By Kevin M

My friend Jay and I were talking about jobs this past weekend and he pointed out something that I hadn’t thought about: There are no astronauts any more! That may not mean too much if you’re under 30, but when he and I were growing up being an astronaut was the ultimate “hero career”. It was, as the kids say today, “the shit” among careers.

Back then it seemed that all of humanity would eventually be going to space—to find resources, to conquer new worlds or at least to alleviate overpopulation here on earth—and astronauts would lead us there. High minded and exciting, yes, except that it never happened!

If a career as cutting edge as astronauts is no longer secure, what can we say about the far more ordinary fields most of us regular folks work in?

You’ve heard it and read it before, and perhaps you’ve even been a casualty of one of the biggest phenomena of our time–the end of job security.

We have to do something about that, but what? Individually, there’s little any of us can do to create job security, but we can gravitate toward it’s close cousin, income security. If we have income security we might not even notice or care that we no longer have job security.

What is job security? What is income security?

Let’s face it, in order to function everyday and to have some sort of certainty about the future we need some measure of security when it comes to earning a living. For at least the past couple of generations that meant having a stable job, but the times they are a-changin’. Fast.

Job security implies that your job is safe for the foreseeable future and hopefully clean through to retirement. Your job IS your income—as well as your source of health insurance, retirement and other benefits, and even your self esteem and your standing in the community. All is well, and you even have income security, as long as your job is secure.

Most people seek job security because it’s a simpler way to earn a living—your employer has your job and your income “covered” freeing you to go about living your life. The downside is when your job is suddenly in jeopardy, because the entire financial component of your life is also at risk. It’s a classic case of having all of your eggs in one basket.

Income security means your income never comes from a single source. If one source fails, you have others to tap, and you can eventually replace the failed sources with new ones. You’re not overly concerned with any one income source, but with creating and maintaining a portfolio of income streams.

In the economic and employment conditions of our time, I think income security is the logical security to pursue.

Creating income security

Its one thing to know the difference between income security and job security, but ultimately it all comes down to making it happen and that’s not as easy. There are various ways you can begin creating income security and that can include just about any revenue sources you can think of.

Self-employment. This is the obvious first choice for providing an additional (or alternative) income source beyond a job. By its very nature, being self-employed is all about creating new revenue streams. If your business income is derived from several or many clients or customers (which it should), you’ll actually have a portfolio of income streams, and that’s the best income security you can have. Even if your income drops, you can still have at least some income from your business, as opposed to a job where your entire income will cease the day you’re let go.

Fortunately, the internet has made self-employment easier than ever and because it’s here and now and growing, that’s probably the first place you should look. It’s where I’ve decided to camp out and it’s working for me—and I’m not exceptional in any way, believe me.

Investment income. In an era of record low interest rates, this is more about turning small amounts of money into larger ones. There are various ways to do this and you should start investigating them. This is not about plunging into the stock market per se, but about developing the ability to identify under-priced securities that have the potential to grow well beyond conventional rates of return—then having the willingness to wait it out. It has nothing to do with get-rich-quick. It’s a skill, just like business- or job-skills are, and once you master it you’ll have created a whole new way to earn a living.

Forming business partnerships or investing in small businesses. One of the things you can do if you have a business is to partner with other businesses in ways that will enable both entities to grow. There are as many ways to do this as there are small businesses and people who own them. It can also be the middle ground between starting your own business and investing. And you can do this with skills as well as with capital.

Let’s say you have some capital but you’re spooked by the stock market; as an alternative you can invest some money in an existing small business (or several) as a way taking partial ownership of a growing business. Small businesses always need capital, but never more than now when getting a bank loan is harder than ever. Conversely, if you have certain skills needed by a small business, you may be able to join that business as an owner/partner. Marrying capital with management and skills is a time honored way for all parties to make money, and very the foundation of free enterprise.

Lowering your cost of living. Not many people think of this as an income source but it really is. When you lower your living expenses, you’re lowering the amount of income you need to earn—that’s the equivalent of a fresh income source, but it gets even better. The less income you need to live on, the less you need to earn, and the less you’ll need to pay in income taxes. That’s a double benefit. The biggest advantage here will come from lowering your biggest expenses, the ones that represent the biggest drain on your income. Less need for income means more freedom to pursue other income sources.

Jobs. I gotcha on this one, didn’t I? If there’s no job security and we need to pursue income security instead, why discuss jobs? Because jobs are, first and foremost, a source of income! The topic of income security isn’t a self-employment is good/having a job is bad debate—any legal income source is a valid one. That includes jobs. Income from a job is good, it’s the complete reliance on it that creates the problems. If you can keep a job while developing additional revenue streams, you’ll achieve income security in addition to having a job. Your job is then part of the income mix, but not the sole source.

One more point about jobs: if you intend to keep one in an era where there is no job security, it’s important that you emphasize skills over the job itself. Transferability is the key, and only a strong set of skills can give you that.

 
You’re creating income security in your life when you start receiving income from sources other than your employer. That point is important in itself—you shouldn’t quit your job to create income security—you can and should do it while you have a job. In fact it will be easier to do it this way, and your job itself can be part of the security you’re working to build.

At a time where there isn’t much in the way of job security, what steps are you taking to build your income security? Are there any ways I didn’t mention?

Related Posts:

How Blogging Solved My Mid-Life Career Crisis
7 Reasons to be Self-Employed
Why Most New Businesses Fail – And How Not to Become One of Them
5 Tips to Go From a Job to Self-Employment
The Self-Employed Health Insurance Dilemma
7 Reasons Why Self-Employment is More Secure than a Job

By Kevin M

“Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”—Motto of The Christophers

I mostly make my living on the internet these days but I have a confession. I never worked much with computers until three years ago, least of which the internet. Sure, in the preceding 25 years that I worked in mortgages and accounting I used computer applications, lots of them, but most of us understand the not so subtle difference between that and working in an environment in which your primary means of support is coming directly from working on/in computers or somewhere out in cyberspace.

My career as a paper pusher ended unceremoniously at the end of 2008, a time when recycled paper pushers weren’t in very big demand. Where to go, what to do? Damn computers–#%&*@$g internet—they’ll be the end of the world, you watch!

That last line is a fiction (OK, it was a deeply suppressed thought), but I chose to intentionally avoid dwelling on it. Every one who’s ever seen their career crash and burn can point to one or more big picture factors that directly or indirectly greased the wheels of their departure. We can either poison ourselves with bitterness, or find some way to benefit from prevailing changes (hence the Christopher’s quote above). Which route we take will mostly determine our future direction.

Job VS Opportunity

Here’s the thing about computers and the internet—yes, they have been responsible for the permanent elimination of millions of jobs around the world (and almost certainly more to come), but they’ve also created a sea change of opportunity. We should work to take advantage of that opportunity.

Now notice I said “opportunity”, rather than jobs—computers and the internet have created many, many jobs, most of them high paying. But they’ve destroyed more jobs than they’ve created on balance. And let’s face it, unless you’re a highly trained “techie”, getting a high paying job in the computer field is tough.

The opportunities I’m describing won’t be found in a job, but in having your own business.

Scared? Don’t be. I think it’s the wave of the future. Most people who have held jobs all their lives tend to think “job” when it comes to earning a living, but the onslaught of computers and the internet have changed that arrangement. I think that computers and the internet are the 21st Century equivalent of the return to the family farm and shop that provided income for the majority of humanity since the beginning of civilization.

What are some of the ways that computers and the internet are making self-employment more doable?

The entire world is our market

Because of the internet we’re no longer limited to the local community as a business base. Business can be developed throughout the world. The obvious advantage here is a much bigger market, but probably more significant is the niche factor. There are more niches globally than locally, and that heightens the chance of finding business success.

