The 6 major business models personally tried over the last 28 years and the major lessons learned for each.👇

1️⃣ 1996-1999: Selling advertising banners on my own media (video game website)

💡 Traffic is easy to monetize.

⤵ To increase or maintain visibility, it's necessary to produce attractive new content all the time.

2️⃣ 2007-2012: Amazon affiliation (test products and earn commission on sales)

💡 Easy and very passive.

⤵ Very (too) dependent on external players (SEO and the platform that pays, in this case Amazon).

Not enough margin to buy advertising and boost the system.

Little sense.

3️⃣ 2009-2010: SaaS (online file conversion platform)

💡 Turning code into tangible value is quite an experience.

⤵ Good marketing and strong brand creation are necessary because competition is tough.

Barriers to entry are falling rapidly as technology evolves.

Easy to start when you have the skills, more difficult to maintain over the medium-long term.

4️⃣ 2012-2014: Direct and affiliate online training sales

💡 Very powerful when you find the winning equation.

Very powerful when you manage to find the winning equation, allowing you to invest massively in advertising (📈 hypergrowth).

⤵ However, this equation is not necessarily easy to find. It may require a lot of trial and error until you have a good enough offer (tip: test different angles of approach).

Promoting affiliate offers is a good way to get started and build partnerships.

But it's not easy to run a business when the timing of cash flow depends too much on others. It's happened to me several times that I never got paid in the end. 😢

It is therefore preferable that the proportion of income generated by this means diminishes as the family grows, or even disappears altogether.

5️⃣ 2015-today: Online training publishing-distribution company

💡 Our knowledge network is important.

Around 20% of bids finance the system.

⤵ The e-learning market has become more difficult since the particularly high rise in inflation.

This means that, even more than before, we need to quickly identify what works, in order to manage investments correctly.

6️⃣ 2016-today: Consulting-mentoring business

💡 Helping others to develop and/or simplify their business is super interesting.

⤵ I prefer to work with a small number of entrepreneurs over the medium-to-long term, rather than giving advice one after the other to a larger number.

✨ As it happens, the short term often leads to more regular follow-up. So it's pertinent to keep a sufficiently accessible front door.