How I Began My Own Online Business From Home
Have you ever thought about what it would be like to start your own online business from the comfort of your home? Just imagine… You’re the boss. Nobody telling you what, when, and/or how to do something. No one using a barely life-sustaining income to control you. The only reasons you have to “perform” are your own.
Hi,
I’m RL Williams, founder of AP InvestaGators.
When I first began my own online business from home the internet was like the WWW.Wild-Wild-West. Scams ran rampant! There were so many unscrupulous “Gurus” trying to sell you the latest and greatest push-button system it was hard to find anything that would benefit my efforts to create a sustainable online business that I could work on from home.
My Trip Down The Rabbit Hole Of Online Business Opportunities
I found a lot of crazy opportunities where you could stuff envelopes or assemble little what-nots at home. But, none of them allowed me to earn enough money to make it worth my time.
Dubious affiliate marketers were selling “systems” that were pyramid schemes worse.
There were gurus all claiming their “program” or “system” was the latest and greatest “formula” to becoming the next millionaire!
If these schemes weren’t trashy regurgitated garbage that used to work sometime in the past or outright scams, they were normally cost prohibitive or sold a training program that taught you how to sell the very same training program and nothing else. (This last thing is completely illegal now.)
I tried a few of the lower-cost “systems” only to discover they were only introductions to higher-cost “Mega” or “Super” systems. I quickly got wise to the ways of the “upsells”. Upselling is how some affiliate marketing is done to this day. They lure you in with something inexpensive and then offer you their main product(s).
This is perfectly acceptable if the products are worth the money. But if the products are complete garbage or extravagantly overpriced then it’s not much different from the scams of the old days.
The Emergence Of Better Home-Based Business Opportunities Online
I have become quite proficient at spotting worthwhile opportunities when it comes to affiliate marketing programs. I have tried several over the years and am considering a few that I know to be above board and beneficial.
Most of the scams of old are gone… wiped away by new international laws and Google algorithm changes. There are still many systems for sale out there that are nothing more than rehashed training that has been beaten to death and can be found by anyone with a simple browser search, so it is still important to do your due diligence when considering any opportunity online.
The reason I started this site was to InvestaGate these systems and programs. What I have found is that the best training programs on the internet are those that have a dedicated website. They will typically have an online community of several thousand dedicated members who tend to promote the training because they know it works. And this is what I do as well.
I am a member of two such training programs that have proven track records. Their claims are backed by numerous success stories and testimonials. Their methods have been tested by people who didn’t have a clue about building an online business or even how the internet worked when they first started out.
Before I started my own online business, I was a typical “employee”! I worked 5+ days 40+ hours a week, I hated most of the jobs I had but I enjoyed the people I worked with.
This Was My Typical Workday.
This is the way my typical workday transpired at the majority of jobs I’ve had.
The daily GRIND! The get-nowhere existence of the majority of employment opportunities available in the world today.
- Get up in the morning when the alarm goes off. Sometimes I hit the snooze, sometimes I didn’t.
- Do my morning routine… Bathroom, Getting dressed and grooming, Maybe breakfast or coffee.
- My commute to work… Hoping/expecting the car will start, Possible traffic headaches, Finding a parking spot once I get there.
- My work day… A couple of hours of mind-numbing work, BREAK, More mind-numbing work, LUNCH, More mind-numbing work, BREAK, More mind-numbing work, Possible overtime… QUITTING TIME!
- My commute home… Reverse engineer the commute to work with obvious changes, maybe stop for a drink or a beer with a co-worker.
The Employment Nightmare Never Ends…
Until/Unless You Do Something About It
If you do the same thing today that you did yesterday, don’t be surprised if you wake up years from now and wonder why the nightmare never ends, why you’ve wasted so much of your life selling your talents and labor so cheaply. The only one that can make a change in your life is YOU! Otherwise, expect the same results day in and day out.
If you are tired of the same old daily grind on the treadmill of a mediocre life, it’s time you took the reins and yanked really hard on them in the direction of a more abundant, rewarding lifestyle. Regardless of what the “haves” want you to believe, you ARE in complete control of your life… the master of your own destiny!
You Really Are Worth It!
You really are worth more than you give yourself credit for, and You absolutely can create a better, more fulfilling life for yourself and your family. There are many paths you can take. The best possible path is one with a low-cost, low-risk start-up factor that you can easily begin in your spare time.
The best way to do this is by creating a business online. And the lowest-cost startup model of an online business that I know of is blogging. It’s not that complicated when it comes right down to it. But it’s not easy.