For example, let’s say you’re an art dealer; you can only drum up so much business in your immediate local community. But by selling on the web, you can reach hundreds of larger markets around the world, and many of them may buy proportionately more art than people on your home turf do. Even as a blogger, a significant amount of my income is derived from non-US sources. That’s the nature of the web—a market without borders.

Free and cheap marketing

Every business needs to market, otherwise there is no business. But marketing can be the mortal enemy of a small business, especially a start up. Advertising in the traditional media (TV, radio, mailers and print) is expensive. The big players can and do play this game, and play it well.

Marketing on the internet is far cheaper (and often free) than it is in the traditional media. You can place ads on large websites for less than the cost of advertising in a local newspaper, or you can market for free on the social media, like Facebook and Twitter. Just having and growing your website or blog is a form of advertising.

Networking gets larger—and more important

Networking opportunities are wide open–people are helping people on the web. Most web businesses are small, often one-man or woman shops, so you can market your products through another online business while they market their product through yours. You can also swap business strategies and gain access to valuable information. Networking is the life’s blood of the internet—which is why it’s called the “web”.

More product lines

Product lines are available to us that once were known only to “insiders”. Everything is being sold on the web and that presents some opportunities. Many companies will offer affiliate sales arrangements, in which you get paid a commission to sell their products. And since it’s what they do, the process of signing up and is usually pretty simple. It goes without saying that any sort of import/export business will be easier to build, since it’s all done online.

Online sales are on the rise

Online sales of nearly every product or service you can imagine are rising steadily. What this means is that the resistance to buying online is much lower than it was just a few years ago. More people being more willing to transact business online is a win for the small business. Where you once needed an attractive storefront or office suite to get people to do business with you, now all you need is a good website.

Free, online training

Information on any business you can think of is no farther away than a Google search (YouTube is another excellent source). Most businesses are “seat-of-the-pants” affairs—you learn by trial and error. If you’re tooling along in your business and you hit on a snag, you can usually find the answer somewhere on the web. It’s been said that because of the internet, the average person today has access to more information than kings and business tycoons had 50 or 100 years ago. Use that to your advantage.

Inexpensive staffing

Next to marketing, staffing is usually the most expensive outlay for a small business, but the web can even help you with that. You can find inexpensive outsourcing help with virtual assistants (VAs)—no need to have formal employees. VAs can perform everything from simple administrative tasks to complicated computer applications, and they usually cost no more than a few dollars an hour. There are talented people in less developed countries who are willing to take on some of your work for not a lot of money. That means no W2s, no employee benefits and no employee lawsuits. There out there on the web, waiting for work.

Building a portfolio of businesses

If you can start one business on the web, you can add a second, a third, or as many as you want. You can enter one business and move seamlessly to another—everything just works faster on the web. Web entrepreneurs are a growing phenomenon—once you overcome your apprehension about the web, the sky is truly the limit. This adds an income diversification that a traditional job can never provide. I’d take that over employee benefits and a loose promise of job security any day!

Servicing the online “establishment”

As more businesses develop on the web, so do the opportunities to provide support services for them. If you have computer-, social media-, marketing-, writing- or administrative-skills, there are internet businesses and blogs who could use your services. For example, blogs often use outside services to write articles, manage content, social media marketing and technical support. Any such niche could be the beginning of a new online career if you have such skills.

Start small, grow large

Here’s one of the best parts of working on the web: you can start as a side business until you grow into full-time. That means you can plunge into an internet business without having to quit your job, and you can continue doing so until you’re ready to take it up to full time. This lowers the risk of starting an internet business substantially. This is possible in large part because internet businesses are talent driven, not capital driven as so many bricks and mortar ventures are. You don’t need inventory, employees or even office space, and as discussed above, marketing is incredibly cheap.

All of these advantages make a strong case for the unemployed, under-employed, disenfranchised (that was me three years ago) or even the currently employed to consider some sort of internet-related income generating venture. And because doing it doesn’t require much money, you can try, fail and try again all you like—until you get it right.

This is after all, a new age—the Internet Age.

Have you thought about starting some sort of internet based business?

Related Posts:

7 Reasons to be Self-Employed
Why Most New Businesses Fail – And How Not to Become One of Them
5 Tips to Go From a Job to Self-Employment
The Self-Employed Health Insurance Dilemma
7 Ways to Improve the Success of Your New Business
7 Reasons Why Self-Employment is More Secure than a Job

By Kevin M

Last night my wife learned something disturbing—not for herself but for some of her coworkers. She has a part time job with a company that just announced that fulltime employees are losing their benefits and being converted to part time status.

Now the optimist may say, “it could have been worse—at least they didn’t lose their jobs”. And while there may be a grain of truth to that assumption, the bad news outweighs the good here, and I’d say by a wide margin. First of all, part time isn’t full time—it’s part time. That means even if you keep your hourly rate of pay, there’s no guarantee of 40 hours a week, or even of 30 or 20. That looks an awful lot like a pay cut to me.

Second is suddenly going from a job with benefits to one without—that includes health insurance. Charles Hugh Smith has made a strong case that the middle class isn’t middle class without health insurance coverage, and I think that point is beyond debate. What we’re looking at here, in addition to the pay cut, is the loss of socio-economic class status. They’ve been demoted to “the working poor” without ever losing their jobs. That’s pretty radical.

There ain’t no more job security

The example on my wife’s job isn’t isolated either. More employers are moving toward some variation of this all the time. Here’s the bottom line: from day to day, you can never tell what will happen with your job. A full-time job can turn into semi-employment with a single policy decision by people you don’t even know. It isn’t just layoffs anymore; its hours and schedule, pay cuts, job re-classification, job stagnation, loss of benefits—you name it. I’d even argue that the unemployment rate issued by the government is now mostly irrelevant.

Employment Realty #1 is that employers are figuring out ways to eliminate people and payrolls through a relentless shift to cheaper workers offshore, the latest computer technology or a combination of both. Translation: as much as we want to buy into the economy-is-recovering projections, it’s becoming painfully obvious that if that is happening, it’s fully capable of doing so without employees. The stagnant employment picture has less to do with the state of the economy than it does with the progression of options available to employers.

At least since World War II job security and benefits have always been major reasons why most people prefer to work for someone else rather than for themselves. Job security means insulation from the ups and downs of both the economy and the employers business, and benefits provided the safety net protecting against many of life’s uncertainties. Who wouldn’t want that if they could get it?

Now that neither job security nor benefits are guaranteed through employment, has the playing field been leveled, is there now less risk in being self-employed than there has been in the recent past? I think so.

Job security and self-employment

Here’s why I think that the case for self-employment is growing all the time, and why it may be the ultimate solution to the employment meltdown of the 21st Century:

1. As discussed above, jobs no longer carry the promise of stability or benefits
2. Self-employment was the primary income source of most people for thousands of years prior to the 20th Century—it is entirely possible that after nearly 100 years of large scale employment by large organizations, conditions are now returning to the historic norm of the family farm or shop (though it won’t look that way)
3. The same computer technology that’s putting people out of jobs is also making it easier to start your own business—we’ll spend a bit of time on this one in a minute
4. As the number of people who are self-employed expands, so will networking opportunities. The way you used to job network with people at other companies coverts to networking with those in the same or related businesses
5. The same instability that is making the job market less secure also opens up opportunities for part time, seasonal or contract work that can be used to supplement self-employment income—in the start up phase and later on an “as needed” basis
6. Employers who are reducing staff are often subbing out the work once done by employees—that’s an opportunity for a small business
7. Because you’re smaller and have much greater freedom in a small business you may be in a better position to react to changes in the economy, such as the ones we’re seeing now

This really is a “glass half full” situation—if we recognize what’s really happening and learn to use it to our advantage. Reality is going where reality is going; we can either embrace change as an opportunity, or let it roll over us while we look to the past for answers.

