This article was originally published on my blog here.

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I recently understood the importance of having a good online presence and how it can change your life by providing you with lot of opportunities you had never imagined and help you make a living by doing what you love.

When I realised this it came as a surprise to me that there were not many articles or videos out there on the internet which explain the importance of having online presence for individuals. There are many articles which talk about online presence for companies. But very few for individuals.

Having been in the process of building an online presence myself for the last couple of months, I decided to write an article on this topic.

Below are the topics we will discuss in this article:

• What is Online Presence?
• Why Having An Online Presence Is Important?
• How Can I Make Money By Having A Good Online Presence?
• How Do You Build An Online Presence?
• Things You Shouldn't Do When Building Online Presence
• Why I Started Building My Online Presence and You Should Too?
• Conclusion

What is Online Presence?

Let's start from the basics. What does it mean to have an online presence?

Existence of any individual or a company which can be found online on the internet is an online presence.

I know you hated that definition. Basically If you have a website, you have an online presence. If you have a YouTube channel, you have an online presence.

But just having a profile or channel is not sufficient. You need to have a good audience who consume the content you're producing. An audience who can't wait for your next video or article to come out.

Why Having An Online Presence Is Important?

With increasing internet popularity it has not only become important but a must to have online presence in the coming decades.

Having a good online presence can help you quit your 9 - 5 job and give you the freedom you always wanted. Imagine having your salary credited to you bank account every 2 weeks by working couple of hours per day or not having to work at all. It can give you that freedom you always wanted!

But how can you achieve this?

There are countless number of ways to make money on the internet these days. Monetise a YouTube channel, get paid to write articles, sell e-books, courses, freelancing, affiliate marketing to name a few. But making money through these channels is possible only when you a good online presence. You need subscribers who watch the videos you're creating, to read your articles writing, to buy your affiliate products. You need trustworthy clients to get freelancing gigs. If you're an entrepreneur and want to startup then having a good online presence will help you market your idea easily.

A strong online presence allows you to build your brand and credibility that you need to attract more customers. It provides an easy way for people to find what you have to offer. You don't want to have a killer product which provides so much value but struggle to sell it.

Basically anything you want to market and sell on the internet, having a good online presence will help you succeed at it.

How Can I Make Money By Having A Good Online Presence?

I know at this point you're like:

"Awesome! Get to the point and tell me how I can make money fast so that I can pack my bags and go vacationing!".

There are many ways to make money when you have a good online presence. You can market your SaaS products, sell your e-books, video courses, affiliate marketing, get traffic to your YouTube channel, to your blog, land more freelancing tasks. Many people have DM'ed me on twitter offering freelance jobs just because I was providing value and they liked what I was posting.

But to sell your content you should have fans and true fans. Fans are someone who may or may not buy the products you're creating. True fans are someone who are always ready to buy anything you create, want to drive 20 miles just to meet you and just want to help you because you've given so much value to them in the past.

Imagine having your 1000 true fans which Kevin Kelly talks about. If you create a product which provides 50$ - 100$ worth of value per year, you can make 50k $ - 100k $ per year by selling it to your true fans, which is a very good income to live with. True fans also spread the word about your products voluntarily.

Do not worry about fans and true fans in the beginning. Just focus on providing value and building your audience. You'll not regret it!

I've been following people on twitter who are making 50k $ per week by just selling e-books on Gumroad. Yes you heard that right! Per Week.

Chris Johnson and Daniel Vassallo are the two guys I look up to on twitter and have been inspirational to start building my online presence.

Earning 50k $ every week is not realistic for many of us to be honest, but if you can earn 10k $ per month on the side with minimal effort, don't you think that's gonna change your life?

Think about it!

How Do You Build An Online Presence?

I'm not gonna lie. Building an online presence is a time consuming process and takes lot of hard work and consistency. It's not something that happens overnight.

You need to build credibility by providing value through your content. You'll have to consistently post quality content and interact with others' content and provide value. For example you can start a YouTube channel where you make videos to help people prepare for their interviews. You can start a blog where you write articles to help people start an online business. The mode of content is not important as long as you're providing value to people. If you do this consistently and long enough, people will slowly start noticing you and start following you.

