Here is a list of internet businesses and internet business ideas that you can start from the comfort of your own home. Each one will have its pros and cons so you will want to look at each and decide which one is best for you. Remember that the best internet business is simply one that you will enjoy doing long enough to actually succeed at it. Many people fail because they can’t stand running the business and end up quitting way too early.
1. Affiliate Marketing
Most people don’t really want to think about or even have the desire to invent and sell their own products. Although creating your own product can be very profitable, it can take money, time, and lots of creativity. So what you can do instead is to sell other people’s products. Having an affiliate internet business can be a good start if you don’t have a lot of capital. Someone else has put in the time and money to create a product. All you have to do is get people to buy your products and you can do that by driving the right type of traffic to your site. In terms of which affiliate programs to use, Amazon and products from Commission Junction are some of the best.
2. Blogging
Starting a blog is something that anyone can do within a few minutes. With so many different free blogs out there, starting one isn’t the problem. The challenge is to actually make money with a blog. Thousands of people have blogs. The things people write about are endless. In order to make this type of internet home business work, you will need to pick the right topics to blog about. Posts about how you went to the mall today might not bring in a lot of traffic compared to posts about how to find the best deals at the mall for example. When it comes to internet businesses, a blog is the easiest one to get started with but actually making money with one will take a bit more work.
3. Ebay Business
Do you have a bunch of things stored up in your garage that you don’t need? If so, you might want to try selling those things on Ebay. This is how a lot of people start off. They create an account and start selling random items online and before they know it, they’re looking for more things to sell. The key to success with a home based Ebay business is to sell the right type of products.
Can you sell Ipods on Ebay? Sure you can but hundreds of other people are as well. What you will want to do is find a product that has decent demand but doesn’t have too many other sellers competing for the sale. If you are deciding to buy products and sell them on Ebay, before doing so, do some research to see how many of those products are actually being sold and for how much. You can do this by logging in and looking at the “completed” sales. This is give you an idea of what percentage of the existing sellers for a given product are actually selling it.
4. Ecommerce Business
If you would rather not have to pay Ebay any fees, then you might want to start your own online store. This is basically where you set up a website to sell products. The key to being successful in this type of internet business is to not only find the right products to sell but to also find a place where you can buy the products for cheap, i.e. at wholesale prices. The problem with this is that there are a lot of scammers out there selling fake wholesalers lists. If you want to find true, legitimate wholesalers, then the site I recommend is Worldwide Brands. You can get access to thousands of wholesalers. You will need a tax ID number though. From there, what you can do is find businesses willing to sell you products in bulk at low prices or even use dropshipping where you make the sale, they send your customers the products with your business name on it, and you give them a percentage of the sale.
5. Freelance Business
This type of internet business involves things such as writing, editing, being a ghost writer, bookkeeping, website design, programming, and a slew of other things. Basically, you will be doing tasks that employers want to outsource but from the comfort of your own home. A great place to find this type of work is on Elance. You can also try being a virtual assistant as well and do customer service and secretarial type of work.
6. Consulting Business
If you have a lot of skill and knowledge in a particular field, you can charge people money to consult them and help them build up their business or help improve their life. You can be a life coach or a business consultant for example. What this home based business involves is basically giving your clients advice on what they should do. Depending on your experience and expertise, you can make quite a good living with this business.
7. Membership Sites
This internet home business involves creating a website and having people sign up as members where they will be paying a fee on a monthly or yearly basis. This can be a service that you provide or a product. The key for success with this type of business is to create tremendous ongoing value. It’s not all that hard to get people to sign up and be a member for a month if you have a great product but in order to get them to keep paying you, you will need to come up with a good enough reason for them to do so. What you will want to do is provide a service or product that is only accessible through your membership site and is something that your clients need in order to make their life easier, more efficient, help them make more money, etc. If they feel that they will be worse off if they cancel their membership, then you have a winner.
8. List Marketing
Being a list marketer basically entails getting people to sign up for your newsletter or email list. This internet business will involve selling a product or having other people pay you to use your list to market their products. One of the keys for this type of business model to work is to build a lot of trust with your subscribers. You can do this by giving away a lot of valuable information for free. Once they are hooked and trust that your recommendations are gold, you can pitch different types of products. Just keep in mind that no one likes junk. If you’re going to do this, make sure you actually provide your list of subscribers with services and products that will actually help them and not just something that will make you money at their expense.
9. Joint Ventures
Another type of internet business you can get into is a joint venture. This is where you basically team up with one or more people on a project. Many times, when you’re just starting out, you might not have the traffic or customer base to really make much money. If you can get someone with a bigger list to team up with you however, you can leverage their list to give your income a boost. The key to making this work is to have something that will make it beneficial for others if they team up with you on a project.
10. Internet Marketing
With this particular type of home based internet business, you will be creating websites or webpages and getting them ranked in the search engines. A lot of the internet businesses mentioned above will require you to drive traffic to your website. There are different ways to do this but one of the best and sustainable ways is to use internet marketing strategies to get your site at the top of the search engines. This way, you will be getting targeted traffic who are ready to buy. You can make money through different methods including Google Adsense, affiliates, or even selling your own products.
This is just a small list of online business ideas that you can get involved with. Before getting into any type of business, make sure you do thorough research and understand what it takes to succeed in that business. Also, watch for scams. There are a ton of them out there. Remember: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Having an internet home based business is one of the best ways to get away from the everyday grind. Instead of having a regular 9-5 job, you can have a business that is based out of your home. One obvious benefit to this is that the start up is usually a lot lower than a traditional business. Many people also choose this type of business simply because they want to stay at home to be closer to their kids. Whatever your reason for wanting to start an internet based home business, knowing your options is important in helping you choose the right path.
There are a lot of different types of businesses that you can start up. Two basic types of home based internet businesses is one that provides a product and one that provides a service.
Product based businesses will deal with selling goods. The goods don’t have to be physical if you are going to sell information such as ebooks for example. Service based businesses will deal with providing a service such as consulting or being a free lancer.