How the internet helps the self-employed

Many might curse computers and the internet for the negative affect they’re having on employment, but that’s the wrong approach.

In #3 above we touched on how computers are making it easier to be self-employed and that’s absolutely true. I’m an example of this. Earlier this week, in How Blogging Solved My Mid-Life Career Crisis, I spilled my guts about being disenfranchised at the age of 50. I was a textbook case of an economic casualty. But I chose to embrace the change rather than fight it.

Here’s the thing…people are making money working from home on their computers, and I decided that I needed to join them. Difficult? Most certainly. Impossible? No way!

Yes, there is more than enough get-rich-quick-on-the-internet snake oil being peddled out there, but beneath the phony claims, thousands of people are making a living (or better) on the internet.

I’m not saying that everyone could or should blog like I and many others are doing. But at a minimum you can use the internet to grow a local “bricks and mortar” business, in a way that wasn’t available even ten years ago. One of my best friends is running a very successful trash hauling business here in my neck of the woods and gets nearly all his business from the web. I believe that’s increasingly possible for most businesses.

If you have any idea for a business, fully investigate how you can use the internet to make it work. And if you don’t have any, look closely into ways you can make money on the web. Some ideas include blogging (my favorite!), freelance blog writing for other sites, and providing marketing, technical and administrative support to the many commercial websites and blogs that are out there on the web.

Because of the internet, nearly any skill you have or can acquire can be converted into some form of self-employment, if only as a side business. And these days, that’s looking a lot more secure than the average job.

Have you considered starting some sort of internet business? If not, what’s stopping you?

Monday’s post: Self-employment in the Internet Age

Related Posts:

7 Reasons to be Self-Employed
Why Most New Businesses Fail – And How Not to Become One of Them
5 Tips to Go From a Job to Self-Employment
The Self-Employed Health Insurance Dilemma
7 Ways to Improve the Success of Your New Business
Starting a Side Business – Why Now is the Time

By Kevin M

Picture this: you’re 50 years old, your career is dying on the vine—your entire industry is on life support—and you need to find a new career to carry you through the rest of your life.

Sadly—and gladly—this situation was not hypothetical. It was my reality. I say “sadly” because it was an incredibly stressful situation to go through, especially having a family to support while it was unfolding. But I also say “gladly” because overcoming crisis is an amazingly empowering experience.

Rising out of the pile of economic statistics

I was one of the millions of career casualties of the financial meltdown that you no doubt heard tell of from the news media and assorted talking heads. In fact, I was at the epicenter of the storm, working many years as a loan originator in the mortgage industry. (When I wrote in the first paragraph that “your entire industry is on life support” I’m sure you can appreciate that I wasn’t exaggerating!)

That was my situation at the tail end of 2008/beginning of 2009. Now at the dawn of 2012 I have a career designation unlike any I ever expected to have in my life: professional blogger. Not a common job description, especially for someone over 50, but I blog and I make money doing it.

How much money? Enough to make a living! That’s plenty—for now—for a guy who based on age and career circumstances could have easily been considered to be “washed up”. But there’s something I’ve learned about blogging—something much more encouraging: it’s one of those fields where the farther you go, the farther you can go. Think of it as “success breading success”. It’s very real in blogging.

Oh, and here’s something else I’ve learned from this experience: you’re only washed up if you think you’re washed up. But let’s get back on topic…

Hundreds, maybe thousands of people are making money blogging—but what IS different in my case is my highly unlikely background. I don’t fit the description of the usual professional blogger, who is typically in his or her 20s or 30s, has grown up with computers the way people my age did with TVs, has few inhibitions in regard to “transparency”, navigates the social media with ease and confidence, and generally has at least some professional connection to the IT universe. I can lay claim to none of that.

For me, entering, continuing, and extending my blogging career has been akin to building a brick wall—one brick at a time. But the take away, I hope, is that you’ll see that you can turn something as casual sounding as blogging into a legitimate career. I’m telling my story in the hopes that it might motivate you if you feel trapped by economic or employment circumstances. There is a way out—there always is.

What do you do when all the doors are closing?

A career crisis is a disaster at any age but once you reach the half century mark all of the problems are magnified. You’re too young to retire, but too old to start a new career.

Going back to school to get a new degree costs time and money you don’t have, and the time horizon to use the new skills learned is too short if you could. Employers in new career fields are unwilling to take a chance hiring you into an entry level position when they can easily hire younger people who are uncorrupted by previous experience and generally willing to work for less money. And that jumping-into-a-parallel-field thing is vastly over-rated, especially in the “worst downturn since the Great Depression”.

And there’s one other thing that any refugee from the mortgage business will tell you: we were widely viewed as “damaged goods”. I even saw ads that said something to the effect of “If you’re coming out of the mortgage industry we don’t want you”. I’m not kidding!

When you’re facing a conundrum like that, you can either cave-in, lose your self-esteem and “settle for what ever you can get” to carry you to the day when you’ll be eligible to collect a meager Social Security check—or you can come out fighting.

I chose to come out fighting. It wasn’t even close. But one of the most difficult things for a suddenly disenfranchised person (a description I never thought would apply to me) to do is to find a way to think long term in a world where your economic underpinnings have been virtually annihilated. The only rational course in that situation is to make an end run around the immediate problem—the very real prospect of permanent un- or under-employment—and to take a chance on something completely new.

I chose blogging. In my world, that’s as new as it gets.

The 21st Century equivalent of the Wild West

Blogging doesn’t top the list of places to find career salvation—I’ll be the first to admit that. More typically teaching, government jobs, IT or “something in the medical field” come to mind when people look to re-tool. Then there are the usual mid-life rest stops: real estate, insurance and car sales, or the various assorted “franchise opportunities”—all of which seldom work for people who have no entrepreneurial background. But blogging has one quality that none of those have: it’s the modern equivalent of the Wild West. It’s a world so undefined that even a complete but determined novice like me has a chance make a go of it.

Chaos—that’s where I chose to cast my lot, but not without reason.

I think it was Ted Turner who said something along the lines of “If you want to make money, find the place where the action is, jump in the middle of it, and money will come to you”. That’s a very loose paraphrase and I might not have it completely right, but it actually makes sense when you don’t know what else to do—and I didn’t. Blogging seemed to be that place.

Being an analytical type, I actually sat down and did T-account analyses to determine what my next “gig” would be—positive qualities to the left, negatives to the right. If a given field seemed to have a much higher number of positives than negatives, it was in contention.

Some of the qualities the new field had to have were easy entry, low or no capital investment, abundant room for growth, ready adaptability to self-employment, geographic mobility, and little or no government regulation—I was coming out of the mortgage business and saw it regulated into oblivion, but that’s a story for a different day. Blogging came up better than any other field I could think of, making it the “logical choice”, if you can believe as much.

The new field also needed to fit my skill set, and that wasn’t as apparent. As I’ve already revealed, I didn’t fit within the blogging “demographic”, didn’t have any IT familiarity and came from a generation where bearing our souls (and personal information) to others was considered out of bounds.

But I did have some skills that I thought would help. Though I’d never made money writing at any time in my life, I always thought of myself as a closet writer. I’m also a deep and generally unrestrained thinker—that fits well in a Wild West environment. And I had business and finance related experience from my mortgage career, and an earlier stint in public accounting. Not a whole lot to go on, but it was a start. I figured that if nothing else, I’d get the content part of blogging down quickly.

And here’s one other seemingly unlikely factor I had in my favor: I literally had no place else to go. That can create a level of dedication that those with more options can never muster.

