Knowledge Commerce Benefits Are Aplenty For Solopreneurs. It’s A Business Model That Fits Their Needs For Ease And Their Earnings Goals Perfectly
Knowledge Commerce is a booming new line of ecommerce. You first discover, and then “productize” your own unique knowledge, talent, skills or passions – into ebooks, courses, memberships, webinars, virtual summits, consulting packages, and a host of other formats.
It’s an ideal business for solopreneurs. If you want to grow yourself into an exclusive and premium brand, and command market-dominating prices, this is your perfect opportunity. So get in early.
To any solopreneur, what’s the fastest (and most profitable) business to start? It would be to sell what he knows to someone who wants to know that. That’s Knowledge Commerce … where costs are next-to-nil and profitability even as high as 95% (if you are ready to do it all yourself).
Solopreneurs are now a huge part of the working market and especially online. MBO Partners’ 2019 Report indicates that 41 million Americans are building solo businesses. Solohacks Academy too is a solopreneur business.
As a solopreneur, you are both the brand and the product of your business. Your brains create the knowledge products you sell, so there’s no demarcation between the business-owner and what the business sells. If you succeed, your name gets emblazoned across the Internet as an “expert”. Also, there’s really no serious competition to beat, because there are no two people exactly like you.
Here are three reasons why being a solopreneur in Knowledge Commerce is a double-advantage …
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1. Solopreneurs Can Start Knowledge Commerce With Whatever They Have
All you really need to start a Knowledge Commerce business is with you already, if you are a solopreneur. You need slim resources, awareness of your area of unique knowledge, and the readiness to slog it out.
a. You Can Soar On Your Strengths And Manage Your Weaknesses
Strengths are your abilities that consistently produce “positive outcomes”. They make your mind feel very clear and in harmony in the tasks you do. Weaknesses are abilities that are not your natural strong suit. They, therefore, produce sub-optimal results. They also make your mind feel fuzzy and unfocused. The secret is to avoid blowing away time trying to fix your weaknesses.
As a solopreneur, you can be successful at Knowledge Commerce if you soar with your strengths. In Knowledge Commerce you clearly soar on your strengths. In fact, the more you rely on your established or latent skills or knowledge you have, you can become an exclusive expert in that area of authority faster. Outsource in areas that are your weaknesses.
It used to be difficult to find the right people to outsource work to, till a few years ago. Now the market is full of “gigpreneurs” i.e. freelancers. You can get them for all kinds of online business tasks, in all price-and-quality ranges, and many of them are far more professional than they ever used to be.
b. You Can Start Lean And Mean On A Shoestring Budget
Among the least expensive businesses to start is a Knowledge Commerce business. This suits a lot of solopreneurs with small starting budgets. Where resources are small, resourcefulness has to be big. So keep your eyes peeled for chances to get by without spending a cent.
Did you know? To begin Knowledge Commerce you don’t even need your own website or blog. You can blog for free on Medium. Use email marketing (free from Mailchimp). You can create digital downloadable knowledge products without cost. Set up a store using the free Woocommerce plugin and Paypal.
The equation in Knowledge Commerce businesses is this. The more effort and time you are prepared to put in yourself, the less money you need to start and run. So shed the sluggishness, and get ready to do all your own work without hires, tools or outsourcing. Knowledge Commerce can cost you next-to-nothing for as long as you wish.
c. You Can Gain The Expertise You Need Easily And Quickly
Most of us complain about the information overload online, but sometimes it can be a boon. If you are a solopreneur, starting out in online business (especially Knowledge Commerce), there are tons of blog posts that can signpost the way for you. The objective of our own site at Solohacks Academy is to bring all the relevant, practical information, knowledge and skills you need to know in one place.
We also take particular care to give your strategic and implementation advice that is easy for solopreneurs to handle on their own.
The secret to becoming an expert in any niche – including your own – is to set apart some time for daily reading. Read up a lot around your topic of interest. Read the best-of-breed experts in your space. Read the latest research and scan the horizon for technologies that can affect your space. The more you read, the more your expertise grows deeper and broader – and reflects in your own writing. All you need to do is discipline yourself to make daily reading a sacrosanct habit.
2. Knowledge Commerce Lets Solopreneurs Enjoy The Lifestyle They’ve Always Wanted
What is this “laptop lifestyle” that solopreneurs are so gung-ho about? It’s the idea that you can carry your work to the park, a desert island, the middle of a busy street, or to the sidewalk cafe, and still do what your business needs. People doing this are still earning in millions.
a. You Can Enjoy Being Your Own Boss And Work On A Topic You Love
Knowledge Commerce is about mining deep within yourself, as a solopreneur, and making a business out of something you are uniquely talented at. No matter how many other experts exist, there may be few with the exact quirks and passions, hidden talents and skills as you have.
