Glossary

Not sure what something means? We've likely got a definition for you below!

Agency

Whereas a freelancer is an individual that provides a service to a business, an agency is a company (with employees) that provides a service to a business. For example, Nike will hire a marketing agency to help advertise its products, because it’s too much work for an individual. Agencies can provide a wide variety of services, limited only by your imagination, but they will often focus on a certain category or niche (e.g. advertising).

Angel Investor

An angel investor is an individual that invests in start-ups or small companies. These investments usually happen at a smaller scale than venture capital, and with companies that are not yet ready for large-scale investments. The reason that they are called “angels” is that these investors are taking on risk by investing in smaller companies that are still looking for major traction and growth.

Backlink

A backlink is a link from one website to another. One website (like this one), might link to another website (like Wikipedia or Youtube), in order to draw your attention to a relevant article or web page. In the eyes of a search engine, like Google, backlinks are a way of determining authority, which is a factor in determining what websites show up in search results. In general, the more backlinks a website has (from other reputable websites), the more authority it will have.

Blog

A blog is a website that focuses on written content, usually around a certain niche or topic. A general blog might write articles on a subject like the best travel destinations, whereas a personal blog will be focused on an individual’s life or experiences. With proper SEO, a blog can generate a lot of traffic through SEO and be monetized through a variety of methods.

Capital Gains

Capital gains are when the value of something (as measured by price) increases during your ownership of it. For example, if you purchase 1 share of Apple stock for $150 in 2020 and the price rises to $200 over the next year, then you’ve got $50 of capital gains. You can then choose to realize these gains (by selling the stock and closing the position), or leave them unrealized (if you think they might continue to increase in value). Capital losses are basically the opposite — when something loses value.

Content

Content is a form of media that was created for the purpose of being consumed by someone else. For example, blog posts and books are written content. TikTok and Youtube are platforms for video content. Content comes in a lot of shapes and forms, and can be created by any person or organization.

Digital Nomad

A digital nomad is someone who works remotely and can travel while doing so. Whereas a remote worker will work remotely from home, a digital nomad will work remotely from wherever they see fit. They might still stay at home, but they have the option of traveling as well.

Dividends

Dividends are when a company distributes a portion of its profits to its shareholders. For example, if you own a share of Apple stock, you are entitled to a proportional percentage of the dividends they distribute every year. This is one of the two main ways to make money from holding stock.

Domain Name

A domain name is the title of a website, as written in its URL. It’s basically digital real estate. For example, the (main) domain name of Google is Google.com. Domain names can be registered if they are unclaimed, or they can be bought/sold on the secondary market.

Dropshipping

Dropshipping is a product fulfillment model where a business markets and sells products that it doesn’t actually own. Basically, the dropshipper will find a product, market it, and then have the supplier ship the order directly to the customer’s residence. This model allows the dropshipper to open an eCommerce store without investing in product development, inventory, or taking care of the fulfillment themselves.

Drop Servicing

Drop servicing is similar to dropshipping, but with a service rather than a physical product. The drop servicer will market a service (e.g. writing blog articles), and once they have found a client, they will outsource the work to a third party. Drop servicing is essentially a less formal version of an agency since your focus is more on finding clients and managing deliverables, rather than doing the contracted work.

eCommerce

eCommerce is basically the exchange of goods and money over the internet. If you buy or sell a product online, you are engaging in electronic commerce (eCommerce).

Freelancing

Freelancing is when you work as an individual contractor to provide a service to a business, entrepreneur, or other types of clients. As a freelancer, you are not an employee. You’re not working for a client, you’re working with a client. Freelancers will typically take care of their own taxes and usually aren’t entitled to the benefits that employees enjoy like paid vacation time or health insurance.

Fulfillment

Fulfillment is the process of getting a product to the end customer. If you buy a product on Amazon, it needs to get fulfilled — it needs to be shipped from wherever it is being currently stored to your address.

Housesitting

Housesitting is when one person — the house sitter— stays at the house of another person while the homeowner is away. The benefit to the homeowner is that they can travel while remaining confident that their home (and sometimes pets) are being taken care of. The benefit to the house sitter is usually that they can stay at the house for free. Sometimes the house sitter will receive financial compensation as well. It benefits both parties.

Idea Validation

Idea validation is the process of confirming that your idea is valuable and has a market of people willing to become customers. For example, if you’re thinking about starting a free newsletter about travel, you could ask people to sign up before you actually create it. If you’re able to tell people the concept and get them to sign up, you’re validating your idea. If you’re unable to validate your idea before fully realizing it, you might find out afterward that nobody actually cares to purchase it.