So I mounted my horse, and rode out into the sunrise of the modern equivalent of the Wild West. God help me in my journey—and I know He did!

The path forward isn’t usually a straight line

Blogging has only been around since roughly the early-2000s, so it’s very much a field that’s still in its infancy. Because of this newness, it’s very much a blank canvass, a place where a novice is free to take chances, and quite literally as many as he wants. You can even mess up, and still move on.

This is very unlike the current employment scene where work flows and procedures are becoming increasingly precise and technocratic, even in the simplest of jobs. That’s the whole reason blogging appealed to me. We all have hidden talents, and blogging looked like the place where I could tap mine.

But chaos has its price too. I read as many blogs and published sources on the business of blogging as I could find, and one thing became clear in the early going: blogging is NOT an exact science. What works for one blogger won’t necessarily work for another. Damn—no road map!

You should gather all the information you can, especially from successful bloggers—some of it WILL work for you, just don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t. Blogging is a work-in-progress and much of it will depend on plain, old trial-and-error.

What DID work for me

Finding success is often a matter of creating order out of chaos, and that seems to be the general rule in blogging. This is not the easiest climb in the business world, but here a few pieces of advice if you’d like to make the trip yourself:

Drop any thoughts of “get-rich-quick”. When you’re down and out there can be a tendency to look for quick solutions and you might begin thinking in terms of rages-to-riches scenarios. Don’t waste your time and your money. Get-rich-quick and building a business are not at all the same thing—especially when it comes to blogging. With that thought fresh in mind…

Adopt a LONG-term view. I didn’t start making even a few hundred dollars a month until I was blogging for at least a year. It took me two years to hit the $1,000 monthly level, but it’s grown quickly since. Some people start making money after just six months, but understand that these are exceptional cases. The vast majority of blogs never make any money at all, and most fail within the first year. I didn’t fail because I didn’t quit!

Find a way to support yourself while you’re building your blog. I was done with the mortgage business, but I took all kinds of temporary and contract jobs while I was building my blog. Some of them interfered with my blogging, but I needed the money. There’s a definite “starving artist” quality to building a blog, but if you think of the outside jobs as supporting the building of your business it can actually turn it into an adventure that also provides you with material for writing content. Footnote: I still work side jobs when I can.

Be open to what ever comes your way. I’ve been describing blogging as chaotic and while that can certainly confuse and even sabotage your efforts to succeed, it also presents opportunities. Once your blog begins to get traffic, others in related businesses begin to notice. Advertising and affiliate deals, partnerships, networking arrangements—you name it—will begin showing up in your email. Many of them will be a complete waste of your time, but some will be serious and profitable.

Carefully consider as many as you can. Because the web is wide open, blogging can take you in all kinds of directions that you never expected. For example, about a year after I started my blog, Paul Van Lierop at Fiscal Geek offered me a paid staff writing position for his site. I accepted, and within a few months I had paid writing gigs on several sites and was making a nice side income. I still do this, but now that most of my income is from my own site, I’m doing less of it than before.

Network, network, network. Part of finding success on the road into the unknown is finding people to make the journey with. One of the greatest blessings of the blogging world is that there are so many people you can team up with. I’ve met dozens, and I’m going to say without reservation that this is the greatest group of people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. All are succeeding in their own ventures, all are entrepreneurs, and all need one another to make it work. I’m in a networking group now where we think of each other as “co-workers”—with all of the benefits of co-worker support, but none of the burdens. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Be relentless. If I could pick one quality that separates success from failure, it’s definitely this one. You have to become almost single-minded, blocking out and even ignoring distractions. No matter what, keep moving forward! While I was working in contract assignments—and enjoying the money of the moment—I never lost sight of the fact that the assignments were temporary but my blog was permanent! Constant forward motion has a way of getting you to where you want to go, even if it takes longer than you expect.

The Payoff

That may seem like a lot to summon up, especially if you’ve never built your own business in the past. But as difficult as it seems, the payoffs of succeeding are even greater. Here are some of the many benefits I’ve gotten from my blogging venture—you can expect the same if you decide to give it a serious try.

1. I have my own business. An income generating blog is a legitimate business—some are even selling for substantial amounts of money. In today’s economy, being self-employed is more secure than being on someone else’s payroll—especially as you get older.
2. My future is unlimited. I’m making money blogging and I haven’t even ventured into wide areas like affiliate marketing or multiple site ownership. While other people my age are worried about keeping their jobs, I’m working on growing my business. At an age where so many are planning on folding up their tents, I’m contemplating the infinite possibilities…
3. I love what I do. I’ve never been able to say that about any job or career I’ve had in the past. When you love what you do, it doesn’t even feel like work.
4. I don’t have to retire. The whole idea of “putting in your time” to retire at a given point never sat well with me. If I retire I want it to be because I want to, not because I have to.
5. Blogging flows with my life. If another opportunity comes along, I can slow my blogging to a side business—or ramp it back up if the opportunity turns into a bust. I can take time to tend to family or personal matters, and I don’t have to ask HR for permission. All I need to do is pack up my laptop and go.
6. I have geographic mobility. Since I’m no longer job dependent, I can live anywhere in the world that has electricity and an internet connection. No office to report to, no buildings to maintain, no inventory or heavy equipment to keep—my entire business can be “stored” in my head or on a flash drive. And both are portable.

I’m here to tell you that you can make money blogging, even if you don’t have any “prequalifications”. Or even if you think you’re too old. I was 50 when I started and I’m no whiz kid of any kind. But here I am, working through my mid-life career crisis with a plunge into what was—until three years ago—the complete unknown. If I can do this, so can you.

Have you ever thought about blogging as a business? What keeps you from moving forward with it?

Related Posts:

7 Reasons to be Self-Employed
Why Most New Businesses Fail – And How Not to Become One of Them
5 Tips to Go From a Job to Self-Employment
The Perfect Side Hustle: Freelance Blog Writer
7 Ways to Improve the Success of Your New Business
Starting a Side Business – Why Now is the Time

By Kevin M

You’re over it, all of it—the job, your career, the nine-to-five routine, the morning commute, the cubicle in the corner—you want to ditch it all and finally start your own business.

You’ve already decided what that business will be, and now you’re setting down to consider the details of how you’ll get it off the ground. There’s a major choice to be made: buy an existing business, or build your own from scratch.

Which route will you choose?
 

The advantages and disadvantages of buying a business

Because of the required upfront investment, both the rewards and risks of owning the business will be substantially greater if you buy an existing business. Each will need to be carefully considered to determine if this is the right path, and you can probably come up with a few more of your own.

Advantages of buying an existing business:

1. You’ll be taking over a business that’s already a going concern; a ramp up period will be completely unnecessary
2. Most of what you’re buying when you buy an existing business is the cash flow, which is the single biggest component in the success of any business
3. There’s no speculation as to the viability of an existing business—it’s a going concern and the results of operations are already known
4. You can spend your time improving management, work flows and sales, rather on setting up the business and developing cash flow from scratch
5. A built-in customer base can provide a ready market for parallel product lines
6. You can take advantage of the expertise of existing employees, or even of the previous owner(s) if they agree to stay on as employees during the transition

Disadvantages of buying an existing business:

• Buying an existing business can be costly, often involving both substantial cash up front plus a note for the balance
• If all of your capital is tied up in the purchase of the business, there may be little available if unforeseen problems or cash flow issues develop
• Though the business has a cash flow, you’re risking—with your own money—that you have the expertise to at least maintain it, if not grow it
• With the change in ownership, existing employees and vendors may not stay with you; none are bound by a purchase contract
• If the business you’re buying is a service business, there might be no way to accurately determine how much of it was based on the previous owners skills, personality or connections—the cash flow could dry up quickly once he or she is gone
• If the business fails, you’ll be out your down payment, and you may still be on the hook for any funds borrowed on your home, retirement plans, credit cards or from relatives

Clearly the advantages of buying a business can lift you to new heights, just as the disadvantages can land you in the poor house!

