The fact that making money online means you can get up when you please, not have a boss and keep whatever company you choose while you earn makes it the only way to live in my opinion. Yet, when I tell people this is what I do for money, they react in one of 2 ways. 1) Suspicious (mainly immediate family) 2) Just unimpressed / unappreciative (friends and acquaintances). I just want to say “don’t you get it? I earn without having to go to work!†See, that’s probably one of the reasons why there simply aren’t enough entrepreneurs in the world and there are all these problems with unemployment, recession and what not. You don’t think about it when you take the knowledge for granted, but to understand internet marketing, you have to understand a lot of concepts in detail, not least how Google works, how to build websites, how to write persuasively, what products will sell and why etc. Internet marketing is a multi-skilled, knowledge rich profession. It’s these factors that thankfully prevent everyone in the world from instantly understanding it, setting up sites and saturating all niches and ideas. /end of rant
In my opinion, website marketing, and all that has to do with it, is just a job. Just like any 9-to-5. People react in that way because making money from the Internet is an informal way of working. And to be honest, saying you can get out of bed whenever you want, sounds like an effortless life. I agree it involves a lot of knowledge, but don't all serious jobs involve lots of specialty and knowledge?
I don't understand what half my friends do all day for a living - why should I expect them to understand, or be interested in, what I do?
When I tell people I work with websites online to make money the first thing people accuse me of is owning a porn site ha but thats far from the truth.
My explanation is that I write for a living, then post that content on websites and sell relevant advertising. Unlike a lot of people that do what we do for a living, I have an office I go to every day as opposed to hanging around my house and working. I've also been know to sit in nice hotel lobbies, restaurants, bars, parks, etc and write. The people that know me on a personal level completely get what I do, they just don't really understand how it's actually done and are amazed that I make a six figure income in the process.
Hats off to you jax - just curious, do you make a six figure income selling diabetes recipes? I agree, the internet lifestyle is very good. I used to be an investment banker (yes i know...boo hiss) before setting up my dotcom and the lifestyles could not be more contrasted. Yes, there is hard work but with correct use of outsourcing it's a nice way to generate an income. My friends are all high achievers but all of them have a dirty backstabbing pig of a boss to report to, are constrained to set hours and have pretty much no flexibility in their jobs.
It's highly misunderstood and people don't know how big the "internet" market is. Don't worry, in time they'll be kissing your feet.
People aren't impressed until you get out on your own and make a living at it while supporting a family. The perception is that you can't do so and until you prove it you are really only making pocket change. My family is surprised every time I tell them how my business is slowly growing from where I was at a few years ago. At the same time, I'm not making near as much as others who have been in the game less time than I have. That is somewhat frustrating, but it's okay!
I agree with you, so many people are blind and have been programmed to only think they can work a job to make money in this world. I think that is a real shame, because so many people struggle to make a living and live only check to check as a result. There is a reason it's called a job just over broke. They make just enough to pay a few bills, and then have to go back and do it all over again. What is even worse is that it actually cost more in most casses to work a job compared to working at home. One example: if you pay about $25 per week going to and from work your spending about $1,300 per year just on gas alone to work your job. That's also not including the daycare, work clothes, if you eat out for lunch and etc. Sometimes you want to just head bunt people and say hey retard your working yourself to death in order to make someone else rich. Why would you do that. That's also not including the fact that your actually being selfish by not working a home based business as well. Here is why: Doing a home based business you make more money, and you have more free time. You can actually be able to donate some of that money to charities, and help out homeless people and etc. The list goes on of all the things you can accomplish once your working from home compared to being a slave to your job!! Them dang Libra's just won't shut up will they!!
What IM takes is good self discipline. Especially if you have no money to fund your start up and outsource some things. It's far too easy to put things off until later. Then these things start building up on you and discouraging you because you are now overwhelmed. Another thing about working from home is that you are always at work. You have to leave your house in order to get away from it. At least for me this holds true. On the other hand, there is nothing quite like seeing the sales from something that just started out as an idea in your head.
I really like your point about the savings that rack up from no transportation costs and diminished costs from eating at home. Another thing about making money online is there is much greater room to make money. With some programming knowledge (PHP mainly) its much easier to put a site on "autopilot" so you have to do very little work to maintain it besides answering some emails and such. This creates opportunities for people to continuously open up sites and get them onto autopilot making money. Doing business online means your income is proportional (more or less) to the work you do. If you put increase your time/day 20% you will likely see a 20% increase in your income. However, if you work for some company and choose to work a 20% longer day, you will only earn 20% more on an hourly basis, but have no oppurtunity to sustain that 20% increase compared to the sustained increase in income provided by working 20% more on your online business.
I believe making money online and at home is the way of intelligent people. Why work as a slave at a day job like everyone else when you can create your own business? It's just smarter to figure out a way to live better, make the same money and not have to work as hard. Although online business is just like any other and it does take a hell of a lot of work to do.
I would really like to start something with Internet Marketing but I have no money to put into it.. I am king with SEO but a n00b with marketing. Any help, tips? I have friends who go the affiliate network / adwords route but like I said, I have no money to put into that.
No, I make almost nothing off of my diabetes site (a couple hundred a month)... I don't promote it at all. My money maker sites are all business related not medical. Funny about the investment banker gig, I owned a mortgage broker shop during from 1999 - 2006 and understand the booing and hissing as I hear it now and then.
Dude - why don't you offer SEO services to people? A lot of people hire SEO guys to get their sites ranked in the search engines.
Yeah but I haven't been able to get paid decent cash. Most people don't understand how much that crap runs and that I give one hell of a deal and still think it's too much. They try to get me to do it for around 300$ for the month, not happening. That and they don't like the fact that I require a deposit either.
If I were you, I would advertise on craigslist in the services section. I'd begin in the Detroit area since that is where you are and Detroit is a pretty lively city on craigslist. It's free to advertise there and there are a lot of viewers on that site.
It's kind of hard for me to socialize with my friends or any strangers when I first meet regarding to what I do for a living. The simple answer of, I'm doing "online marketing," is just not due in my opinion. Because whenever I give them that answer, they look at me in a weird or uncertain way. I'd then spend 5 to 10 minutes and explain what I am exactly do. Some people give me positive reaction where they believed that it's a benefit because I work at home and flexible with time. Other people give me negative reaction such as, how do you make money with that, or when will you get rich? Enough of what people are saying, I believed that if you like what you're doing, and focus on finding research and be successful at it, you'll see the hard work that you put in.