Self-knowledge is what you need and there’s no cost to it. What you don’t know about business can be best learned on the job, by doing, experimenting, failing and standing up again for another try.
There’s no boss at your back so that is a big plus-point. You can work at your own pace and “follow your bliss”. But some solopreneurs suffer initially when there’s no one else they are accountable to. They can’t seem to be strict enough on themselves to get enough work done to make their businesses succeed. There is an easy way to develop motivation without a boss, though. It is to love your work, your niche and your daily process so much, that you want to excel without being told to.
b. You Can Be Any Type Of Solopreneur And Still Succeed
There are so many different types of “preneurs” out there now, all in online businesses. You have mompreneurs, homepreneurs, gigpreneurs, sidepreneurs, propreneurs, authorpreneurs, couplepreneurs, laptopreneurs, blogpreneurs, studentpreneurs … whew!
Which kind of “preneur” you are, depends on why you have got into business, what your strong knowledge areas are, how much time you want to devote to business, and where and how you want to work from. The important thing is that any “preneur” can trade knowledge for money very successfully. There is no need to be looking beyond one’s own unique expertise to set up up shop to sell anything else.
Did you know that there’s a separate class of people called “Wantrepreneurs”? As the name suggests, they are those who say they desperately want to start solopreneurship online, but as the Wiktionary says “they are people who aspire to be entrepreneurs, but who never realize this ambition.” Wantrepreneurs are generally too obsessive about finding the “right idea”. Why successful solopreneurs love “Wantrepreneurs” is because they are big buyers of books, courses, tools, mentoring sessions. They’ll buy all those knowledge products – and then look around for more.
c. You Can Earn Passive Income Streams By Productizing Your Knowledge
What is passive income? If you were to try to impart the knowledge you had, one-to-one, to a number of clients and customers, there would be a limit to your time and the number of clients you could handle and earn from. But if you were to “productize” your knowledge – as ebooks or courses or membership sites – then your business could handle any number of clients 367x7x24 – and earn endlessly, even as you sleep.
Solopreneurs have limits to how much work they can do in a day. But if you use that time to creating passive-income products – as most knowledge products are – you create just once, but earn without limit.
One thing more. Though “passive income-earning” is a good idea, in theory, it’s not as easy to achieve. You have to specifically and shrewdly build products to earn passive incomes. Many passive income products are poorly designed. They become semi-passive earning routes. They still demand the time and effort of the solopreneur to keep them going. With each product you create, ask yourself this. “What features can I build into this product to help it fully serve customers without me?”. Give it thought, and it’ll pay returns.
3. Solopreneur Businesses In Knowledge Commerce Can Grow And Scale With Ease
I was once told: “Never make the mistake of thinking ‘solo’ means ‘small’.” Solopreneurs can grow into very big brands and businesses without adding more people to their teams. They just decide to grow straight and tall, instead of sideways with branches.
a. You Get To Keep All The Money You Can Make – Often It’s Close To 95% Profit
The beauty of a solopreneur business is that you can earn less and still profit more. Say you earn just $150 in a day but get to keep almost $140 of it as profit. Isn’t that far better than earning $300 a day and having to pay out $200, leaving you with a profit of just $100?
Most people don’t realize that there is less pressure on a solopreneur to earn a lot, from a lot of customers. In Knowledge Commerce, especially, where all your products are digital there no loss really even if you don’t sell in droves, because your product cost nothing to create.
Many solopreneurs I work with are operating at close to 90%-95% profitability. They are able to do this because they have streamlined their personal workloads – and don’t need expensive tools, outsource help or part-time employees. When they do spend any money, they are careful to spend on things that will earn more money than they spent. For example, many solopreneurs have affiliate programs where they pay high percentages to high-performing affiliates. Being ROI-conscious, with every expense, is the game.
b. You Get To Deploy Automation Smartly To Reduce Work And Convert Customers
There are some parts of business that not even big teams can successfully do – but automation can. Imagine having to track the buying behavior of all those who visit your site, segmenting them according to their interests, and then selling the right products to them, that are most relevant for their needs.
Solopreneurs score over larger businesses because they learn early on how to use free email marketing automation, without paying for those fancy, pricey site-wide automation tools. The process is simple. Let subscribers fall into the right segments of your mailing list, depending on which page of your site they were reading when they signed up. Then set up automated follow-up email sequences wooing them to buy products in their interest areas. Is this rocket science?