The advantages and disadvantages of building a brand new business

This may be the natural choice for most would-be business owners, if only because it doesn’t require the huge up front investment.

Advantages of building a completely new business:

1. You can usually enter start ups with little or no money up front, especially if you’re going into a service business
2. The success of the business will rely entirely on your skills and abilities, rather than on an injection of capital or on the skills of an owner who’s no longer there
3. Since the business is an upstart, you can work at it gradually while still maintaining other sources of income
4. The business will be customized to your desires; there won’t be any risk of running off existing employees, vendors or customers
5. Building your own business from a cold start will force you to be resourceful; you may find ways to run your business with subcontractors and product sources that will eliminate the need for employees, building space and equipment—all major costs
6. Should the business fail, you can walk away without having lost a large investment, or being stuck with holdover debts from a business that no longer exists

Disadvantages of building a completely new business:

• No cash flow will mean you’ll have to spend most of your time in the beginning building a customer base
• You’ll have to build the business relationships, product lines and workflows to enable you to service your customers—once you have them
• Being the new kid on the block can, in and of itself, be an obstacle to customers; many don’t want to deal with an upstart business
• You’ll probably have to be chief cook and bottle washer, at least until a steady cash flow is established, which will make it easy to get caught up in working on details that won’t put any money in your pocket
• The business will be entirely dependent on your abilities; if they’re deficient, you’ll find out right away and there may not be anyone else to rely on
• You’ll be working alone which can be tough if you’ve never done it before; there’ll be no one to be accountable to and motivation will be a constant struggle

Here we have largely the same situation as with buying an existing business—the outcome can go either way. The risks will be substantially lower than buying an existing business, but at the same time there will be less certainty of your success.

Which is the better way to start a business?

I don’t think one way is better than another as a general rule. It may come down to your skill sets and money situation more than anything else. If you have cash for the upfront investment, and a strong set of management skills, buying an existing business may be the better choice.

On the other hand, if you don’t have the upfront cash to buy a business, but you have strong sales skills and an aptitude for business you want to enter, starting from the ground up may produce better results—at substantially less risk.

What are your thoughts? Are you thinking of starting a business? Or if you already have a business, which route did you choose? Can you offer advice to anyone else? There are no right or wrong answers here, so have fun with it!

Related Posts:

Should You Borrow Money to Start a Business?

Starting a Side Business – Why Now is the Time

7 Ways to Improve the Success of Your New Business

Steady Paycheck VS. Self-employment; Which is Right for You?

Pursuing Your Passion Isn’t As Risky As It Used to Be

Why Most New Businesses Fail – And How Not to Become One of Them

By Kevin M

Are you thinking about starting your own business? If so, you have a lot of company. According to the Department of Labor, more than one million new businesses are formed each year. Depending on the source quoted, somewhere between 50% and 90% will fail, usually in the first year.

Why do so many businesses fail? And if you’re planning to start a new business, how can you avoid becoming one of them?

Some business ventures fail for bad luck, but probably far more fail for causes that were not only known up front, but could have been prepared for in advance.

Lack of capital

Many new businesses require money up front just to open the doors. Would-be business owners often borrow against their homes, their retirement plans or from their relatives to make it happen.

This presents two problems: 1) debt obligations are created, causing an instant increase in monthly expenses, and 2) no money is available to cover living expenses before the business is generating any serious revenue. The chances that a business will succeed under these circumstances are…questionable!

SOLUTION: Avoid entering any business that will require a large investment up front. Avoid borrowing to make that investment (save that resource for later—you may need it!). Most of what you’re bringing to a new business should be your skills and abilities, not your capital. You don’t want to buy a business, you want to be a business!

Lack of cash flow

Most businesses that fail do so for a lack of cash flow. Maybe some never had it from the beginning, while others had it for a time and lost it. Either way, cash flow IS a business.

SOLUTION: Know where your revenue will come from before you even start a business. Line up clients before you open the doors. If that isn’t possible, develop a large network of reasonable prospects—you should know that a revenue base is there otherwise don’t even start.

Work your business part time to develop revenue while you still have your job for income. Alternatively, work part time (or contract) for as long as it takes to build your business to where it can sustain you financially. This is the one aspect of having a business that you can’t fail at. No cash flow=no business!

Lack of knowledge

People often start businesses they know nothing about. They may start a business because they know someone who’s in it, or they may get into one that’s part of a trending fad. That starts a process of learning in the preverbal “School of Hard Knocks”, and it usually doesn’t end happily.

SOLUTION: Being self-employed is not a time for earn-and-learn; you need to have as much knowledge as possible beforehand. In fact you’re whole basis for becoming self-employed are your abilities as an expert. Consider the following:

• Start a business related to your current occupation
• Learn what you can from published sources
• Work for businesses already in the field
• Start the business as a part time venture so you can make your mistakes while you’re still on someone else’s payroll

Lack of time

Get-rich-quick schemes on TV are so convincing, aren’t they? In six months you’ll be making $50,000 per month(!), sitting all day by a pool or a beach in a warm place with palm trees, surrounded by beautiful people, and a fleet of luxury cars parked nearby–all yours, we’re to presume. Apparently that kind of money will not only buy you all those perks, but it will also leave you with plenty of free time to enjoy them.

But forget all of it! It’s pure fantasy. Most entrepreneurs never get that rich, and few ever have that much free time if they do. Running a business, especially a new one, will require more time than a full time job. Not everyone is willing to work 60, 80 or 100 hours a week to make a business work. Often there are other obligations and interests that make working that many hours undesirable or impossible, and the business withers and dies.

SOLUTION: Be realistic about how much time you’ll need to put into a new business, keeping in mind that you probably won’t be able to afford to pay someone else to do those important-but-not-necessarily-profitable jobs. Clear the decks of as many outside distractions as possible; hobbies may have to be put on hold, and needy friends and family members may have to be held at bay.

You’ll also need to identify the most profitable activities in your business. The ones that generate the most customers, cash flow and profits will be where your first best hours need to be spent. The sooner you can get that going smoothly, the sooner you can hire others for the stuff that doesn’t put money in your pocket. Then you’ll have time for pools and palm trees.

Poor timing

Timing is everything–and nowhere is this more true than starting a business. Many new businesses never get out of the starting gate for no reason more complicated than bad timing.

Sometimes this can be bad timing on your part. Starting a business when you’re unemployed can be really bad timing, and that’s the time many choose to make the move. But cash flow is usually the goal of the unemployed and new business ventures seldom provide this in any abundance, and never quickly.

Sometimes timing issues will be completely beyond your control. Starting a home building business or a mortgage company in 2006 would be stellar examples of bad timing for factors beyond your control. Sometimes you can see that sort of thing coming, sometimes not.

SOLUTION: Starting a business requires a strategic plan. You should do it at a time that’s favorable to you, not at a point of desperation or for a lack of alternatives. Make sure you have your contacts lined up, a tested marketing plan, and your financial house in order before taking the plunge.

Big picture, pay close attention to the economy and to the industry you’re going into. These are the forces that can carry a business one way or another. Better to start a business late in a recession (or early in a recovery) when much of the competition has folded, than when the economy is booming and competitors are on every street corner. Look at developing trends that affect an industry. As an example, consider the affect that direct video rental companies, like Netflix, have had on brick-and-mortar video businesses. New technologies are creating new businesses and destroying others, and the trends can never be ignored.

