One of the first and most important decisions in building an online income, is choosing which model to pursue. Get this wrong and you spend months, sometimes years, working hard in the wrong direction.
We looked at six different models before settling on our current approach. Here’s what we found with each one, honestly.
Affiliate Marketing
This is where we started and where our current online income primarily comes from.
You recommend other people’s products and earn a commission when someone buys through your link.
The appeal is real: you don’t need to create your own product, handle customer service, or manage stock.
The reality is equally real: you need an audience first and building that audience takes longer than most people tell you.
We promote LaunchYou products as affiliates. We chose to start here because we know the programme from the inside, 18 months of lived experience, means we can recommend it honestly rather than just promoting it cold. That authenticity matters to us and we believe, to our audience.
Digital Products
Mick is developing resources around engineering problem-solving, like root cause analysis frameworks, condition monitoring guides, continuous improvement tools for people in industry.
Jackie is exploring what three decades of dog training knowledge looks like as digital content.
Neither of these is generating income yet. We’re building them properly rather than rushing them to market half-finished.
The appeal of digital products is significant: create once, sell repeatedly, with margins that reflect the work you’ve put in rather than the cost of production.
We’ll get there.
We’re just not there yet.
Network Marketing – We Already Had One and Tried others
We’ve been running an aloe vera business for a while. It hasn’t grown the way we hoped and the honest reason is that we didn’t have the marketing skills to develop it properly.
That’s actually one of the reasons we joined LaunchYou.
The skills we’re building there will eventually help every income stream we’re developing, including this one.
Better marketing, better results, even for something that already exists.
Coaching and Consulting
Mick’s engineering background, root cause analysis, condition monitoring, continuous improvement, is a genuine skill that businesses pay for.
This is something we’re developing via LinkedIn for the future.
Jackie’s 30-plus years of dog training expertise has similar potential.
Neither of these is our immediate focus, but both are on the roadmap.
E-commerce and Drop-shipping
We looked at both and crossed them off early.
Thin margins on physical products, complex logistics, supplier relationships, stock management.
None of that fit the life we’re trying to build, more freedom, not more complexity.
Why we chose to start with affiliate marketing
The discipline of focusing on one model before trying to build them all simultaneously is something Mick’s engineering background reinforces strongly. Continuous improvement requires focus. You can’t meaningfully improve everything at once.
Affiliate marketing, specifically LaunchYou products, gave us the best combination of:
– Something we genuinely know from the inside and can recommend honestly
– A product with real value that we’ve seen make a difference for us and other for people like us
– The opportunity to learn marketing skills that transfer directly to every other income stream we’re building
The marketing knowledge we’re gaining through LaunchYou applies to the aloe vera business, to Mick’s engineering digital products, to Jackie’s dog training content.
We’re not just learning to sell one thing.
We’re learning to sell — full stop.
The question worth asking yourself
Which model fits the life you’re actually living right now?
Not the life you think you should have.
The one you actually have, with the time, the skills and the resources you genuinely possess.
That’s always the right starting point.
If you’d like to understand more about the programme that’s been the foundation of our approach, the link is below.
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