Sure, it will take a lot of work. Nothing good ever comes easy or overnight. And this can definitely be one of the really good things in your life, but only if you take action. You have to become the master of your own destiny. You have to stop thinking like an “employee” and start thinking like an entrepreneur.
Employees are always worried about the possibility of losing their job or getting a raise or finding a better job or BLAH BLAH BLAH!
Entrepreneurs are always thinking about how they can take an idea and make money with it. Or what they need to do to take their business to the next level. They are the movers and the shakers in the world. They don’t worry about losing a job… they CREATE jobs and businesses.
Creating A Business Online From Home: The 4-Step Method
Before we jump right into creating a business online, let’s consider what the cost of starting your own business in the physical world would be.
The cost of starting your own brick-and-mortar business can be astronomical! I’ve tried several things myself. The lowest-cost start-up I ever tried was in the service industry. I had a handyman and a professional lawn care service. My overhead costs were my tools and vehicle which I already mostly possessed, plus my business license, and insurance. The license cost was negligible and I shopped around for cut-rate insurance.
Then there was the cost of advertising and dealing with all different types of people. I did actually enjoy my work and I made some decent money from it. But I would never consider it life-changing. And I would never consider doing any of the “offline” businesses I tried again.
Starting Your Own Online Business From Home
There are many ways you can start your own business from home. Too many in fact for me to go into in this article. But the one I’m going to share with you can be very life-changing. It has been for many thousands of people worldwide! And it’s a business that requires only two basic things, a computer, and an internet connection… Plus it’s a simple 4-step process.
Step 1: Find Your Niche
When doing business on the internet, you want a well-defined niche when first starting out. You want to figure out the market segment in which you want to do business.
Segment a large niche such as sports into particular segments like football, basketball, and baseball. Then further hone those down into smaller segments.
Continue doing this until you have laser-honed your niche into the smallest component that you can define. This is your mini-niche. And this is where you begin to build your online business for which you will need some form of an online presence.
Step 2: Creating a Website – Your Online Nexus
For our purposes, we will assume our online platform will be a website… more specifically a blog. You have several options for creating and hosting a website.
With today’s online technology, it has never been easier to build a website. And it will only get easier with time. There are many platforms to choose from, among the most popular are Wix, WordPress (my favorite), Weebly, SquareSpace, and Joomla.
The least complicated would probably be Wix and Weebly. The most functional would be WordPress, unless you are, or you have a friend who is, a wiz at writing HTML and other coding languages to build websites.
There is a lot more involved than just getting a website online. There are many components you need to add to your website’s functionality, and many different moving pieces involved in building a business around your website.
Build it and they will come!
Yeah, maybe… if you know what you are doing. You can’t simply build a website and put a lot of stuff on it and expect it to be successful. How are you going to let people know about your website? How do you maximize your efforts to get people to visit your website? What do you do once people start to visit your website?
You need to learn the answers to these questions. And that takes time and knowledge gained through training courses. These things are not that difficult to learn. There is information all over the internet. And everywhere you look you will find just enough information to intrigue you. This article is no exception. It’s simply meant to point you in the right direction, not educate you on how to start your online business.
Everyone who is in this business knows that the quickest and easiest path to building an online business is to find a good training program and/or a mentor. I would like to take a moment to introduce you to one of the best, most affordable online training programs in the world.
Within this training program, you will meet an entire community of fellow entrepreneurs from all over the world, from all walks of life who are eager to help you on your journey to building a successful online business. It’s called Wealthy Affiliate. I’m a member myself, and after several years of being a member and successfully creating multiple websites, I highly recommend it.
But, let’s get back on track with the next step towards building a successful online business from home.
Step 3: Attracting Visitors To Your New Website
If you have the funds to do so, you can run paid ads to attract people to your site. But it’s not absolutely necessary. If you can’t afford to or simply don’t want to pay for advertising, you don’t have to. You can easily build organic traffic to your site over time.
There are three basic steps to attracting organic traffic to your site besides word-of-mouth of course.
- Keywords
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Social Media
Using Keywords to Gain Traffic To Your Site.
A keyword or keyword phrase is any word or phrase typed into a browser’s search bar to locate anything on the internet. Internet marketers and bloggers utilize keyword tools in order to create relevant content for their websites. When considering a title for an article, the smart blogger will do keyword research. They can do this by either using various available Google tools or by using a keyword tool that compiles various online traffic data into a single database.
Keyword research is invaluable to the blogger.