Choosing the wrong business

Every year thousands of people plunge into businesses they know close to nothing about, and the results are completely predictable. Often this happens through franchising operations or multi-level marketing schemes. Ease of entry is the only reason anyone might consider them, but they can be especially enticing because they carry the notions that…

• other people are doing it (implied: “and so can you”), and
• there’s a company or network to back you up and help you succeed.

Now, both these points may be legitimate, but here’s the thing…as an entrepreneur you’re the point person in any business you’re operating. No matter how many resources you have on the back end, your business will never be any stronger than it is on it’s front line, and that’s you.

SOLUTION: Never pick a business because it seems to be working for others or because of a convincing marketing presentation. Never pick a business that’s completely outside your area of expertise. Pick a business because

1. it’s one where you have demonstrated skills and abilities
2. it’s something you’re genuinely interested in
3. it’s where you have natural connections (networks, affiliate relationships, product sources, etc)
4. you have more than just a casual idea of what it takes to succeed in it
5. it’s one you’re likely to stay with even when the cash drawer isn’t full
6. it’s a business in which you can claim some status as an expert

 
Starting a new business should never be a blind shot in the dark. It should be about calculated risks in which you’re aware of the likely challenges you’ll face, and more importantly, how to overcome them.

Are you in business for yourself? What obstacles did you run into when you started, and how did you work them out?

Related Posts:

Should You Borrow Money to Start a Business?

Starting a Side Business – Why Now is the Time

7 Ways to Improve the Success of Your New Business

Steady Paycheck VS. Self-employment; Which is Right for You?

Pursuing Your Passion Isn’t As Risky As It Used to Be

By Kevin M

Welcome to the 21st Century, where job security is a thing of the past! No one wants to think about this, but because of technology and globalization, the possibility is very real that many jobs and careers that have recently disappeared aren’t coming back.

There may be a temptation to think that you have nothing to worry about because your job or career isn’t immediately threatened. But that’s just what many people in customer service, information technology and many other fields thought just a few years ago before their functions were moved overseas.

There are almost no jobs that can’t be replaced by a machine, a computer software system or a lower wage worker in some other country. The economic landscape is changing and though we may not like it, we have no choice but to adapt. Are you ready?

There is no more job security

It’s time to face a few facts:

Get past the idea of job security. Somewhere in our minds is a vision of a “normal world”—a place where America’s economy is the undisputed world leader, and it’s citizens and workers are fully and comfortably employed in living wage jobs with full benefits. But this isn’t the 1950s any more, or even the 1990s. Today’s reality is that many people don’t have jobs, let alone job security. Begin to replace job security as a priority with employment security,–the ability to earn an income beyond your current job or business.

Loyalty isn’t a lifelong commitment. Many of us have been trained to believe that loyalty is forever, but in today’s uncertain economy that kind of thinking can keep you on a sinking ship long enough for you to go down with it. Do the best job you can in the job you’re in now, but keep your radar up and in high gear, always on the lookout for the next opportunity. Realize that loyalty is a two way street and remember…

…they’ll get rid of you as soon as they don’t need you any more. This is the ultimate reality in today’s job market. You may be up to your eyeballs in work today and even for the foreseeable future, but businesses survive and thrive today by finding ways to cut costs. And that means jobs—maybe yours.

The time to look for a new job is before you need one

It seems to be some sort of cosmic law that the best opportunities in life come upon us when we’re busy with something else. The corollary is that when we’re unemployed and available they just don’t seem to come our way. Recognize this conundrum and prepare for it. That means searching out and pursuing opportunities before you have an immediate need to do so.

Just as important is realizing that many opportunities take longer to hit pay dirt than we typically think. If time may be required to make a job or venture work, starting now will be the most prudent course of action. What ever job or business you have, always look ahead for the next opportunity.

Keep your skills current—develop new ones

When I was growing up it was a mark of a successful career that one could kick back, relax, and enjoy the fruits of a long career. But get too comfortable in your career or business today and you could join the ranks of the unemployed.

Stay on top of your field, procure the skills you need to stay in it, and look to develop new ones that might enable you to move into a parallel field.

Consider maintaining more than one career

If you’ve been in sales the past few years, you might appreciate what I’m about to say here. Since about 2007, many commissioned sales people have experienced dramatic income drops. During recessionary times, this isn’t an uncommon occurrence at all. How great would it have been to have hands-on skills to move into a salaried position or self-employment?

Moral of the story: have a back up career. Money is good insulation from employment uncertainty, but sooner or later it runs out. When it does, you’ll need to have something you can do to bring in more. Having that career, skill or business in the pipeline before it’s needed will make the transition that much quicker when it’s needed.

Never settle in financially!

No matter how optimistic you are about your current job, don’t settle in financially. That means spend less, save more and stay out of debt. The traditional advice of saving a small percentage of your net income over many years—say 10%–doesn’t apply in a world where employment can no longer be relied upon. Try saving 20%, 30%, even 50% of your net income if you can.

And don’t plow it all into retirement savings either. Immediate needs for savings are more pressing now than they were a few years ago. Saving for the near future is now at least as important as doing it for the distant future.

Consider self-employment, even if you’ve never been

If you can’t count on a company to keep you employed, having your own business may be the best security you can have. Though not everyone is cut out to be in their own business, the state of the job market has ironically made doing so less risky than it was just a few years ago.

Even if you’re not in a position to quit your job and start a business, you probably can begin by starting with a side business. Unlike jobs, business ventures need time to develop, to make mistakes, to find a niche and to turn a profit. If you’re currently employed, you have the needed cash flow to take a chance on a business.

We’re told to use diversification in building investment and retirement portfolios, as a way of reducing risk and increasing long term returns. Now is the time to apply the same philosophy to our incomes. Diversify income sources between a full time job, a part time job and/or a side business, and be prepared to roll with the economic punches of our time.

There’s no advantage in agonizing over what appears on the surface to be a reduction in economic opportunities. We need to see this as an economic reorganization, a time when the rules are changing, and the need to seek opportunity has never been more important.

Can you give any advice on how to keep a paycheck coming in this economy? Have you faced long term unemployment and wished you’d taken some of these steps?

Related posts:

7 Reasons Everyone Needs to Have a Blog
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Nursing Your Career Back to Health
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10 Ways to Survive a Down Economy

By Kevin M

Plenty of people have lost their jobs in the past few years, the poor economy being the main culprit. But many more are in jobs where promotional opportunities have disappeared, and the emphasis has shifted from advancing to surviving.

If you’ve lost your job and can’t find a replacement in your field, or if there’s a pending layoff and you’re sure you’ll be in that position soon, or if it’s clear you’ve hit a career ceiling, here’s a radical suggestion…

Find your passion—and start living it!

If you can’t do what you’ve been doing career-wise, try doing what you’ve always wanted to do—that thing you you’ve dreamed about for years but couldn’t possibly do because you’d lose your seniority/security/pension/benefits/living standard—fill-in-the-blank.

For many people, the job isn’t providing many of those advantages anyway. When the perception of job security is lost, it may be time to stop running away from who it is we want to be.

Why seeking our passion is so important

When we’re moving forward in our careers, we not only have a positive view of our work but also of our lives in general. We’re going places, and that’s exciting. It’s called hope for a better tomorrow, but when it’s gone life can start to get stale. It may even get a bit…lousy!

Optimism is a natural human state. We all need it to feel that what we’re doing is making a difference—that we’re making a difference. But how do we feel that if our careers are stuck in neutral or worse? Do you get up in the morning and say “I just wanna get by in life”? Of course not.

We want and need to move ahead, to improve—to thrive! With cost cutting and job eliminations being the norm in so many fields, money can no longer be our primary motivation for measuring the value of our work. If money is tight no matter what we do for a living, then loving what it is we do becomes more important than ever.