The type of internet home based business you choose will depend on your financial goals and what you hope to gain out of starting this type of business. If you have a skill that you would like to provide, then a service business will do well since the amount of money you make per transaction will usually be much larger than selling a product. The problem with a service business is that you will be limited in terms of the amount of time you have.
With a product business, you can sell tons of products. Your income isn’t really limited. One disadvantage is having to deliver the products as well as deal with customer service. This all depends on the exact type of business you start. Let’s look at some home based businesses that many people do to give you an idea of the different options you have.
Some Internet Business Ideas
1. Selling products on Ebay.
This is something that almost everyone has heard of. You might have even sold something on Ebay before. In order to make this a business where you will actually make a decent income, you will typically need to choose a specific niche. Although selling stuff you find in your garage is a good way to start, once you run out of items, your business will stop.
What you will need to do is to find a couple of products that will sell well. From there, you will need to find a place to buy these products at wholesale prices.
I knew a guy who sold antique toys on Ebay. These were toys that dated back in the 50′s and earlier for the most part. Doing this part time, he was pulling in about $3,000 a month. The way he got those toys was by going to garage sales. Since he got good at spotting good deals, he was able to pick up antique toys for a couple of bucks and sell them for many times more. Some of those toys are worth hundreds of dollars.
2. Creating and selling your own products.
If you have a skill, some knowledge, or an invention, you can sell it online. Since most people don’t see themselves as capable of actually inventing anything, an easier path is to create an ebook about something you have a lot of knowledge in and sell it online. Of course, you’ll have to be able to find out if there is a demand for your type of ebook or product as well as how fierce the competition is.
3. Find a home internet based business opportunity.
This can be in the form of joint ventures or where you simply provide a service like writing articles. A great place to start is going to Odesk. That site offers a bunch of different tasks you can do such as web design, virtual assistant, programming, etc. Many people work full-time from their home doing this stuff.
4. Home based internet marketing business.
The reason why many people start selling on Ebay is because it already brings a ton of traffic every day. If you are going to sell on your own, meaning with your own website, you will need to be able to drive traffic. This is what internet marketing is all about. If you happen to already know how to drive traffic, then you can set up a business where people pay you to help get their website ranked for certain keywords and terms.
5. Creating niche websites.
One of the cheapest ways to start a home based business on the internet is to start your own website. If you can find niches that have decent demand, low competition, and you know how to get ranked in the search engines, then you can make a lot of money from the comfort of your own home. In fact, this is one of the reasons why this site exists. Since a lot of people want to start an internet home based business, they will go searching for free information about it online.
Of the many visitors that come to this site, most will just read and/or leave but a small percentage will buy something I recommend. This is also a part of affiliate marketing as well. Since less than 5% of visitors actually buy something, in order to make money, you will need to drive a lot of traffic. The more, the better.
Legal Stuff
When you are first starting out with your internet home based business, you probably don’t have to worry too much about creating a business entity. However, as you grow and make more money, it’s a good idea to set up your business in a way that will give you some protection in case something were to happen such as a lawsuit. Things happen so it’s best to be prepared.
Where to go from here?
You’re probably thinking right now that knowing what type of business is good but HOW do you start? Or you may be asking, “What is the best home based internet business?”
The best internet business is one where you actually enjoy. Making money online isn’t easy. Many marketers and scammers will make you believe it is. Don’t buy it. The fact is that 99% of the people who try to make any type of decent income online fail and end up having to stick with their regular job.
In terms of the “how”, this is what this site is about. I’ll be going over different types of internet businesses tactics. If you’re looking for a free home based internet business, then you’re in luck because I’ll be going into that as well.
I’ll do what I can to help you start and actually make money with an internet home based business. Having an internet business, in my opinion, is one of the smartest decisions you can make. With thousands of people logging on to the web each day, learning how to create an income and actually making an income really is within everyone’s grasp.
If you have any questions or comments, please leave them down below.
Being able to retire early is something that most people can only dream about. The reason for this is because most people have been trained to take the wrong path towards early retirement. What do I mean? Well, if you think about it, most people’s plan for retirement is to work until they are 65 and live off of their savings, pension, and any government assisted help that they might be able to get. We all know that social security isn’t going to be enough to allow you to keep up with your current lifestyle and quite honestly, retiring at an age where you’re a bit too old to really enjoy life and do all of the physical things that you want to do is sort of a bummer in my opinion. Let’s look at the plan that most people are on, why it doesn’t work too well, and how to retire early without being a millionaire with an internet business.
Most of us have been taught from early on through the words of our parents as well as our teachers that the best path in life is to get an education, apply for a job, work up the corporate ladder, save as much as you can, and retire when you’re in your 60′s. Although this is a plan, it’s hardly the best plan. The stats show that most people, at the age of 65, are financially broke and need help from family and the government. If you have kids that do well then it’s fine but wouldn’t it be better to not be a financial burden to them? Less than 4% of the population that retires at that age even have a decent income and only 1% will be bringing in over $100k a year during their retirement years.
Some Facts (The Reality)
43% of people going into retirement have less than $10,000 in savings.
At today’s average interest rate for a savings account of about 1.5%, you will need $3.3 million in savings to have $50,000 a year to live on.
Social Security is pretty much a big Ponzi scheme and although it will pay out to the earlier baby boomers who are now retiring by the masses, the well of money will soon dry out to the later folks.
Many people who will retire within the next decade or two will realize that they can’t and will have to re-enter the workforce.
Although more and more families have both spouses working now, the financial situation hasn’t really changed much.
This is where you’re likely to be headed if you follow the norm. For many people, this is the only plan that exists in their mind. For others, they see how this plan is flawed and will do things like start a business. Although this is a better path, it will only work if you have the right type of business. If you open up a restaurant for example and spend all of your time working, unless you are making a killing, you probably won’t be able to retire early. You’d have to hire someone to run the business for you once you are done working in order to continue to bring in an income unless you save up enough money to last you through the remaining years of your life. If this what you want to do then you better have millions saved up.
The main problem with the traditional plan of working for a company is that you will be trading your time for money. The obvious problem here is that time is a limited commodity. We only have 24 hours in a day which means your income will be limited. On top of that, since it’s dependent on you physically working, if you were ever to stop working, the income will also stop. So if this is your plan for early retirement, then chances are, it’s not going to happen unless you’re making a ton of money. Fortunately, there’s a better path in terms of early retirement planning.