Investing

Investing is when you take your money and buy an asset that you believe will generate some sort of income or return in the future. You could invest in the stock market, real estate, cryptocurrency, or a million other things. It’s the process of putting your money to work for you.

Lead Generation (Lead Gen)

Service-based businesses need prospective clients to sell to, and before the deals are closed, these clients are referred to as ‘leads’. A lead is essentially someone that may be interested in what you have to offer. Lead generation is the process of using a system to find people that are interested in certain services (e.g. a website owner that is looking for an advertising agency) and is usually monetized by selling the lead to an organization that offers that service.

Licensing

Licensing is where one party (the licenser) gives the other party (the licensee) the legal right to use something. You can license a product design, photography, your brand name, and a ton of other assets. This arrangement will come with a contract, and usually, the licenser will receive money in exchange for making the asset available for use.

Local Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Local SEO is the process of implementing SEO practices to help websites show up in local search results (on search engines like Google). Whereas SEO will help websites rank for keywords like "best pasta recipe", local SEO usually includes a geographic term (for example — "best Italian restaurant in Toronto"). It's much more specific. This can also include getting the business set up on Google maps if it has a physical location.

Monetization

Monetization is when you implement a system to begin making money from something. For example, you might choose to monetize your Youtube channel by allowing Youtube to show ads. You can monetize your website, social media page, photography, and many of your other creations or assets.

NFT

An NFT is a digital asset that exists on a blockchain and that you can own. The other major asset that exists on a blockchain is cryptocurrency, which is fungible. It being fungible means that it’s all the same. A bitcoin is a bitcoin, and you don’t care if it's the first bitcoin or the millionth bitcoin. You value them the same. Since an NFT is non-fungible, this means that it is a specific item and that you should care about what it is. This NFT could be a piece of artwork, a song, a video, or whatever else. It doesn’t have to be a digital item either, since an NFT can represent ownership over a physical product as well.

As an example, an artist like Kanye West could release an album as a set of 1000 NFTs. This means that there are 1000 copies and that they will be numbered 1-1000. You could then buy the NFT which gives you access to the album, and you could also sell it when you’d like to. Generally speaking, having the first copy (#0001) will be worth more than having another random copy (like #0984). If someone wanted to trade you #0984 for your copy #0001, you would say no because your version has more value.

Niche

A niche is a specific category or subset of a larger topic. For example, a blog is general. A blog that focuses on the topic of long-term travel with kids is niche. In the world of online business, your niche is essentially a category that you might focus on rather than trying to cover every topic possible.

Podcast

A podcast is a digital audio recording (sometimes with video) that is typically part of a series.

Print-On-Demand

Print on demand is a dropshipping business model where you sell products with unique designs, and the product supplier prints the designs after the product has been sold. For example, you might have a store on Etsy where you sell t-shirts with your designs. Once a customer buys one, you send the order to the printing partner (e.g. Printful), who then prints the design on their stock of generic inventory. This allows you to sell customer clothing, mugs, artwork, etc., without investing in printing equipment, warehousing, or fulfilling orders yourself.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing a website so that you are maximizing the chances of it showing up in search engine results. In this context, a search engine is a platform like Google. There are millions of websites that talk about travel, but if you Google “travel”, only 10 results will show up on the first page. Those are the websites with the highest level of SEO. There are specific practices and principles for how SEO works, and it can be one of the best ways for generating unpaid web traffic.

User-Generated-Content (UGC)

User-generated-content (UGC) is when an individual makes content promoting or using a business’s product or service. For example, if you buy a pair of Nike shoes and take a video of you running in them, that’s UGC. Because it was generated by you, the user. Some brands choose to purchase the rights to UGC so that they can use the footage/images in advertisements since UGC typically looks more authentic than branded content (made by the company itself).

User Experience (UX)

User experience (UX) is the design of the journey that users will go through as they use your product or service. For example, someone who signs up for Facebook will be asked for their personal information, and then be connected with a bunch of people they know in real life. A UX designer will do their best to create a positive experience for users that makes them want to continue using the service and receive the benefit that they were seeking.

User Interface (UI)

A user interface is an interface that a person will interact with when using a certain product or service. For example, the Facebook Homepage is an interface that was specifically designed to display content to users. This is a form of design, and there are certain things that clients are used to that they will be expecting to see.

Venture Capital

Venture Capital (VC) is a term for private investment into a business from an outside source. It usually refers to institutions and individuals that invest in start-up companies. For example, a start-up like Facebook may choose to raise venture capital in order to expand its operations. This is different than offering the stock to the public by way of trading on an exchange.