Marketing automation often makes newbies to internet marketing balk. But if they care to examine the process, all that happens is automated “follow up of customers”. You set up systems that send the right email messages to the right customers, after you study their behavior on your site and understand their interest areas. Free sign-up form plugins and free email autoresponders can do this for you.
c. You Can Speedily Change Your Business Model To Get Better Results
The marketing word for businesses that can chop-and-change their business model in a cinch is “pivoting”. Solopreneurs in Knowledge Commerce can do this at any moment, without batting an eyelid.
If your current business model is not turning out to be successful, even after a good run, how long does it take really to get it onto a new trajectory? No time at all. Everything you created is digital and has no inventory to get rid of or lose money on. Much of it could even be re-purposed and re-used perhaps, with a bit of adroitness.
I’ve seen a lot of savvy solopreneurs who are spectacular “change artists”, and experiment with freedom till they get it right. Some experts give this flexibility another fancy name. They call it “growth hacking”. In other words, you set only one goal: “growth”. You then experiment a lot till you get it right. All the while you keep an eye on the costs and stay lean and mean.
In Summary …
- For a solopreneur, Knowledge Commerce is the fastest business to start.
- It’s also the easiest, and most profitable, online business to start.
- Solopreneurs embody their brands and are hard to beat, since every solopreneur is unique.
- Being “solo” needn’t mean “small” … many solopreneurs in Knowledge Commerce earn in millions.
- Passive incomes and easy automation can help solopreneurs scale and grow at speed.
- They can live the “laptop lifestyle” and still challenge big brands by being nimble.
Hear These Experts On This Topic …
Shelcy V. Joseph in the article “3 Ways Experts Can Monetize Their Knowledge”:
Wouldn’t it be nice to get paid for your knowledge? The good news, it’s totally possible—and it doesn’t necessarily involve starting a business. If you’re a full-time digital marketer, for example, you can get paid to speak at local events, guest post on popular outlets or consult with people. The point is, if you know more about something than most people, you can get paid for that information.
Nothing gives you more credibility than having an outlet where you consistently share that knowledge—i.e. a blog, podcast or personal website. Anyone who creates content (i.e. videos, photos, blog posts, news articles) surrounding a particular topic will be seen as an expert. And with that comes an incredible opportunity to create an impactful brand and monetize that influence.”
Dorie Clark in the article “How Successful Solopreneurs Make Money”:
How do you determine how you price yourself? Well, ultimately the starting point is, what does your reputation, what is your platform dictate is possible? When you’re starting out, some people would say, Oh, well, you’re not charging a lot because you don’t have a lot of experience. That’s kind of true but also kind of not true.
What it really is that you don’t yet have a lot of credibility in your field. If you want to drive prices, the best way to do it is to drive your credibility, to drive your platform. If you are known by more people, and you are respected by more people, that dictates higher prices, because essentially what people are buying is a guarantee.”
Andrea Bolder in the article “24 Ways To Monetize Your Expertise As An Infopreneur”:
This revelation of selling your own stuff literally transformed my business overnight and it has been booming ever since. Creating digital products may be something you already implement in your business model, but it took me a second to catch on. Maybe I was scared to put myself out there, maybe I didn’t think I held enough cred to create and sell my own products, but boy oh boy, once I made the decision to just go for it – it was hammer time!
Now, it’s all I do. Create, brand and sell information products on topics I love.”
So What Are Your Thoughts? Do Share!
This post is incomplete without your input. The community of Knowledge Commerce solopreneurs would feel galvanized to hear from you … so do share your thoughts on this topic with us, in the comments field below this post.
Related Reading
This post is part of a series that elaborates on “Knowledge Commerce: A $325 Billion Solopreneur Opportunity“.
Other related posts you may like to read are these:
- What Is Knowledge Commerce? Why Is It A Red-Hot Business?
- Knowledge Commerce Products: What You Can Create And Sell
- Knowledge Commerce Challenges That Can Rattle Solopreneurs
- Knowledge Commerce Myths That Solopreneurs Must Disbelieve
- Knowledge Commerce Money Making Potential For Solopreneurs
- Knowledge Commerce Resources To Ease The Solopreneur Life
- Knowledge Commerce Roadmap To Start And Run Your Business
- Knowledge Commerce Skills Every Solopreneur Must Acquire
- Knowledge Commerce Case Studies: Solutions For Solopreneurs
- How To Sell Your Knowledge Online … Solohacks RoundUp
- How To Create Digital Products At Profit … 10 Thrifty Tips
- How To Sell Information Products … Solohacks RoundUp
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We Also Have a Host Of Specialized, Intensive Courses That Can Sharpen Your Strengths In Important Related Topics.
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- Avail exclusive deals and discounts for members - on handpicked resources.
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