EP 391 - Best Online Business Models for Women Over 50 (Ranked by Profit & Freedom)

MarketingCoaching LifestyleTechnology
Written By Debbie Shadid
 

If you're a woman over 50 looking at building an online business and you have no idea which model is actually worth your time, Etsy, a digital course, affiliate marketing, or coaching, this video breaks down all four and ranks them by profit margin and real time freedom.

We will discuss the real profit margins behind physical products, digital courses, and affiliate marketing, and why coaching and consulting ranks highest for women over 50. If you are looking to start an online business or want to know which model actually fits your life, this video is for you. We will cover topics such as choosing between one-to-one coaching, group coaching, or consulting, and how to build income around your schedule using nothing but your own life experience.

You don't need to create thousands of pieces of content or build a massive audience to make real money online. You need a business model that values your decades of lived experience over volume and hustle.

Once you see the real math behind each model, it becomes so much clearer why coaching lets you build a profitable business around the time you actually have, instead of chasing an audience you don't.

Want help deciding which coaching format fits your life? Book a call with me here: debbieshadid.com/schedule

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TRANSCRIPT

If you're a woman over 50 and you've been looking online thinking, "I want to build an online business for this next phase of my life, this next chapter, but I have no idea what will actually be worth my time," you are not alone. Every single week people ask me, "What type of business, Debbie, should I build? Should I open an Etsy store? Do affiliate marketing? Should I spend months recording a course?" Here's the deal. There are so many options, including coaching. I will work through all those options for you today, and I'm gonna be able to tell you the four most popular online business models and rank them on two things. Number one, net profit margin, and number two, real-time freedom. These are two key pieces that most people don't think about. If we have not met yet, I'm Debbie Shadid, business coach for women over 50. For over 20 years, I've helped women turn their life and career experience into simple highly profitable businesses without using complicated tech, without using paid ads, and without living online 24/7. So grab a notebook. By the end of this master class, you will know the exact math, the real workload behind each model, and which one fits your life, especially if you already work full-time. Before I review model number one, we need to address the biggest misconception that women over 50 have when they're entering this online space. You open up social media and what do you see? I know what you see. You see some 25-year-old, or you think she's 25, and she is waking