How to Retire Early
Just so we’re on the same page here, to retire early means to retire well before 65. My personal definition is to retire before 40. For some people, retiring early can mean to retire before 60 while for others it’s before 30. In any case, let’s look at one of the best ways to achieve this goal. Since the plan of working for a company while trading your time for money isn’t the best plan, what you must then do is to move away from that plan. This means you will need to work for yourself and create residual income .
There are lots of ways to do this and one of the best ways is to start an internet business. The advantages of an internet business are many but the main point is to have money coming in even while you’re not working. If you have a website that gets a lot of traffic, you will be able to make money even while you’re sleeping. What does this mean in terms of your plan to retire early? Simple. It means that all you have to do is figure out how much income you need on a monthly basis to live the lifestyle you want, then, figure out how to make enough residual income to cover those expenses. This is why you don’t need to be a millionaire to retire early. The only reason why people think they need to be a millionaire is because they are assuming that they must work for income to come in but this isn’t true at all if you have the right type of income.
In order to make this work, you need to figure out where you are, how much you need, and how to produce that amount of passive income. You can do this simply by see how much it takes to have your current lifestyle. You will need to account for any expenses that only come once or twice a year as well such as property taxes and car insurance. Once you figure out how much the expenses are, you will need to figure out if you want a better lifestyle or not. If you do want a better lifestyle, then the expenses will obviously increase. Once you figure out how much you need to live the kind of life that you really want, take that number and double it.
The reason why you want to double it is to account for any expenses that you might be overlooking. Also, you will want make more than you need just in case some of your income dies out. Nothing is guaranteed so good planning is key.
How to Retire Early with an Internet Business
The key to early retirement is to have residual income. Yes, saving money and investing is important as well but unless you have a ton of money to invest, it’s going to take a while. We’re talking about retiring early here, not just retiring.
The key to creating residual income with an internet home business is to pick the right niche and drive traffic to your website. I’ll be going into this more in another post but hopefully by now, you get the point that the popular path of working for a company, trading your time for money, isn’t the best way to retire early. In fact, it’s a pretty lousy way if you look at the failure rate. Early retirement is easier than most people make it out to be. You just need to know what to do, figure out how to do it, and put all of your time and effort into making it happen. Once you achieve this goal, without needing to depend on a job, you will truly be able to experience life to the fullest.
Are you looking for some real internet business opportunities? If so, then you are probably sick and tired of the journey that most people take in life which is to trade their time for money until they are way too old to really enjoy life. The single biggest reason why anyone would want to start an internet business or any type of business for that matter is to have financial freedom as well as not having to work for anyone. If you have been looking for an internet home business opportunity then my bet is that you have actually tried some of these so called “opportunities” and ended up either losing money, wasting time, or both. If this is the case, then you’re not alone. I’ve been there myself and so has a ton of other people. So why does this happen, what can you do to avoid it, and how do you find real opportunities that will help make you an online income? Let’s find out.
Everyone Wants A Piece of Your Bank Account
The main reason why people pitch and sell internet based business opportunities is to make money off of people who are looking for them. The hard part is figuring out which ones are legit and which ones are scams. Almost every company is going to tell you that they are the best and that they are out for your best interest in mind. Almost all of the sales pages you will see will have pictures of happy people, positive testimonials, and even pictures of checks. That’s all good and grand but how do you know if those testimonials and checks are even real?
In a world where anyone with a computer and basic photoshopping skills, creating a fake check is as easy as making a bowl of cereal. I’m not saying that all opportunities with long sales pages are fakes but many are and you need to be aware of them. Another thing that you will come across often is “expiring” home internet business opportunities where they make it seem like if you don’t start right away, with the next 20 minutes, your chance of owning a successful internet business will be gone forever. This can also come in the X amount of slots left form. For the most part, it’s all just a sales tactic to get you to act right away because they know that the longer you think about it the less likely you are going to buy.
In other words, most people/companies that sell these things are only out for your money regardless of how many times they use the words, “I want you to be successful.” Sure, it would be great to have real, success stories but most people out there sell crap businesses with the intent to make some quick cash from oblivious people.
In order to avoid falling for some fake internet business opportunity, just use common sense. If they make it sound way to easy or the opportunity sounds way to good to be true, then it probably is.
Finding Real Internet Business Opportunities
In order to find a true home internet based business opportunity, you will need to know what to look for as well as how to do some basic research. Although there are a ton of phony businesses out there, finding a true internet based business opportunity isn’t entirely impossible if you can figure out to separate the treasures from the garbage.
1. Reputation
Before investing your money into any type of internet business, make sure you do some research on the person or company behind the business. With access to the internet, this should be too hard. All you have to do is search for the name of the company or the person’s name with either the word, “review” or “scam” behind it. You’ll have to be careful though because many of these shady companies know that people will do this and will purposely write up articles with titles that make you think it’s a negative piece about the opportunity only to give it positive feedback. This often happens when you have programs that offer affiliate programs where many people will aim to rank for the terms that you are searching for.
Another thing you will want to keep in mind is that most people simply don’t put in the amount of time and effort that is needed to be successful with an internet based business. This means that you can research on a legit and real opportunity only to find complaints from people who never even put in the work.
Checking the Better Business Bureau is another thing that you can do to see if they have any complaints file against them. Now although you should take other people’s opinions into consideration, you shouldn’t let those opinions dictate your future.
2. How does the seller make his/her money?
The best internet business opportunities are the ones where the promoter or marketer of the opportunity is making most of their money from the same type of business that they are trying to get you to buy into. There are tons of “businesses” out there that tell you to make money by selling ebooks on how to make money. These don’t even make any sense! If the ebooks actually showed you how to make money, then why not just use what the ebooks tell you instead of selling them?
Listen, if I make most of my money off of selling a program to you on how to build a successful internet business instead of from the type of business that I’m trying to sell you on, then it’s best not to listen to me. However, if I sell you on a business and it’s also something that I personally make most of my income on, then chances are, it’s the real deal.
