As the economy has struggled over the last few years, more and more folks are looking to the net to replace or supplement their incomes. Several months ago I made the jump and now work as a stay at home/work from home dad. I had a related sarcastically ask me a few days ago "Does anyone really make money online?" As some of you know the short answer is "yes", but I wanted to take the opportunity to give my long answer. I wanted to share some of my personal/professional revelations over the last year.
I was speaking with my father a few days ago about my transformation from "Cooperate America" to my home office, and remembered my emotional and mental anguish over the decision. I imagine there is a growing segment of the population that is currently looking for home-based opportunities. These "opportunities" general fall under four categories:
? Multi-level Marketing
? Affiliate programs
? Home based start-ups
? Home based franchises
I took a good look at several options under each category in the year leading up to my exodus. I would encourage anyone who is considering making the jump to take a few months to consider options under each category carefully. There are certainly pros and cons to each. Although this article is not about an in-depth look at each option, I will mention; as a veteran of the MLM industry, it usually takes several months at best to build up any income from almost any MLM. The only exception that I have found to that statement is if one is selling it successfully online.
I want to digress into my personal past experience a bit because I believe it may be helpful and relevant to many others. Here is how I became an online entrepreneur:
About a year and half ago I was still working at week 55 plus hours. I had been doing that for several years. I worked in a very high stress attorney's office in the Twin Cities. Aside from the hours, what I was doing was "emotionally, mentally, and spiritually draining. I would drag myself home between 8 and 9:0 pm every night. I saw my wife and kids about an hour a day back then. My oldest, Luke, who was two at the time needed my attention so I would put him to bed and I literally saw my youngest (who was 4 months at the time) about 15 minutes a day.
In June of 2009 my family had a wedding to attend and as usually I had to work so my wife and kids drove up ahead of me. I met them the next day. My wife was getting out of her car and had her hands full so she asked me to get my youngest, Nathan, out of the car. I will never forget it. I opened the car door, and I'm telling you, he did not know who I was! I mean, he took one look at me, beat red, and let out a blood curdling scream!
That was a pivotal moment in my life, folks. Don't get me wrong I went back to work on Monday for another 55 hour week. I had a mortgage and a car note to pay. However, I realized I was messing up. I had to make a change and get out of the modern day slavery that I had believed was the "American Dream."
I don't think I was a-typical. Most people in modern America are driving themselves into the ground trying to survive, or maybe even get ahead in today's economy. I thought that if I made enough money, no matter what, that would be best for my family. At the risk of sounding cliche folks, life must have a balance. Most of us need to find some way to slow down.
As I hope we all know, our value to our families is about a lot more then what we can physically provide. I am, of course, talking about the love, nurturing, and support that we provide to our children; as well as the companionship to our spouses.
With these profound revelations swirling in my head, I set out to escape my situation. I knew the goal was more time with my family. I had spent fifteen years in the fundraising and collection industries. Although there was home based opportunity in those industries, my heart told me it was time to find a brand new adventure. The logically went through the four above categories of options and looked at many different companies and programs. If you are currently going through that process, I would like to give you some solid advice: don't BUY HYPE! Seriously look into any opportunity before jumping into (especially an MLM). Don't buy hype. Don't sell hype. At the end of the day jumping into a situation without having a solid plan of action for success can cost you much more than your time.
I eventually came to a realization: If I was going to really make money from home it was likely going to be largely online. I started looking at the countless claims on the internet. There is one thing we can all agree on: There is an almost unlimited opportunity to make money online! I don't care if you're selling an eBook on how to get your pets pee smell out of the living room carpet. There's a thousand people out there buying-if you can master internet marketing. Wrap your mind round this one, my friends. On any given day there are over 1, .000 people online 407.724. You can't tell me to 100 aren't looking for the best way to get to smell out their carpet. Hypothetically, even at 3 bucks a piece, that is $ 300 per day!
On that note, I have to warn you not to be fooled by thousands of videos, books, programs, and that promise to make an "overnight millionaire, an online marketer, and all you have to do is buy this program for $ 500 and push the enter key on your keyboard. Now watch the dollars magically flow into your bank account! " Possibly I'm embellishing a bit here, but the reality is that there must be 10.000 programs and videos online that pretty much make that claim. If you take one thing away from this article I hope it is not to waste your money in the hope of making a successful career change based off of a $ 500 training program.
The truth is, if you really want to learn successful online marketing to good training program is likely going to cost you 1500 plus dollars. There are several good ones currently online. Some run as high as $ 5,000 to learn just one aspect of online mastery, so look at the curriculum very carefully. Consult someone who knows all the aspects of internet marketing to make sure that what you are looking into is the real deal. Any good university style training is going to take some time and must be accompanied by an instructor, mentor, someone who is willing and able "answer questions as they come up. Without this, you are likely to run into many little problems that can take you weeks to figure out without someone to ask. I am writing this article to encourage others not to fall into the trap of wasting thousands of dollars by purchases "pieces of the puzzle" only to fail because they do not have the full picture.
For example, you could master 90% of SEO techniques, but if you do not have good keyword research you will fail at any internet marketing. Another big fallacy is that you need to spend money to make money on the internet. I have found that it is very possible to get to the top of organic searches through many free tactics. They aren't exactly free ... they do take effort and know-how.
If you considering doing anything online you need to have good internet marketing training to succeed. Earlier in my journey I spent over 100 hours developing a membership site. This cost of the site was around 12 k. Most entrepreneurs spend thousands to build fancy sites and lose money because they do not know how to market their product, service, or opportunity online.
So I would encourage you, if you are on a similar journey, to ask yourself: What is it worth to learn internet marketing? Take a good look at your options to do so, but don't get led into spending money for a piece of the puzzle. Invest in a comprehensive training program and the newly found expertise will change your life! I have the ability to make more from home now than I ever would have been capable of working for someone else!
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