Why the risks are lower than at any time before

If you’re facing a career crisis, or at least reading newspapers and blogs you already have a good idea that our economic futures are no longer remotely secure. Consider the following:

• Jobs are being outsourced to cheaper foreign locations, while others are being replaced by technology
• There are no unions to protect workers in today’s declining industries
• There is no job security in most fields
• The future of Social Security is uncertain
• Traditional defined benefit pensions don’t exist in most jobs
• Employers are shifting more of the cost of health insurance to employees, and in many cases eliminating the plans altogether
• Cost cutting fever has put an end to automatic annual pay raises
• In many career fields, parallel jobs at competing employers don’t exist; a job lost will be a career lost

I’m not advising that you quit your job tomorrow and start pursuing your passion, but I do mean to point out that the things we’ve been pinning our hopes on for the past few decades aren’t as certain as they once were. Because of that, pursuing your passion could be very well be the most reliable step you can take to securing your future. There really isn’t as much to lose as there used to be, and there could be plenty to gain.

How your passions could be the key to your survival

We often tend to view pursuing our passions as being a flight of fancy bordering on recklessness. But maybe that’s not entirely true, certainly not in the way it was in the past. There are certain benefits to it that may offset what we lose by leaving (voluntarily or otherwise) our traditional careers.

Doing something you truly enjoy. If you like what you do, it won’t feel so much like work. Not only will that eliminate the need for expensive hobbies and past-times, but it will also lower stress levels and that has measurable health benefits.

There will be less necessity to retire. Because you actually like what you do, there’ll be less need to “cash out” via retirement—early or otherwise. In fact, by doing what you love, you’ll be creating a career you can work at the rest of your life. That may be the best retirement strategy of all, especially if you haven’t managed to accumulate a large retirement nest egg so far in your life.

Better blend of work and personal lives. It’s often easier to balance work and personal when we’re following our passions, especially if that involves self-employment. If you’re happy in your work, you’ll be happier in life and the need for strict boundaries may not be so important.

Liking what you do means you’ll be better at it. If you actually like what you do for a living—as opposed to enduring it for the sake of a paycheck—you’ll do it better and be better at it. Perhaps more than anything else that may do more to increase your income and provide a steady paycheck than any other step you could take.

Minimizing the risk before taking the plunge…

While it may not be difficult to follow your passions early in life when your monetary needs are light, it can look like financial suicide to do so when you have a mortgage to pay, a retirement to prepare for and a family to raise. So how do you move toward your passions if this describes you?

1. Lower your cost of living. The less you can live on, the more likely you are to succeed at anything you try.
2. Debt is a critical obstacle to free choice. Pay it down gradually, pay it off immediately, sell the possession securing it, but get rid of it. The freedom you’ll gain will more than replace what ever it is you had to give up.
3. Save as much money as you can. The bigger your bank roll, the better prepared for what ever the future holds.
4. Pursue your passion as a side venture. Enter it and build it up on the side, until it reaches the point where you can make a full time pursuit.
5. If you go the side venture route, view your job as a financing source for your passion, for your new life. Not only will this thinking make your current job more tolerable, but it will also make it a key element in support of your forward movement—even if the job itself is taking you nowhere.

In today’s economic environment, pursuing you passions may carry less risk than you think. In fact the biggest risk of all may be in not following them.

Do you ever dream of pursuing your passions? What keeps you from doing it?

Guest post by Clair Schwan

Working a business in the online environment can be exciting. After all, it’s cyberspace – a new frontier. And, there is little doubt that many sources of information, ways of interacting with one another, and doing business will continue to expand in popularity and effectiveness on the web. Many wanna-be business owners have jumped onto the bandwagon of the Internet and gotten themselves immersed in an online business or two. And many have been very disappointed with the results, simply because they weren’t realistic in terms of expectations.

It’s commonly known that most online businesses fail. It’s largely because those involved pull the plug and abandon their efforts. Much of this retreat in the online marketplace is attributable to inadequate planning that fails to temper expectations. The Internet works at the speed of light, but revenue and profit doesn’t necessarily follow at the same pace. Let’s look at some of the areas in which we need to be much more realistic when it comes to our expectations for success in an online business.

• Time in service – a website created today doesn’t mean a throng of readers tomorrow. The most successful sites out there have been up and running for years. Sure, a website or blog can become a hot item, but this is something that’s rare. I spoke with a lady recently who was disappointed that her Ebook hadn’t sold a single copy, and yet she had the book advertised for sale on her website for two days, and there was hardly a page on the website that didn’t mention the book or provide a link to the sales page – including the home page. Two days? I wouldn’t be surprised if there were no sales during the first two months.

  Time in service provides the basis for several things. First, it allows the search engines to find your site and today it’s search engines that direct much of the traffic to a website or blog. Second, time in service allows readers who find you to become more comfortable with what you have to offer. Third, being online for a while allows others to recognize you as an expert, and this adds to the comfort that your visitors have. Comfort leads to trust, and trust leads to sales.

• Search engine optimization – in the ever-changing landscape of the Internet, we see search engines responding to our site content much more like humans, and less like mindless algorithms. So, it’s necessary to learn what pleases search engines, and play that game. Staying up with what search engines like is just another investment that we need to make. Also, if we’re smart, we won’t try to game the system. That’s a sure way to get ignored by the search engines.

  Also, we need to understand that search engines won’t find our site right away – it takes time, sometimes a month or more. And, search engines aren’t going to settle into our site with their “spiders” and “bots” and thoroughly go over all of the content and categorize each page – at least not right away. It will take several visits before they have a “feel” for our site, and then it takes more time for them to watch our visitor traffic to see if what visitors came to our site to find is really what we’re offering.

• Niche popularity – oh boy, you’ve got an exciting idea and you know it’s going to be big. That’s great, but does anyone else think it’s a great idea? That’s what counts. You might know plenty about pruning fruit trees, and that’s probably a niche market, but have you asked yourself some of the most important questions?
   
  • Who really cares about this subject, and how many potential visitors can I expect?
  • How much competition am I facing?
  • What can I do to bring the marketplace to my door?
  • Is this a profitable niche?

  Just because you’re all excited about something doesn’t mean someone else will be. What you create has to be interesting, compelling, remarkable and marketable. Otherwise, you’re not going to attract and retain loyal readers, and you won’t have a foundation for making revenue. Spend lots of time thinking about what you’re going to create, how you’re going to fit into the marketplace of products, services and ideas, and how you’re going to capitalize on your web presence.

• Quality content – no serious visitor will ever be interested in pedestrian level content. Your writing has to be good and attractive. We’re talking about knowledge, insight, a good “take away” for your readers, ease of reading, respect for their time, and something appealing like photos, audio and video. Getting good content together requires time and effort. You can’t simply highjack someone else’s stuff and expect readers to place trust in you – the highjacker.

  One of the advantages of the Internet is it levels the playing field – you can have your own brand and compete with others. Therefore, you need to show your visitors who you really are. They need to understand what your brand means and why they should trust what you say, advertise and sell. That requires your voice across the content of your site. Create quality content that has your own voice, and you’ll engender trust among your readers. That means they’ll be more likely to return for additional doses of you, and that ups the chances that they’ll be contributing to your revenue streams as well.

• Promotion – so you have good content, you’ve been around for a while, you have a good subject for your site, and you’re search engine friendly, so that’s about all you need, right? Not quite. You’ll still not be “taking off” like you could unless you actively promote your site. There are many ways of promoting your site. Let’s look at just a few of them.
   