Searching through the hundreds of internet business opportunities out there can take a lot of time if you have to do research on every opportunity that comes your way but unless you have a ton of money to just burn as well as a lot of time on your hands, you’ll be glad you did your due diligence.
There are many really good reasons why you would want to start an internet home business. The advantages of having a business that you can run from the comfort from your own home are many but the problem is figuring out what to do. If you have been looking into different types of internet businesses, then you that a lot of them can be confusing. So let’s look at some of the basic steps that you need to take in order to have your own internet home based business.
Product or Service?
The first thing that you will need to decide on is whether you want a service based business or a product based business. There are different advantages and disadvantages of each. With a product based business, you will typically need to make a lot of sales in order to make good money. This will depend on the cost of your products though. Many people will do choose this business model by doing things like selling products on Ebay for example. The advantage of selling products is that your income is quite unlimited. With a service based business, you will typically be able to charge more for your time. The problem with a service is that you are limited in how many hours you have in a work day.
There are, however, different types of businesses that take advantage of both such as a subscription based website where you are providing a service based off of a product that people pay you every single month to use. Things that fall into this category are things like website hosting and training courses.
With that in mind, realize that there are different start up costs for different types of businesses. If you want to simplify everything and just get started with your own internet home business quickly, then the best thing to do is to get a website. There are a couple of things that you will need to do. The first is to get hosting. The second is to choose a domain name. Once you have those two things in place, you will then want to work on driving traffic to your website.
Obviously, there are a lot of crucial steps in between those steps such as finding the right niche and learning how to actually drive traffic to your site. Home based internet businesses can be cheap to start up but unless you know what you are doing, you won’t really get anywhere in terms of producing a decent income.
Things to Avoid
What many people will do when first starting out is to buy get into some type of internet home business opportunity. You will want to be careful with these. Many of them sound really good but in reality, the only one making money are the people selling the opportunity. Such businesses are ones that promise to do all of the work for you and tell you that all you have to do is point and click and make money. If making money with an internet business were that simple, you’d know more people making money online but chances are, you probably don’t know that many people that do.
You will also run into a work and home internet business that involve things like filling out surveys or signing up for different products or becoming some type of mystery shopper. There are a ton of these on those job sites and basically advertise saying that you can make X amount of money from home with absolutely no experience. With these types of opportunities, you just need to be logical about them. Why would someone pay you so much money to do something that requires no experience? Sure, you can make some money with some of these types of work, but they hardly fall into the category of a home business. If you’re looking for some pocket change, then these things might work out for you but not if you’re looking for a long term internet home business.
As you can see, starting an internet based home business can be difficult because of all of the misinformation that is out on the web. People want to get right quick and companies or individuals are ready appeal to people’s sense of greed and scam them out of their money. This doesn’t mean that all internet home businesses are scams of course. There are plenty of people, including myself, who are making some real money online, from the comfort of their home.
I don’t have a home internet based opportunity for you to buy. What I have is experience and knowledge of how to create an internet business around the right niche and how to drive traffic to your website. I explain it in my niche internet marketing post.
Residual income is the key to financial independence. That might be a bold statement but I can back up this claim. First of all, just so we’re on the same page, this type of income is one where you get paid over and over from work that you did once. Just knowing this alone should help you realize just how powerful this type of income truly is. Think about it for a second. What do most people spend their adult life doing for 40 hours a week? That’s right, they work. The only reason most of us work is to make money in order to have the lifestyle that we desire. What if you were able to have income coming into your bank account without working? Sound impossible? If it does sound far fetched to you then you’re not alone.
Most of us were brought up with the mentality of going to school, getting a job, and working until you retire. Although this is a plan, it’s a bad plan in my honest opinion. Life is short and it doesn’t make any sense to be spending most of our adult life working for that paycheck. What most people have following this plan is linear income. Let’s take a look at the difference.
Linear Income
This is where you trade your time for money. You go to work for 40 hours, you get paid for 40 hours. It doesn’t matter how much you make per hour, if you ever stop working, your income will also stop. In order to have financial independence with this type of income, you will need to increase the amount you make per hour to the point where you are making enough to save up enough to retire at a reasonable age. If you get this type of income, then you’ll have to make quite a lot of money per hour if you ever hope to retire before the age of 60.
Residual Income
With this type of income, even after you stop putting in time and work, money still goes into your bank account. You might actually already be making some residual income. If you have a savings account, then you are making money each month from the interest that the bank pays you. Of course, unless if you have hundreds of thousands of dollars in your savings account, you’re not earning much income, definitely not enough to retire on.
What if you are able to have enough residual income to cover all of your monthly expenses, how would your life be like? Think about it. Let’s say you need $10,000/month to have the lifestyle that you want. With linear income, you’ll have to put in the time in order to make the money to have that lifestyle. This will go on unless you save up enough to live the rest of your life without having to work. With this path, it will take a while. Just 10 years of retirement will cost you over $1 million. But what if you are able to make residual income, enough to cover that monthly expense? Well, it would mean that you will be able to retire much sooner. This is the power of residual income.
Disadvantages
The advantages of earning residual income is obvious, it gives you the ability to become financially independent. However, there are a couple of disadvantages as well.
1. Slow results
Unlike linear income where you get paid for ever hour you work, with things that produce residual income, it can take weeks or even months to see results from work you did today. This is something that most people don’t have the patience for. If you are able to delay gratification and basically “work for free” and still keep up your enthusiasm, then you will do just fine but if you can’t do that, then making this type of income will be very difficult mentally.
2. Criticism from others
Believe it or not, the idea of retiring off of residual income is something that is foreign to most people. The way most people think is that you must work and put in time in order to make money, there is no other way. Of course, you and I both know that this is a false belief but because most people think this, many people will criticize you and even discourage you from taking this path. It can be for different reasons. Sometimes, it could be because they don’t understand how this type of income works and will therefore think that you are getting scammed somehow.
The crazy thing is that at first, they will have proof! Since it can take months or years before you make any decent amount of money, they can easily see you putting in work without having much in return and say, “I told you so.” This can definitely be discouraging but it’s just one of the hurdles that you might have to deal with. However, once you start making enough money, all of the obstacles that you had to go through will be worth it.