up at 4: 1:36

00 AM, posting five times a day, chasing an algorithm. She's chasing the trends. She's building a massive audience, and she is selling tiny digital products. I don't mean small in size, but small in money. That is a volume model, and it requires a lot of hustle, a lot of hours, and honestly, months, maybe even years of doing unpaid work, and I mean creating the videos and posting and editing and all that stuff before you see any real return. You can see some small return, but not real return. At 50 plus, you have an asset that they, those ladies that are younger than us, they do not have. At 50 plus, you have an asset that those women don't have, and that is decades of experience. Many of you have four decades of lived experience, problem-solving, professional skills, emotional maturity, and real perspective that they do not have. You do not need to create 10,000 pieces of content to make five or $10,000 a month. You simply need a business model that values wisdom over volume. Let me say that again. You need a business model that will value your wisdom over volume. Can you imagine creating that much content? Most women I work with, when they create a few social media posts, they're like,"Wow, that was a lot of work." That is the first model that many women try, but they often find themselves trapped in something they did not expect, and they are not making any money. Let's get into the models now. Model number one is the physical products or the homemade goods. You can think about Etsy or Shopify, and there are so many other options out there. I'm gonna walk you through the pros and cons of each. And the first model, this is for women who would consider selling something like crafts or jewelry or customized planners or any kind of gifts, again, either on Etsy or Shopify. And I have to tell you, a lot of women fall into this category because it feels easy, it feels safe. It's something that is tangible that you can hold onto, and you can price, right? it's tangible. You can hold it in your hands. There is an emotional comfort to finishing a physical product to show that you worked on it. The hidden reality of this is physical products come with very low profit margins and high physical labor. I just spoke with somebody the other day who's been working on physical products, actually journals, and while they were beautiful, high quality, they were really nice journals. They were very special. I said, "What is your profit margin on every single journal?" And when she shared that with me, it was like, oh boy, do you realize how many of those things you have to sell and ship and store? A lot. A lot to make any money. And she was like, "You're right. I didn't really think about that." So physical products that come with a low profit margin, that might not be the right thing. If we think about an actual gift, a handmade gift that's maybe $35, then let's just say the materials that go into it are $10 and the packing and shipping is $8 and then maybe wherever you're posting the product, there's a platform fee, there's a platform fee, a listing fee, there's credit card processing fees, and let's just say four bucks. Your take home out of that $35 product that you sold is $13. Do you realize how many products you have to sell for $13 to get to where you want to go? You started out doing the math, and you were like, "I'm gonna sell it for$35 and sell three and make $100." In reality, with $13 profit, you have to sell a lot more than that to make $100. Now you know the truth about that. So if your goal is $4,000, you have to source the materials, you have to handcraft every one of them, pack them, and ship them. And if you've been at the post office and seen people come in with these big box fulls of stuff, that's exactly what they're doing. You would have to do over 300 boxes every single month to profit $4,000. That is 10 packages every single day, including weekends. Plus, don't forget, you have customer service, people looking for their packages, tracking the packages, and then, as I mentioned, running to the post office and carrying all the stuff in. So here's my verdict. It is wonderful to have a creative hobby. But as I often say, not every hobby is a good business idea. So if your goal is financial freedom and flexibility in your 50s and 60s, a physical product maybe is not the best option for you. I'm just saying. You have to do a lot, and that factory of yours where you create the product will literally have to take over your living room seven days a week. So you might also be asking, "Well, what about a digital product?" Let me walk you through that path as well. This is the second model, and if you are on the internet, you've seen everybody promote passive income. I have to say, I literally wanna get on there and say, " There is no such thing as passive income." The truth is, if you are selling something that is a digital product or a mini product or a download, there is nothing passive about that. While you hear them say, "Hey, record the lessons one time, put them on your website, and wake up to money in your bank account," yeah, it sounds really good, But the part that nobody's explaining is, yes, you might have the modules recorded, and that's fantastic, but the truth is the conversion rate, and this is another number that you need to think about, is 1 to 2% for online sales. that means if you get 100 people to come to your shop, one or two people will buy that product. all that you have to do to get 100 people to come there, do you know how much work that is? It's a lot of work, and it's not impossible. All of these things are feasible business opportunities. It's just a matter of how you want to spend your time. So if we look at the math on that digital product, and let's say it's a course that's $97. To make $5,000 a month, you have to have 52 buyers. If we look at that 2% conversion rate, you have to have 2,600 visitors to your sales page month after month. If you do not already have an email list with thousands of people on it and a huge social media following, and you launch a course, you're gonna be just like most of the other people that have launched courses, and there are so many people out there that have done this, and they have made zero sales. And their thought is, "I just need a different product or a better name. I need a different brand on it." None of that is true. You just need people, more people. So there are tech headaches that come with building an online product. There is your platforms that you have to host the course on, which those are expensive. I use Kajabi. That's $250 a month. It's not expensive for me because I have profitable business. But if you don't have a business. And you have to find a place to host your product. It's expensive. There are other options that are more affordable, but you really do have to think about the platforms, the payment integrations, the email automation, and when a customer needs their login. And even my own clients ask me questions like that, "How do I get my login again?" I'm happy to help, but that is part of what comes with an online business. So here's the verdict. Digital courses are fantastic later in your business. When you already have an audience