  • Blog carnivals
  • Guest posts
  • Blog comments
  • Article marketing
  • Expert article sites
  • Contributing to “answer” sites
  • Starting a complementary blog/website
  • Print publications
  • Ad campaigns
  • Discussion on forums

  Just when you thought you were finished with all the work, it seems that the job of promoting your site is as big as building the site, and there is no end in sight. That’s about right. It’s a big job that never ends until you’ve gone viral and your site popularity is such that additional traffic is self generating and in the range that you’re satisfied with. Even then, you need to keep monitoring your traffic and revenue to make adjustments in response to the ever-changing marketplace on the web.

  Two of the big keys to promotion are to make your efforts provide you long term payback, and to be certain that you’re promoting something worthwhile. Examples of long term payback would be “evergreen” articles and blog comments that stay on the web for years and point back to you and your web presence. And, when your promotional activities are effective in bringing traffic to your site, you’d like the visitors to “stick.” That’s where good content comes into play, so start heavy promotion of the site after you have enough quality material to make it worthwhile for your visitors to stay, comeback, and recommend your site to their friends.

  If you’re reading between the lines here, you’re keenly aware that an online business requires good planning, dedicated effort, focus in and on the marketplace, smart work as well as hard work, and quite a bit of patience. In America we’re constantly fed “sound bites” and little video clips that don’t give us the entire picture of what’s going on. We’re also very accustomed to getting many things in a convenient package, perhaps something that’s instant and obtainable via a drive-up window. We need to forget about that and stay focused on the long view as any good business manager would do.

  Although running an Internet based business is different than a brick and mortar presence in the traditional marketplace, there are still many similarities between the two. A business plan is one of those similarities, and like any good business plan, we need to address various aspects of startup and operation, and that includes having realistic expectations about what we’re getting ourselves into.

  Clair Schwan is the host of Sensible Small Business Ideas, a website dedicated to encourage others to engage in self employment, whether on or off the Internet. He’s a big proponent of self employment simply because the only business you’ll really ever be part of is your own.

  Do you have an online business story to tell? Can you offer advice to someone running or starting one?

  ( Photo courtesy of danielbroche )
  ]]> http://outofyourrut.com/blog/2010/08/05/a-successful-online-business-requires-realistic-expectations/feed/ 8 http://outofyourrut.com/blog/2010/02/02/starting-a-side-business-why-now-is-the-time/ http://outofyourrut.com/blog/2010/02/02/starting-a-side-business-why-now-is-the-time/#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 04:43:39 +0000 Kevin M http://outofyourrut.com/blog/?p=898

  By Kevin M

  Unstable employment may be here to stay. 10% of the work force is now unemployed, and millions more are under-employed, working at temporary or part-time jobs. By some indicators the economy is showing signs of recovery, but globalization, advances in technology and rising healthcare costs have been gradually cutting away at employment long before onset of the Great Recession.

  In Multiple Income Streams to replace One Man-One Job?, we discussed different options to deal with the increasing unreliability of permanent, full-time, fully benefited jobs. Starting a side business is at the center of that discussion.

  Why start a side business?

  Even if your job seems secure at the moment there are a number of reasons you should be interested in having your own side business:

  1. Many of the jobs now in jeopardy were once considered “safe” only a few years ago. Banking was one of these, but we all know how that’s playing out now. Could your field be next?

  2. Even in jobs that are relatively safe at the moment, opportunities to advance have diminished. While your job may provide some security, you may need to look elsewhere in order to move ahead in your livelihood.

  3. Having an established second income could cushion the fall in the event of an unexpected layoff, freeing you to accept less than full-time work if necessary.

  4. Retirement. Few investment projections adequately account for the effects of inflation on future portfolio values. Relying exclusively or even primarily on overly optimistic retirement investment projections could leave us far less prepared than most of us assume.

  5. A solid second income could reduce the stress that comes with being dependent on a single source for your livelihood.

  6. Work for a living on your job, but a side business can offer an opportunity to do what you love.

  7. What starts out as a side business could grow into a future full time career.

  8. Any time we step into a new venture, we develop and expand opportunities and skill sets that weren’t available to us before we started. You never know what parallel opportunities could result from having a side business.

  Stop waiting for “someday”

  Who hasn’t fantasized about striking out on their own to start a business? What keeps us from doing it? A steady paycheck is one reason; a benefits package is another.

  You don’t have to give any of that up. In fact, being securely employed and dealing from a position of strength is probably the best launching pad from which to start a business. Keep your regular job and start your business as a side venture.

  To use a sports metaphor, think of your regular job as your defense where you fortify your household and don’t take chances. Your side business is your offense—the venture in which you take chances in favor of achieving long term financial independence or even real wealth.

  Choose a business that you would like to do—a hobby, a business that really interests you or something for which you have a natural talent. Many people work in careers they don’t particularly like because it pays the bills, or worse, because it’s what they’ve always done. Having a side business should be about preferences—doing what you really like. Think of it as an opportunity to break out and to try something fresh and new.

  Part of the reason you’ll want to start now is that it often takes longer than we think for a new business to start generating a positive cash flow. But start now, while you have a cash flow from your regular job, and you’ll have the staying power necessary to make the venture a success. Wait until you lose your job to start and the whole dynamic will shift from strength to desperation.

  Side business suggestions

  Here are some side business ideas just to get the creative juices flowing:

  • Tutoring. Were you a strong student in school? If so, you can tutor students or adults in a favorite subject. English as a second language is in great demand right now due to the influx of immigrants.

  • Blogging. Like to write? Have some great ideas? There are blogs on virtually every subject. Find one or two you like, visit blogs, leave comments and see how the process works. Get enough visitors to your site and you can earn income through ad programs like Google Adsense as well as affiliate programs. In addition to making additional income, blogging also offers a way to get your ideas out into the world.

  • Repair work. If you have knack for fixing broken things, a side business in repairs could work for you. Cars, houses, computers all need to be repaired and with the current emphasis on college norm careers, there aren’t always a lot of people around who can do that kind of work anymore. Start in your local area, and spread out from there.

  • Home remodeling. Given the weak economy and the even weaker housing market, a lot of homeowners are opting to renovate rather than move. I know a few people in home remodeling and they’re busier than ever.

  • Sell a product. . Most people work in service businesses these days and products often get overlooked. Find a product or product line that you believe in, that you actually use and can endorse without reservation Since most consumer goods are produced overseas, finding an inexpensive product source should be relatively easy.

  • Parlaying your full time job into a profitable sideline. Can you take the work you do on your primary job and turn it into a side business? This can be the easiest way to start earning money quickly and should be the first business type you consider.

  • Converting a hobby into a profitable sideline. Do you have hobby you really enjoy and where you’re really knowledgeable? This can be something you can blog about, earning revenue not only from ad sales on your website, but eventually from product sales related to your hobby.

  • Professional speaking/promoting. Most people have an almost mortal fear of speaking in public, which puts a natural lid on the number of people who do it. If you like speaking before groups, find out if there’s a way you can monetize that skill.

  • Pet care. The dual career household is now a cultural fixture, but who’s minding the family pet when everyone is at work or school? This is a business you can start in your own neighborhood—where you have credibility—then branch out as your referral base builds.

  • Web design/marketing. Websites and web marketing have become major advertising venues, so nearly every business needs help in this area. If you have skills in web design or web marketing your potential market is nearly the entire business community.

  You can come up with as many ideas as you have interests and skills, but the important thing is to get started now while time and circumstances are on your side.

  If you think that building a side business may be the right path for you, but you don’t know what kind of business to go into, check out my post, The Freelance Blog Writer Side Hustle. Blog writing is one of the most promising side ventures you can enter because it’s growing rapidly and has excellent potential to lead to still more opportunities. This post can help you get started if you think it could be a business for you.

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