3. Unconventional
You won’t find many people pursuing this type of income so you might feel alone on this journey but keep in mind that retiring early is also unconventional. If you do what most people do, you’ll end up like how most people end up at the end of their work life, broke. Choose to take the path less traveled and you’ll be able to experience a life that most people can only dream of having.
Ways to Make Residual Income
There are many ways to build residual income. You can create a product, a song, a book, etc., and sell it and earn money off of the royalties. You can buy a rental property, rent it out, and collect money each money. You can start an internet business, automate everything, and walk away. You can start a traditional business, build it up, hire someone to run it, and be done. Obviously, some paths will require more time and money than others but either way, they beat having to rely on linear income.
The cheapest way to start making residual income is to create an internet business. All you really need to start is a website, hosting, and an idea. Of course, you’ll need to learn what to do as well.
Hopefully, you understand the power of residual income. If you do, you will realize that every spare minute you have should be spent on creating this type of income because it will be your ticket out of the working life. Think about all of the things that you want to do with your life. The things you want to buy, the places that you would like to travel to, the time you want to have for your family; all of this will be possible if you have passive income. Without it, you will be like most people who work until they are too old to truly enjoy life.
The sooner you start, the better. Seriously, life is too short. Read the other posts on this website to learn how to produce an online income with an internet business and put as much time and effort you can into it. You can learn from the best for free during the 1st month. Check out: The Keyword Academy
If you’re not doing everything you can to produce residual income, then you’re nuts. Financial freedom can be just around the corner.
My Top Recommendation
Read my review on The Keyword Academy and sign up for a 30 day free trial. This program changed my financial life and it could very well change yours as well.
In my Keyword Academy Scam or Not review which I wrote a while back, I outlined the training course and gave my thoughts on its pros and cons. I have been a member for about a year now and thought I would update what this program has down for me since I joined.
Like most people who try to start an internet business, a lot of time is spent trying to figure out how to drive traffic. Many people believe that all you have to do is write amazing articles and people will automatically find your website. Not true at all. I know of plenty of websites that have pretty great content but get very little traffic. This training course basically teaches you how to drive traffic to your website.
When I first joined, I was making about $8 a month. Yes, barely a quarter a day. Less than one year later, about 10 months after joining the Keyword Academy, I surpassed the $1,000 a month mark. To be honest with you, I didn’t really do much until my 3rd month as a member. I still felt that I needed to read different blogs and learn as much about this business as I can. Perhaps part of me didn’t really believe that it would work. Anyway, in the end, it was a waste of time. My income was still dismal so I decided to stick only with the methods I learned from the Keyword Academy and started to work like my life depended on it. That’s when everything started to change.
So if you take that into account, it took less than 7 months for me to hit the $1,000 a month mark. I know, it’s not that much compared to getting a regular job but the great thing is that it’s all residual. Ask around, 99% of the people you know don’t make any type of residual income at all. Residual income is what will set you financially free. In fact, the month before and the month that I actually surpassed the $1k mark, I didn’t really do much work. Try doing that with a business that you need to physically be there or a job. You’ll go broke or get fired.
Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of outsourcing. I barely write articles anymore, yet, my income keeps increasing. That’s the beauty of this business.
I remember when I first started, the amount of money I’m making now was a dream. Now that it’s a reality, although it was exciting at first, I have my eyes set on bigger goals. You’ll experience the same thing. You might think making $100 a month is great until you actually hit it month after month. After a while, you’ll want more.
Ultimately, you will want to make enough to be financially free and enjoy whatever lifestyle that you want. How long it will take will depend on what sort of lifestyle you want and how hard you work.
Anyway, that’s my update on the Keyword Academy Scam or Not Review.
This program literally changed my life so I highly recommend it. You can sign up at the following link. It’s FREE for the first month.
Once you sign up, I recommend reading my post on The Science of Niche Internet Marketing. I wrote that back when I was still doing everything on my own, before I was making enough to outsource. It’s a long read so grab a cup of coffee or something. In that post, I basically outline what it really takes to succeed in this business and it’s basically how I got to where I am today.
Just because you sign up as a member of the Keyword Academy, it doesn’t mean you will be successful. It takes work and patience. Knowing what to do isn’t enough. A lot of this business is mental as you will soon find out.
I’m going to start making random posts on the topic of motivation, success, and personal development because I think it’s important. Having the right mindset when you attempt to accomplish something will go a long way. This post will be on dealing with setbacks.
If you want to be successful with your internet business, you need to realize something, success isn’t easy. Here’s the best advice that I can give you on this subject. Once you find out the true price of success, meaning what it will take, you will have to be willing to accept it 100%. Once you do that, get to work.
You see, most people fail because they don’t fully grasp what it takes to be successful with an internet home business. So many people expect to be making tons of money within a few months. We’ve all been brainwashed by stupid ads claiming amazing success by some guy or girl with some sad story. Although some of those stories are true, you have to realize that thinking that is going to be your case is like trying to win the lottery. The sooner you accept the fact that success is going to take work, time, and having to deal with a lot of setbacks, the better the chance you have at becoming successful at building residual income online.
Recently, one of the founders of The Keyword Academy wrote a post on the forum responding to a member venting about the many setbacks they were facing with their online business. He gave a long response where he shared a couple of stories of how his friends saw a 6 figure deal fall through because of something Google did. He also shared a personal story of how his income was cut do to a setback. I won’t go into the details but let’s just say if any of us experienced the same thing, we’d be depressed for a long while. Losing the amount of monthly income he was making (more than most people make in a year) practically overnight is enough to make anyone want to quit.
Did he give up? He could have. I mean, who would blame him for wanting to? Know this. Any person who has achieve success could have came up with a valid excuse to quit during their journey but they didn’t. That is why they are successful. Get rid of your stories of why you can’t succeed or how the world is against you or how you grew up poor or how you have bad luck. We all have reasons why our life should turn out like crap.
