for SEO.
Attribution Models - True attribution is impossible. Don’t believe any of your tools or agencies. Understand the underlying journey of your users. This will be at the core of how you market.
Starter Site Analysis - Looking to buy a “starter site”? An analysis of starter sites that have been bought and what happened to them. Not pretty.
Dabblle and Getting Initial Traffic - Looking at the history of this business and how they make money based on their traffic and business model.
Comparison of Ranking an Article on a New vs Aged Domain - Domain age and links matter. The difference shown in the data.
The Good Body Business Model - Looking at the history of this business and how they make money based on their traffic and business model.
If you haven’t actioned, no need to read further.
Action on it.
Action on it. Seriously. Go.
That’s all for today. This post will be pinned and continuously updated as I write more for you. Make sure to bookmark it as you’ll want to constantly come back through your journey and as it’s updated. *Google every term and concept in the posts that you don’t understand*.
If you’re subscribed to this newsletter, you need to keep in mind why we’re here.
Your boss and company, no matter how nice, doesn’t care about your future. Nobody outside of a few family members and select friends care about your growth and your future.
You are the only one that can save yourself and make your life what you want it.
Single player. Just you.
This Substack is here to help you build a business and build the life that you want. I’ve laid out the basics to understand, analyze, & grow most any online business.
The best way to learn how to do this as fast as possible is to start from the beginning of the Substack. That and follow me on Twitter & Instagram.
Free articles on WiFi Money are supported by:
►SiteGround - SiteGround is one of the easiest hosting providers to get setup on quickly. For a full guide in getting setup with your first website in less than an hour, read how to start your own website.
►Shopify - The #1 and only ecommerce website builder that you should be using. If you’re selling a physical product online, look no further. They handle 90% of the hard stuff. Start building on Saturday morning and be selling by the afternoon.
►Surfer SEO - Save hours by using Surfer SEO to prepare content optimized to your domain, niche, and audience. Use the #1 AI writing tool on the market that the best affiliate marketers are using.
►SEMRush - The one tool I cannot live without. This tool has almost everything you need. Keyword research, spy on your competitors, local SEO, site audits, social media management, paid advertising tracking, PR monitoring and much much more.
If you want to get smarter about all things digital, upgrade today from free to paid for only $10 a month. The paid posts are where I dive even further into the weeds to help you truly understand and capitalize on the digital landscape.
Disclaimer: Nothing written here should be construed as legal for financial advice of any kind. These are opinions and observations, written by an anonymous cartoon Opossum, built up over years working in e-commerce & affiliate marketing.
work in b2b sales (biz travel, prev ad tech sales & fintech) and cold email for meetings daily. Not sure if cold email agency still viable or other type of lead gen would be better?
Hey Opossum,
Just wanted to drop in and say that the entire Substack has been a tremendous help for setting up my first official business. It's probably gonna fail but this Substack increased my odds of success ten-fold. Will try to provide an update way down the line on how its going. Might be awhile though because like the jungle says "Success ain't linear".