that knows you and trusts you, that's gonna be part of what you could do. But starting here with zero audience is probably gonna lead you to burnout, overwhelm, exhaustion, and very little revenue, and I suspect never making a dime. So let's move past passive, and let's decide that's not exactly the right choice. Model number three is affiliate marketing, and this is you recommending software and books and products and anything that is lifestyle related, and you add special links for commission. I do this sometimes. You can find links underneath my videos, but I have to tell you, the kind of money that's made off of that is not what you think either, my friend. Many people love this idea because they don't have to create a product, they don't have to buy anything, they don't have to inventory anything. All they have to do is share links, and that does, in theory, sound like a great thing too. And affiliate marketing, it typically pays you between four and fifteen percent. Some of them are higher, for sure, but that is what you can expect, and sometimes it is month after month after month, or it's a one-time payment. But to replace a part-time salary of three thousand dollars a month, you would have to generate seven hundred and fifty individual sales every single month. Seven hundred and fifty. And to do that, you would have to have thirty to fifty thousand website clicks on an affiliate link. It's a lot. To get that kind of traffic, you're gonna have to have a social media engine that is really producing a lot of content. You gotta have SEO or a blog, Pinterest. There's many different ways to do it, and they're all great options, but chances are you're gonna need all of those things. I do actually have affiliate links, and I do make affiliate income, but what I do wanna say is for me, I wanna offer an affiliate link if it saves you money. I don't want it just to be me making money. That doesn't quite feel right when I'm saying use my link. I wanna make sure it's something where you save money as well. And truthfully, when I get my commission checks on affiliate things, sometimes it's like a $1.21 per month from somebody who bought a piece of software using my affiliate link. So it doesn't add up to huge dollars. Now, that is not my number one business driver, but that is one way that you can add on. You can add on those things. Just like I mentioned earlier, you could add on a course someday. So here's the verdict. Affiliate revenue is a great additional income stream. When we talk about having multiple income streams, I wanna encourage you to do this. I have multiple income streams from various affiliates, But it's not a primary source of money. It's like pocket change. You're gonna do that. You will make that kind of money once you have established traffic. But as a primary business model for women over 50, it takes far too long to really replace that income, to really build meaningful income with that business model. So physical products take too much labor, and courses and affiliates, they demand tens of thousands of visitors. What is the number one model that gives you immediate profit? Well, my friend, model number four is where you are really gonna see a big change. That is with coaching and consulting. Year after year, mature women, they use this model and above everything else, it makes more money faster. And I can tell you, you're gonna wanna take notes here and really think through this and consider this. The number one thing is you have zero inventory and almost zero overhead. you don't have to purchase stock. You don't need a warehouse. You do not need complex course portals or expensive funnel software. All you need is life experience. That can be from your career, that can be from relationships, that can be from parenting, that can be from caregiving, you name it, your own health crisis. There are so many areas that you can look into. I'm gonna actually leave you the profitable niche blueprint linked here that you can utilize to help see and explore what would a niche be for me, and how do I determine if it's the right niche? This will give you all kinds of ideas, but your life experience is enough, my friend. You need that and a computer, a Zoom account, and just a way to receive payments. The second thing you need to know is you do not need a large audience. Coaching is high touch, it's transformative, and you can price it in a much different way than you can price something from Etsy or some product, and there's no cost in it. You can decide to price your coaching either by the hour or by your program or by a series of sessions, and that's gonna be dependent on what you want to do. But let's just say that coaching is equal value to therapy or counseling. It depends on where you live in the country, those prices vary. But at the bare minimum, it'd be $100 a session. Bare minimum. You decide what's right for you, but I think that coaching is of equal value to those things, so that might be something you consider. You wanna compare the math of that digital course that we talked about to what you could actually earn through coaching. We talked about the $5,000 a month with a $47 course, and you needed 106 sales. 106 sales, and that is from 5,000 website visitors. To earn $5,000 as a coach, well, you could have two $2,500 coaching packages, or you could sell five clients 10 hours worth of coaching at the $100 price I told you. You only need a few people. Can you imagine? Even at that lower structure that I said, five clients, 10-hour packages, that gets you to $5,000 with only five people. Let that sink in. It is so much easier to build a real business, to create authentic trust, and to really be able to genuinely help somebody, to help strangers, to be able to genuinely help somebody who needs guidance, to be able to help strangers, to be able to help people and honestly to get referrals. It is so much easier to get a referral in the coaching space than it is to get somebody to send your Etsy link to somebody to get a purchase. So instead of fighting the crowd and being on social media night and day, I really think that you should honor your lived experience. At 50 plus, you already have solved major life problems. You've had professional wins, you've had relationship challenges and wins as well. You've had health, financial, and career problems. People are seeking mentors who actually have lived through what they are currently experiencing. You're not pretending to be an expert. You're just saying, "Look, I'm gonna guide you because I've already proved that I know how to get there." That is experience enough. Now, the question that often follows this is, "Debbie, what if I still work full-time?" Okay, great. I have a lot of clients that work full-time."And what do I need to do to make that work? Do I have to be on Zoom all day long?" Here's the beauty of coaching. No, you don't have to. You adapt coaching to your life. You build the business around the time that you have. You design the way that you're gonna deliver your coaching to fit your life. When coaches that I work with ask me,"Well, what time should my coaching session be?" I say, "I'm not gonna tell you what time it should be. It should be at the time