The point is that setbacks will happen to everyone no matter how good you are at something. That’s just life. You either have to learn how to deal with it and keep moving on or do like most people and whine, bitch, and complain about it and hope someone will throw you a pity party. If the second scenario describes you, don’t worry, you can change that. Here’s how.
Dealing with Setbacks
1. Recognize the price.
* Jot down the sacrifices you will have to make while pursuing your goal. Anything you can think of.
2. Accept the price.
* Ask yourself if you are truly willing to accept the sacrifices. Once you make that decision to accept them, don’t ever complain or whine once the going gets tough. Remind yourself that you chose this path and that if it’s worth the price then it’s worth the fight.
3. Plan for setbacks.
* Like I said, setbacks, challenges, obstacles… these things are inevitable. It’s not about avoiding them, it’s about what you are going to do when they happen to you. You need to come up with a game plan.
If you were making $100 a month in residual income online and one day something happens that is out of your control, such as an affiliate program of yours decides to shut down its business, what will you do? What is your plan of action? Will you curse your bad luck and quit or will you roll your sleeves up even higher and work even harder?
Accept the fact that nothing in life is a guarantee except for death and taxes. You can achieve your dreams, be living the life you’ve always wanted one day and have the rug pulled out from underneath you the next. Of course there are things you can do to reduce the damage of these types of things happening but the point here is that setbacks will happen. How will you react to them?
The Power of Having a Coach
If you study a bunch of successful people, you will know that almost all of them have a coach or a mentor to help them. Whether it’s in sports or in business, having a coach will give you a competitive edge on your competition.
One of the great things about having a coach is that they have gone down the path you are going down. When you are met with a setback and don’t know what to do, they can help you because they’ve dealt with the same setbacks before. When you feel like quitting, when things get too overwhelming, when you start thinking there’s no use, a coach can come in and put things into perspective for you.
You see, the tougher the challenges you go through, the stronger you will become mentally. If you’ve ever been in sales, one of the toughest things to have to deal with is rejections. The great thing is that the more rejections you deal with, the stronger your mentality becomes. If you’ve successfully dealt with hundreds of rejections, when another one shows up, you won’t even think much of it. This is the same with coaches.
They’ve been through so much that nothing seems to phase them anymore. They’ve been through all the crap and setbacks that you are going to go through. While you have no idea if you can get through them, they do, because they’ve done it before. Having them by your side will be a huge help in terms of mental support. They can help reassure you and remind you that the setbacks you’re facing are all part of the game. They can give you the faith and belief to keep going.
Remember this: The greater the challenge, the sweeter the victory.
No matter how tough things get, if it’s worth pursuing then it’s worth persisting.
** If you want coaching from some of the best in the internet business world, then sign up with The Keyword Academy. The technical and mental support you will gain by joining will greatly increase your chances of success. They have literally changed my financial life.
So is there a science to niche internet marketing and how does residual income play into it? If you are into reading personal development books then one of the keys to success that you may have came across is that sustainable success isn’t something that happens by accident. People who are successful at what they do, do certain things over and over again. We’ve all heard that to be successful at making money online or at anything really, you have to take massive action. That’s all well and great but I don’t care if you’re the hardest working person around, if you’re doing the wrong things over and over, you’re not going to get very far. Just look at the thousands of bloggers who crank out tons of posts a day and don’t make squat!
In order to be successful at niche internet marketing or at any internet business, you have to be able to not only work like a madman, but to also analyze and notice what is working and what isn’t working. How do you do this? By keeping track of your efforts. Every day when I sit down at my laptop and work on closing the gap between my dreams and reality, I take note of the things that I’m doing. I keep spreadsheets of the time I put in, what I do during that time, the keywords that I find, highlight the ones that work, the ones that don’t, and figure out any patterns that are taking place.
You see, what gets measured, gets improved. If you are just blindly throwing up random sites and not taking the time to figure out why some sites work better than others, then you will just end up putting in a lot more work than you have to. So how exactly do you do all of this?
The first step, which is the step that very few people do anyway, is to crank out a ton of sites. This could be hubpages (see update down below), infobarrels, blogger blogs (never again), or your own hosted sites which is ultimately the best way to go. Until you have more than 100 of these, then you won’t have much to work with in terms of figuring out patterns. Don’t worry, I don’t mean 100 huge sites. Some can be just one page.
UPDATE (2/28/2011): Hubpages was hit hard by Google and at this time, I don’t recommend using them. As I stated above, it’s always better to own your own sites.
Get the Formula
If you sign up with the Keyword Academy, you will learn a precise system, a formula, for choosing the right keywords. That is where I learned how to do this stuff by the way so don’t think I’m just trying to advertise some random program. I support them wholeheartedly. When it comes down to niche marketing, it’s all about choosing the right keywords. Now once you learn their formula, you will need to work like your life depends on it. There has been a lot of different contests going on around the MMO world recently. Things like 100 posts in 30 days for example. If you are really serious about living the life of your dreams, then you need to step up your game.
Possibilities with Niche Internet Marketing
Imagine bringing in $167 a day on average from your websites. That’s $5,000 a month coming in that you don’t have to do much to maintain. How would your life be if you had an extra 5 grand coming into your bank account every month? What different life choices would you choose? Would you perhaps pursue your dream of becoming a musician or an artist? How about a teacher? Will your vacations be a bit different? I don’t know about you, but that term the media has come up with, “staycation”, is a bunch of bull. Life is crazy short guys, you either do what you need to do to get the most out of it, or you waste it working your whole life away.
It’s not just about the money here. It’s about giving yourself more time freedom. Money just gives you more options. Instead of going to the park because you can’t afford anything else, you can choose to go to Disneyland. Instead of eating from the dollar menu at McDonald’s everyday, you can choose to eat slimy exotic sea creatures. So what does it take to put your life in that type of a situation? Work.
The Ultimate 1 Day Challenge
Here’s a challenge for you. Choose one day out of the week where you have 4 hours of free time. On that day, during those 4 hours, you’re going to do nothing but write. Whether you do hubpages, infobarrels, other sites, or posts on your own site, it doesn’t matter. If you can, I’d stick with working on your own sites since, in the long run, it’s a smarter idea. The point is to put in 4 hours of total concentrated work. The goal here is to see how many posts or articles you can write. You will want to take short 5-10 minute breaks every 60-90 minutes or so and maybe 15-20 minutes for a meal, but that’s it. You will also want to spend an hour the day before to find enough keywords for this experiment.
