For over ten years I taught English to high school students. It wasn’t until I started seeing other people in my social media feeds building serious income online, even part-time, that I decided to dip my toe into building something of my own.

The first digital product I ever launched, The Fighter Jet Formula, made just over $2,500 on Clickbank. I hadn’t put a huge amount of work into it, and the result floored me — not because it made me rich of course, but because it proved to me that creating and selling digital products online genuinely works.

That launch gave me the confidence to take an online business a lot more seriously. I invested more time and energy into it, and over the next few years I steadily grew my business.

But, even as the business grew, I found myself following the same pattern: weeks of preparation, a burst of sales, and then almost immediately, thinking about the next promotion. In revenue terms it worked. But I was building a business that was always looking for its next hit.

I remember finishing one of my bigger launches, hitting the target I’d set, and instead of celebrating, my first thought was, “Right… what’s next?” That was an eye-opener. I’d built something that never really let me enjoy its own success.

There wasn’t one dramatic moment that changed things — it was more of a gradual realisation over several years. Eventually, I asked myself a simple question: if I still had to work like this in ten years’ time, would I actually enjoy it? The answer was no.

That shift in thinking led me to focus on recurring revenue and membership sites. It also inspired me to create products like Membership To Go, a step-by-step system for building a membership site without creating everything from scratch, and Rapid Recurring Revenue, a training programme focused on building predictable monthly income instead of constantly chasing one-off launches.

But perhaps the biggest change was in how I started thinking about audience. I no longer wanted the biggest list possible — I wanted the right list. I’d much rather have a thousand people who genuinely know, like and trust me than a hundred thousand who barely recognise my name.

These days, the people who find me tend to fall into a few groups: parents looking for a serious side income that could grow into something bigger, people whose kids have left home and who suddenly have time to build something of their own, and retirees who want an income that lets them enjoy retirement to the full. Most of them have tried something else first — selling physical products and getting worn down by inventory and returns, or trying the stock market or crypto and finding out that it doesn’t live up to what it promised.

If any of that sounds familiar — if you’ve ever thought “I can’t do tech” or “I don’t know how to launch a product” or wondered “how do I get customers?” — that’s exactly where I started too. I’m not interested in selling you on an overnight transformation, because that isn’t what happened for me and it’s not what I think actually works. What I can tell you is that building something small, consistent and trusted is a much steadier and happier way to having a successful online business.

To get in touch with me – to help you start or grow your online business – you can click here.