You may have read articles about working at home. You have definitely seen countless ads about making tons of money over night and multiple success stories about how someone made a big some of money in little time. In my experience most of these stories apply only to those who have the best advertising campaign to sign you up for information that you pay for.
The truth of the matter is nothing is free. Making money from home, whether it is the way I do it, by physically working and building a business or by creating a virtual mall, or blog spot enterprise, requires a monetary investment, time and effort.
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I will give you an idea of what I have done to make my business known. I started by joining a group of people who write blogs. The idea is to create a web site that is about something you are passionate about. A niche so to speak. The training here shows you how to create a site, and get affiliate links to put on your site. These are pay per click ads (PPC) that pay you an amount when people click on them. Some will also pay you if the visitor signs up, or buys from the website that they have been directed to.
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The most difficult part of this is to get your website ranked high on the search engines, Google being the most important, followed by Bing, and then the smaller ones (yahoo etc.) It can take months to figure out the keywords that work best, even when you pay for the tool that is provided. This is effective but can required hours of research and one must learn and polish the art of blogging about subjects that interest the visitor. This particular company makes it’s money by selling you membership, and add ons. They also provide an income for everyone that you can sign up to take the training.
I found that the training here was invaluable for the money I spent, and there was some residual income.
The most valuable thing I learned was how to get a presence on the internet (google search and maps) In this day of computers and cell phones, digital advertising is the most effective way to get noticed. It is not free, but it is cheaper than renting a billboard, having a radio spot or any kind of paper media advertising. Most importantly” it is effective.
So here is my routine:
- I get up and get my brewed at home coffee (this is paramount for me)
- I turn on the computer, check for relevant messages and emails
- I see my wife and the kids off to their various endeavours for the day (school and work)
- The next step is to be dressed to work. I have a morning routine, just as if I was going to a job elsewhere.
- Then leave the house with the phone and head to the shop at the back of our property. There is some tweaking needed here, because my parts catalogues and computer have to remain in the house for the time being.
- I stay focused on the repair work that I have set out for the day, and will only come back to the house for lunch, or to do related paperwork, whether that is doing estimates, ordering parts, or looking up numbers to call work related people.
If I have errands to run, I will schedule them in to my day (banking, parts or tools purchases that are done locally)
A very important thing to remember is that YOU ARE AT WORK. Do not get distracted by facebook, or whatever social media sites that you are interested in. If you are socializing with friends, you are not as productive, and in the end time is still money. Facebook etc. are also a valuable tools for your business, but use your computer time wisely.
Sometimes I forget to update my website software, sometimes I don’t post on my Facebook page as much as I should, sometimes I don’t write enough blogs. It is a learning curve, and some things will take time to work in to the day. To me the key is to keep improving and tweaking the routine until I am fully comfortable with it. That may never happen because things change as the business grows.