You don’t have to spend 4 hours. If on a typical day, you have 2 hours to work on this, then do 2 hours.
Increase Your Standards
The point of this is to expand your mind and to help you see what is possible if you focused your efforts on one task without doing anything else. Let me give you my own experience so it will help explain the reasoning behind this.
I used to ‘work’ for hours and hours a day but only write maybe 3 articles on a good day. The majority of my time was spent reading forums, checking email, looking at stats, checking my rankings, and a bunch of other useless crap that wasn’t making me any money. So one day, I decided if I could beat my 3 articles in a day out of curiosity. I chose a day where I had all day free and just worked with 100% concentration. I ended up doing 20 articles. That blew me away! Since I time everything I do, I added up the amount of time it took me to writes those articles and guess what? I put in about the same time as I did those other days where I only finished 3 articles.
Because of that experiment, my mindset and standards are now at a whole different level. Do I do 20 articles a day? No. I average about 10 a day. You see, 10 a day used to be something that seemed impossible to me since before that, 3 a day was the most I did. On top of that, with the whole 100 articles in 30 days challenges that have been going around, 3 a day seemed pretty damn good to me. But after that experiment, 100 articles in 30 days seems like a walk in the park. 10 a day is quite easy for me these days. Apparently, out of the hundreds of people who signed up for that 30 day Hubpage challenge, less than a dozen people actually accomplished it. When Court over at the the Keyword Academy was doing the challenge, I was still in my “3 a day is lot” mentality so I didn’t even try it.
So since I have been busting out 10 articles a day, which takes me about 3 1/2 hours to do by the way, my income has increased steadily. Most of my articles are between 550 – 650 words. It really depends on what platform I’m writing them for. For hubpages, they are normally closer to the 700 words range. If it takes you a lot longer than 20 minutes to write a 400 word article, including research, then you may want to check out the 7 minute articles program. It has helped me speed up my writing a lot. It used to take me over an hour just to write one article including research.
My Personal Project
I have my own personal challenge which is an ongoing one but the first phase of it will take me 3 months. At the end of the 3 months, my goal is to have 900 articles. There will also be an additional 1,800 mini articles for link building purposes as well. Now when I say articles, this includes any hubs, infobarrels, posts on my own sites, or ezine articles. Those 1,800 mini articles will be on different directories.
I am focusing on certain types of things at a time since I work better that way. Some people will do a few hubpages, then jump to infobarrels, then jump to something else. For me, I found that I am much more efficient when I focus on just one task. So I’m doing things in sets of 100. Meaning, I’ll do 100 hubs then jump to doing 100 infobarrels and so on. Afterward, I’ll do some analysis of what is working and what is not, adjust some things, then go through the cycle again using what I learned. Then I’ll be buying domains with Hostgator for words that are doing well.
The Science of Niche Internet Marketing
So let me go back to the science of niche internet marketing. The reason I am cranking out so many articles is because that’s the only way I can analyze what works and what doesn’t work. I’m on week 3 of my project and have well over 200 articles. I just did some analyzing this morning and I’m starting to see some patterns already. I haven’t gotten it down completely yet but I’m getting better and better. Again, the reason I’m recommending that you crank out a ton of sites is to have access to a large amount of data that you can use to help you become more efficient at choosing the right keywords. The formula from the Keyword Academy is an excellent start. Within that formula though, there are certain things that will make certain keywords pop out at you as being the one you should choose.
On a typical day, I will do about 1 hour of keyword research and find maybe 25 that will meet my criteria.
**Update: The Keyword Academy came out with a tool that automates this step so what used to take me 4 hours to do (finding 100 keywords, checking potential, determining competition, etc., now takes me 20 minutes. This tool alone is worth the monthly membership price but it was included for free. If you’re not part of The Keyword Academy yet, you’re seriously missing out.**
I write 10 articles a day but I find around 20-30 keywords to do those 10. This makes it a lot easier to bust out articles because if you only have 10 keywords, then for sure you will come across a keyword that you just don’t want write about and this will just slow you down. I have a couple hundred of keywords that I haven’t touched yet and adding more to the list every day (now with the new tool, I have thousands). Many of those keywords I will probably never touch but by having much more than I can use, I will never have to slow down my work just because I don’t have enough keywords. So I would recommend spending at least 30 minutes a day looking for keywords. I always like to have a fresh set of keywords each day for my 10 articles. (With the new tool, you can spend 30 minutes and find enough keywords to last you for months)
This is the kind of work that it will take you initially if you ever hope to be making money online. Forget all of those empty promises of making millions by doing nothing. Many people will use the excuse of “working smarter” and not “working harder” to not work hard. It’s as if by working hard, they are being stupid or something. Listen, making money online is the “working smarter” part. Compare that to working for a company and living life on their terms. If your goal is to make money with an internet business, then you are already working smart. Now, you just need to work hard to make it happen.
Working hard alone won’t make you successful. You need to know what to do. That’s why signing up with The Keyword Academy is so crucial. I know I keep mentioning them but I honestly wouldn’t have this much progress if it weren’t for them. It will save you a lot of guess work and years of trial and error since the guys that run this training program have taken all the guess work out for you. But knowing what to do isn’t enough either. You have to combine the know-how with consistent hard work. Even with this, it can take several months to make any decent amount of money so that’s why you need to be consistent.
How to Work Hard Consistently
Anyone can work hard for a day. It’s easy. But how many people can consistently do it for a week? How about a month? 3 months? 6 months? 1 year? 3 years? 5 years? I don’t have a crystal ball but I’m willing to bet that if you consistently work hard, doing the right things, for 1 year straight, your life will never be the same again. Keep in mind that when I say work hard, it doesn’t mean spending a lot of time in front of the computer. It means spending time doing concentrated, focused work. Whether you have an hour a day or 10 hours a day, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that for the amount of time that you have available, you do everything you can to produce as much as you can for that amount of time.