Before even starting to draft an article, you should use laser targeting to come up with the best keyword phrase for your article. And as you write your article, related keywords will naturally occur within it. It is important to optimize the placement of your main keyword. This brings us to the next step of attracting visitors, SEO.
Utilizing On-page SEO
On-page SEO is the things you can do on each page of your website to help attract the attention of the search engines. And one of the biggest on-page SEO tactics is where to use your main keyword.
If you don’t have your main keyword placed tactfully throughout your page, the search engines might overlook your article and place it way down on the list of search results. Plus, you don’t want to use your main keyword too little or too much. It’s kinda like the Goldy Locks principle. You want your keyword usage to be just right.
If you don’t use the main keyword enough, the search engines will think your article is not relevant enough for the search term. Use it too much and you get dinged for keyword stuffing and search engines frown on this.
The Goldy Locks rule of thumb is to use your main keyword on average one-half of a percent of the time at the most. Some say up to one percent. So, about 75 times within a 1,500-word article would be optimal. At least once in the opening paragraph, at least once at the end, and the remainder dispersed naturally throughout the remainder of the article including in subheadings.
This establishes relevance between the main keyword and your article content. Just be careful to not overuse your keyword, otherwise, you may be penalized for keyword stuffing. And you do not want that.
Utilizing Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO consists of external links to and from other websites and internal links between articles. Social media accounts play a role in off-page SEO. With Facebook, you can create a business page related and linked to your blog.
External Links
These are links to or from other websites. They can be links you created yourself linking back to a post or page from other websites or your social media accounts, or links created by others sharing your content.
The best external links or backlinks are links created by others when they visit your site and share to their own social media accounts, or create a link from your site to an article on their own site if their site is relevant to your content. Another type of beneficial link is internal links.
Internal Links
These are links that interconnect the pages and posts of your website. You will see them all the time on other websites. As you are reading an article there will be a link within that article that will take you to another article or a page on that same website.
Internal links can also be from one section in an article to another section within that same article. A perfect example of this is a table of contents so you can jump right to a particular section in an article.
Social Media
When it comes to social media associated with your blog, you normally want to create separate social media accounts. You can:
- Use personal social media if they are related to your blog.
- Use your personal Facebook profile and create a business page and/or group for your blog.
- Utilize other Facebook groups within the same niche as your blog, just be careful to not spam or advertise because most groups don’t allow outside promotions.
The main social media platforms many bloggers use are Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. I wouldn’t recommend fewer than three social media platforms. Social media is also a great way to get external links which is another component of off-page SEO mentioned earlier.
After learning about the first three steps of building your online blogging business, comes the good part… the money part.
Step 4: Getting Your Offer In Front Of Your Audience:
Where The Magic Happens
There are several ways to earn revenue with a blog. The most basic ways are affiliate marketing, selling ad space, and/or selling your own product. Affiliate marketing is one of the simplest to use in getting an offer in front of your audience. And just about every major retailer in the world has an affiliate program that you can join. One of the largest is Amazon.
Other major retailers with affiliate programs include but are not limited to:
- Walmart
- Target
- Home Depot
- Lowes
- Barnes and Nobel
… for a very short list. I could go on and on and on.
In addition to the many physical retail stores, thousands of online retail stores have affiliate programs or are part of an affiliate network. One of the biggest online retailers that I mentioned earlier, Amazon, holds a huge portion of the affiliate marketing world. Other online sites like eBay and Etsy also have affiliate programs.
It’s easy to locate affiliate programs. Most sites will have a link at the bottom of their website pages. And if you don’t see it there, you can use a search with the store, website, or product name coupled with the words affiliate program.
Examples (Type into your browser search bar.): Flex 90 affiliate program, baby strollers affiliate program, self-help books affiliate program, and diet and nutrition affiliate program
I came up with these off the top of my head. I don’t even know if Flex 90 is an actual thing.
It doesn’t always work but a lot of times it will. If you are really curious about a product or website, you can use their contact form and ask if they have an affiliate program. I used that method several times with great success.
End Result: How To Start Your Online Business
At the end of this 4 step process of creating your online business from home, you will have a fully functional, completely optimized, and monetized blog that is ready to make money! The only thing left to do is continue to add relevant content to your site and keep interlinking the pages and posts.
Of course, there is a lot more to it than this. But I have to stop at some point so you can get started on your blog. And if you make the smart choice and use Wealthy Affiliate as your gateway to training, you will find me and many others there ready to help you succeed.
What things have you tried to start a business online and how well did they work?
Believe in Yourself as I Believe in You.
RL Williams,
Founder: AP InvestaGators