that you want to work." If it's Saturday morning, then okay. If it's Monday night, okay. You decide based on your time zone and based on the time that you feel the best and the time that you are available, and then the clients that could fit in that time zone and during that time slot will be your clients. You're not trying to fit a time for anyone else and fit your own self and fit your own schedule into that. You pick the time. Pick the time that works best for you. Okay, I wanna go just a little bit deeper on this. There's a couple of formats that I wanna talk about when it comes to coaching. The first format is one-to-one coaching. Now, this is an incredible way. It is the fastest path to cash. I love to make that personal connection. It can be personalized coaching. This is a selling word, my friends, personalized coaching. Write that one down. Personalized coaching. It's not just one-to-one, it is personalized to the needs that you have. You can meet your ideal client, you can meet them in person if you want to. I would suggest that you do it online. You can do it weekly, bi-weekly, whatever works for you. Something else that can work is you could do, intensive sessions. You could do a half-day session with somebody. Whatever you want to do is the way that you can create your offer and deliver it that way. You only need three or four clients, especially if you work full-time, that's really all that you have time for, to be able to create solid income in very few hours. The second format is small group coaching, which I have to tell you, I love that. This really is the best thing for women who work full-time. It honestly is. If you work Monday through Friday, 9:00 to 5:00, you don't wanna take eight private clients because you'll be working all weekend. Remember, while you are coaching, you still have to do your marketing, you're still having consultation calls, you're still doing things like this YouTube video. So you've got marketing that you do in addition to coaching. So working full-time and having eight clients is not feasible. But what is feasible is one coaching group, one hour a week or two hours a week. We have six to 10 women. That is incredible. All the women receive the same support. They have community, and your delivery time is capped at just a couple of hours a week. I must tell you that I actually believe group coaching is a better option for most niches, and I hear this time and time again. You benefit so much from hearing somebody else get coached, from hearing their experience, from getting their questions. It really does give you a much richer coaching and educational experience as the one who is attending the session. So I really encourage you to think about group coaching. The third format would be this executive consulting and strategic sessions. Now, what is the difference here? If you are a consultant, that means you're telling people what to do. Strategic sessions are guided sessions. It's the same thing, like you're giving people the next steps. The truth is, I call myself a coach, and I really do tell you what to do. I always say, "I'm gonna teach you, I'm gonna tell you, and I'm gonna show you how to do it." The reason why I call myself a coach, and I truly am not a consultant, and I truly am a consultant or strategist, is because people that I work with, they understand the word coach. They're like, "Oh, I need a coach to help me." If I said, "I'm gonna have strategic sessions with you," a lot of people that are just starting their business would be like, "I don't need that person yet," but they do need a coach to help them. So you get to decide how you're going to create your title and what you're gonna say. In this format, though, executive consulting and strategy sessions, you're going to figure out what somebody needs. If you've retired from a corporate career or you're transitioning out of a nonprofit, healthcare, leadership, organizations, whatever that is, those people will pay premium to be able to have you advise them. If they've got some issues at work or if they're trying to get the next level raise or they're trying to get promoted, to have somebody in their back pocket that is helping them, to have outside perspective, to have input from somebody that's already been there, this is gold. When you have a way to impact somebody's income, like how much money they're making in their career, that is coaching that people will buy. They want to invest money in corporate, non-profit, healthcare. I listed all those things where people will pay to get support. Pick the structure that really matches you. I love, love to tell people what to do, and not because I'm being bossy, but it's the very thing that I wanted. When I started my business in two thousand, I just literally was thinking,"Why can't somebody tell me what to do? Why is nobody willing to answer a question for me?" I had my wedding magazine, and I was part of a franchise company, and nobody would give me directions. They didn't wanna commit to anything, as if they were gonna be wrong and I would be mad. I just wanted somebody to give me some guidance. That is why I do the coaching that I do. I'm like, "If you need to send an email, this is what you should say." To me, that's a starting point that saves people who don't have the experience so much time. So that's the coaching business that I have built because it's around what I want and what I need and how I thrive. What would it be for you? What works for you? Do you like to be able to ask inquisitive questions and help people discover things? That's traditional coaching. You also wanna think about your schedule and your lifestyle. How much time availability and how much input do you wanna have? How many touchpoints every single week do you wanna have with them? So here's the bottom line. When you look at the profit margins, the upfront cost, the tech requirements, which is very little, the time freedom that that can be creating, coaching is hands down the most viable, and honestly the most profitable online business that you can start over 50. You do not need a massive social media following. You don't need a warehouse full of boxes. You just need to know who you're helping with a clear message, a simple offer that solves a real problem, and you need the simplest path to clients. That's it. If you're ready to see how this works, I really wanna invite you to get the profitable niche blueprint. That guide will help you decide right now as you're thinking through all the ideas, what idea is the best idea, and that will get you moving. So many women spend a couple of years thinking about your niche Just grab the guide and then work through that process and You can confidently decide, is this for me or is it not for me? So that is it, my friend. I'm gonna link some other videos here that you can take a look at that will help you continue on this journey of exploration to growing a profitable coaching business. Have a beautiful day and a beautiful week. We'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.

Debbie Shadid https://www.DebbieShadid.com
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EP 390 - The Complete Step By Step Roadmap To Starting A Coaching Business Over 50