You don’t want to burn yourself out though. Pick an amount of work to complete that is a bit of a stretch for you but isn’t something that will kill your motivation. Can I do 20 articles a day? Sure. I could probably do 30 400+ word articles if I wanted to, but I chose to stick with 10 a day which ranges from 4,000 – 7,000 words a day. It’s something that I know I can consistently do. I see this all the time. Someone will get all pumped up and bust out dozens of articles for like 3 days, then burn out and do nothing for the next 2 weeks.
A smarter way is to produce a consistent amount of work every day. There will be times when things will come up where you won’t be able to work. I have accounted for this so that’s why 10 a day is perfect for me. If I know I need to spend the weekend doing something else, I can just do 15 – 20 articles for a couple of days and take the whole weekend off. But that’s just me. If you’re crazy and think you can go all out hardcore style, then be my guest. Just make sure you do that consistently. Even if you can only handle 1-3 articles a day, as long as it’s consistent, you’ll do fine.
Ultimate Goal
The ultimate goal in writing all of those hubs and infobarrels is to figure out which keywords have the greatest potential of ranking well and making you money. You will ultimately want to own your own sites. Who knows what the future holds for those sites like hubpages and infobarrel? Plus, with your own sites, you make 100% of the profits. So once you see which one of your keywords are ranking well, buy a domain name from places like Godaddy.com and host them on hosting services like Hostgator where you can host unlimited domains for under $10 a month.
UPDATE (2/28/2011): Hubpages was hit hard by Google and at this time, I don’t recommend using them. As I stated above, it’s always better to own your own sites.
When you start getting a huge cluster of related keywords, you can make it all into one power house site which, in the long run, is the best way to go. You don’t have to start with hubpages though. You can learn the formula and dive straight into creating your own niche sites which is better in the long run. Doing a ton of hubpages or infobarrels will at least give you a lot of experience on how the game works, and it’s free.
Bottom Line
I know I have rambled a lot here but my main point is that in order to get good at the science of niche internet marketing in order to make residual income, you will need to do a ton of work. From there, you need to figure out what is working best and do more of it. Until you have at the very least 100 money making pages out there, you have no right to complain or ask why you aren’t making any money. Once you know the formula, just do it. People who are making a ton of money online have put in their time and until you do, don’t wonder and question why you aren’t making any money online.
Step up your game. Do the Ultimate 1 Day Challenge and see just what is possible if you put in 100% concentrated, focused work for 4 hours or however many hours you have on a typical day. Once you realize what is possible, your standards will be higher. Once your standards are higher, continue to put in the work. Do this until you reach your monthly residual income goal. Remember that every day you produce, you will be one step closer to making your dreams a reality.
If you don’t produce, you won’t get what you want. Period.
If you have the money, you can outsource a lot of this as well but either way, put in your time and effort and you’ll eventually make it. With the right mentality and work ethic, making enough residual income online with an internet business to be financially free is well within reach.
I’d like to end this post with one of my favorite motivational video clips about giving your all. You have more within you than you think.
Pumped up? Good! Now go out there and explode your internet business!
In my previous post, Avoid the Scams, I wrote about how not all scams are the easiest things to spot. In this post I want to talk about the free workshop, seminar, or bootcamp shows that are being ran all over the country.
These are those things advertised on the radio or the newspapers. Basically, a company will run some free event at some hotel to show you the secret of making money through various ways like with an internet business, real estate, stock investing, etc. These things are really just a 1-8 hour sales presentation. It can even last several days. A lot of them will tell you tickets to these events are normally several hundred dollars but you’re “special” so you get to go for free. No one really pays for these things in most cases.
The Process
So what happens is that they have some professional sales person talking to you about how he/she used to be broke or some other sad story with the point to make you connect with them. Their goal is to make you drop your guard by coming across as an honest, average guy who became successful and all he wants to do now is to give back to the community. They may even throw in the fact that their children are part of the business too and how they are so proud of them. Some might even cry right there in front of you.
Once you trust them, they start producing feelings of pain inside of you. They know that most people who go to these things are broke so they will hit you with that fact in order for you to want to “make a change” and buy their program. The price of their product or service and how they present it will depend on how long their free seminar is.
If it’s just a few hours long, they will typically sell you on some 3-day event that may cost just a few hundred dollars. If it’s already a 3-day event, they will sell their package deals that may run up to $50,000 or more depending on the business that’s being sold. You read correctly. The ones that last a few hours where they sell the 3-day event is a gradual sales technique.
How They Get You
What really happens is that instead of showing you their real prices, they will make you commit to a small price first since they know that once you put money in already, you’re more likely to put more in.
This is why the easiest people to sell to are existing customers and the way they do it is called the upsell. You experience this all the time. What do they ask you at any fast-food chain after you place an order? “Would you like fries with that?”
With these workshops, the same thing applies. At those 3-day events, they never give you enough information to actually go out and make money. Instead, they overload you with a ton of non-essential information just to confuse you.
After 3 days of this BS, once your mind is worn out, they introduce to you the “coaching” programs. They might bring up “real customers” who have made money with the program to tell you their stories about how they were just like you and just a short time ago, they were sitting in your seat, and because they made the decision to buy, they get to stand before you.
Since you already spent your time and money, you’re worn out, and you feel lost as heck, you are now the perfect victim. Those “real customers” are mostly just sales reps who get paid a commission. Even if they claim they don’t, you can be sure that they are getting rewarded in one way or another.
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There are different variations to this scam and not all of them are actual scams but like the warning signs from my previous post says, if they are promising you a quick way to riches, chances are they are full of crap.
Again, the free workshop, seminar, or bootcamp scam can vary. It can be a simple internet business program where they promise to “do everything for you” for only $100 or something. After you buy, you will find out that the ones who make the big bucks went for a larger package that cost thousands. It’s all part of the upsell. No one is going to fall for these things if they talk about the expensive packages and deals first. It’s because they start small and build up that many people fall for these scams.
In the next session, I’ll be discussing MLM or network marketing and discuss how you can spot a scam from a legitimate home based business.