There is no other way. You start small and grow from there.

This is a big topic by itself and one can write an e-book on. If you're interested to learn in detail, I'll share links to the courses which have helped me immensely at the end of this section.

In this article I'll share some of the important points (In the context of twitter. But most points apply to all channels) you need to focus on to get started:

• Pick a social media channel depending on the type of content you want to create. YouTube, Twitter, HashNode, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, Dev.To etc.
• Pick 1 - 3 niche topics which your care and love discussing about. I'm a developer, freelancer and a SaaS enthusiast. So I generally tweet about programming, freelancing and building SaaS products.
• Post quality content everyday. Interact with small and big accounts in the niche you picked. Consistency is the key.
• Eventually big accounts will notice you and when they interact with your posts, you get good visibility and that's how you grow.
• Do this for several months consistently and see the response you get. Do experiments along the way with respect to what kind of posts your audience likes or dislikes.
• The important thing is to provide value.

As I mentioned earlier, a detailed course will help you get started better. Below are the ones which I bought and loved:

1. Everyone Can Build a Twitter Audience
2. Improve Your Online Presence
3. Reload Field Manual

Things You Shouldn't Do When Building Online Presence:

As a beginner it can be frustrating to keep posting content but not having anyone to see and react to it. In the beginning it feels like all the content you're creating is going into the void. After sometime you will start questioning whether you made the right decision by putting all the hard work for nothing.

Believe me this happens to most of us. But keep going. If you're creating quality content, people will eventually start noticing you.

But many people tend to make below mistakes in the beginning:

• Copying other's content and posting it as their own.
• Buying followers, likes, retweets etc. Yes these services do exist!
• Not being consistent with posting their content.
• Posting lot of content without any quality. Always focus on quality rather than quantity.
• Start selling their products from day 1.
• Involve in useless debates with haters.

Avoid making these mistakes and be genuine and authentic with your content.

The courses I mentioned above talk about these things in detail. But I just wanted to mention them here for the completeness of this article.

Why I Started Building My Online Presence and You Should Too?

Here's my story. Around couple of months ago I came across a tweet by Daniel Vassallo in which he had shared his last month's earnings by his latest e-book. It blew my mind. Being an indie developer I release new products often but struggle to get organic traffic. Seeing this tweet was an eye opener for me and this opened up new opportunities.

I immediately bought Daniel's course Everyone Can Build a Twitter Audience and started building my online presence on Twitter following his suggestions in the course. This is an incredible course and I highly recommend if you're serious about building your online presence.

I recently bought another course Improve Your Online Presence from Catalin Pit who I have been following from last 2 months. I love his tweets on career, job searching and programming in general. He has grown his twitter account from 0 -> 40k followers in just around 6 months. I loved this e-book and will soon created an article with my review about the e-book.

These course are cheap for the value they provide.

As of today I have grown my twitter account from around 100 followers to 3700+ followers in 2 months.

In the last 2 months I've made progress in many areas of my interests:

• Met some incredibly talented people and have become friends with them.
• Received 10+ freelancing job opportunities.
• Part of a new indie hackers slack channel created for Indian developers.
• Helped many beginners with their questions. It is very fulfilling.
• Have been known in the community to provide good value.
• Most important of all, I've been learning a lot on daily basis as a content creator. It's like my learning has been fast paced from the last 2 months. It's crazy. I'm very glad I started working on my online presence.

I know I'm still small and at the beginning of this journey. The reason I wanted to write this article was to spread the word about power of having an audience and how it can help you in the future in ways you cannot even imagine. I hope I've helped you learn something new today.

I have been a developer from past 8+ years and was always a consumer of content on the internet. Being a creator from last 2 months has changed a lot for me, in good ways!

Don't wait. Start creating today. Your future self will thank you for that!

Conclusion:

• Having an good online presence will always help you in the long run.
• Having a good audience will provide you with opportunities you never imagined. Take my word for this.
• Start building your audience on a social media channel of your choice like Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Blog etc.
• Pick few niche topics and start posting content regularly.
• Engage with posts from other creators.
• Consistency is the key.
• You learn a lot yourself by creating content.
• Growing online presence has been life changing for many people.

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