The Basics of Making Money from Home

1) Search Engine Optimization 

Commonly referred to as SEO, search engine optimization is the process of adding content to a website that is designed to target search engines. This is done through utilizing specific keyword phrases. Popular search engines like Google and Bing rank websites based on targeted keyword phrases. For example, if someone types “Local Shopping Coupons” into a search engine, then the user is given a list of website that best match their search.  

There are many different theories as to how search engines rank websites so this book will not try and convince you of any tricks. In fact, it’s safe to say that if anyone tries to show you a quick trick to get your website ranked, then it’s likely a black hat technique. These will get your site banned quickly so don’t use them. 

The most effective way to rank a website is to provide useful content that is targeted for visitors rather than search engines. If you create quality content, then your website’s ranking will slowly rise. More about SEO will be discussed as appropriate all throughout this book.  

2) List Building 

List building is the process of collecting email addresses and other contact information from individuals in order to market to them. Most people will give something away in return for an individual’s email address. I’m sure you’ve seen a free giveaway online that only asked for your email address in return for a product. That company is list building. If done effectively, list building is one of the most powerful forms of marketing on the web.  

The mistake that many people make when list building is they tend to spam their potential customers. That will not only lose their interest, but comes across as unprofessional and will generate hate towards your brand. List building is used in several of the money making scenarios that are discussed through this book.  

3) Niche 

Finally, the term niche will be used quite a bit and refers to a specific type of product market. Using television as an easy example, channels like ESPN, Fox Sports, and Golf Channel are all affiliated with the ‘sports niche’. CNN, Fox News, and CNBC are with ‘news and media’.  

Some online niches include electronic, medical, and social media. However, to be successful you will need to narrow your niche down a great deal and focus on one area rather than a mainstream. For example, instead of focusing on the broad ‘news and media’ niche, you would need to narrow it down even further:  

- Latest Political News 

- Breaking News about Insurance 

- News about New Books  

All three of those have been narrowed by one level. You can go even further by getting more specific: 

- Latest Republican Political News 

- Breaking News about Car Insurance 

- News about New Fantasy Books 

I think you get the general idea by now. You will learn more about niches throughout the course of this book. For now, it’s only necessary to know what the term means. 

4) Proper Money Management 

I want to go over one more thing before we start with different money making methods. At this point, you should have a plan that lists your goals. That’s the first step to proper money management. Getting into better money management habits is a good idea for everyone but it’s essential if you want to be successful in making money from home. Here are some tips on proper money management for those working from home. 

5) Don’t under budget for expenses 

Some of the methods that we mention cost no money while some have a few expenses attached with them. It’s important to plan your budget correctly. Make sure your numbers are correct. Many people make the mistake of underestimating their expenses and end up in the red.  

6) Income Management 

Working from home can provide a nice income. However, that income will be sporadic. That means you need to plan differently for this than you do with your weekly or bi-weekly paying job. Since monthly income is likely to fluctuate, always keep track of your average monthly income and plan your expenses for at least 10% below that amount.  

7) Avoid Borrowing Money 

Credit cards can be a life saver in emergency situations. However, getting into the bad habit of relying on a credit card will get you into trouble. Never spend money that you don’t have on your business. There are enough free methods that you can simply use those to finance opportunities that initially cost money.  

8) Keep Track of Taxes 

Any income generated from self-employment is imposed with extra taxes. It’s best to keep track of this all through the year and to pay keep these taxes paid on a quarterly basis. This will keep you from incurring under-withholding penalties. It will also not allow those taxes to blindside you all at once.  

9) Be Organized 

The more organized you keep your work area, the more productive you will be. Always file invoices in a timely manner, pay bills on time, and keep every receipt. Store contact information in a way that makes it easy to find. A little organization will go a long way.  

On a final note, remember that generating a steady income from home will take time and effort. It doesn’t just happen. Individuals do not just stumble upon success. They earn it. The idea is not to work hard, but to work smart. Handle everything in your life as if it were a business decision. Get better at managing your money. Learn to budget your time. Most importantly, don’t be afraid of making mistakes. They will happen. If you learn from a mistake, then it’s not a total loss. You will have gained valuable experience. 

Top 13 Reasons Why People Fail

Now we come to the scary part. Don’t worry! These things will not happen to you. Why? Because you are going to be aware of those critical mistakes that cause people to fail. 

One can work as hard as they want for as long as they want, yet still make absolutely no progress. Then most will either blame the system or fate, but rarely themselves. How can we move forward without taking accountability for our actions? The answer is we can’t. So if you make a mistake, always take accountability for it and learn. Whether or not you feel it’s truly is your fault is irrelevant. You chose the action and are therefore responsible for the outcome. Unless you were forced down that path at gunpoint, you only have yourself to blame. If you get into the bad habit of blaming everyone else, you are just standing still as the world flies by you. Here are the common reasons for failure when starting a home based business. 

1) Lack of Knowledge 

Let’s face it, trying to start a landscaping business without knowing anything about landscaping is guaranteed to fail. Seems logical right? Well the same goes for working from home. Many people follow a single system and try to make money without truly realizing how it works. They never try to learn either. That’s the real problem. Good news for you is that by using this book as a guideline, you will equip yourself with enough knowledge to get started. However, don’t stop there. Continue learning and growing through experience.  

2) Unrealistic Expectations 

As mentioned before, falling prey to unrealistic expectations can lead to a huge disappointment. In order to be successful, you will need to turn to your list of realistic expectations (the one you wrote down earlier). Working from home is not a get rich quick scheme (those never work by the way). It’s a path to the future and will take time to get the ball rolling. Most people expect results after a month and when they don’t see them, they simply give up. 

3) Lack of a Plan 

This is huge and goes hand-in-hand with unrealistic expectations. Everyone needs a plan – whether it’s for business or just day-to-day life. A plan can be something as simple as a list of goals. Track these goals. This is the only way you will be able to see your progress. Without a plan, you will not be able to see your efforts leading to progress.  

4) Lack of Self-Discipline 

In other words, being lazy and procrastinating when one should be working toward achieving a goal. Of course, most who fail never have a goal in the first place. How would they even know which direction to go? Procrastination will kill a home-based business before it gets started. You want to be your own boss? Then you have to manage your time accordingly. There’s no longer anyone to hold your hand and tell you what to do next. That’s what your plan is for. 

5) Poor Time Management 

It takes time to start a home based business. That’s not saying that you should quit your regular job immediately. It simply means that whatever time you have should be dedicated to meeting your goals. The most common excuse that people make as to why they don’t start their own business is that they just don’t have the time. Here’s a fact. If someone wants something badly enough, they will find the time to make it happen. Trust me when I say that time is one thing you likely have an abundance of.  

6) Falling Prey to the Words ‘Get Rich Quick’ 

I hate to be a bubble buster but here’s the truth. Working from home is not going to instantly make you rich. If you want that, play the lottery. People waste precious time surfing the web for ways to get rich when they could be setting up their future. So many fall prey to this that it’s truly disappointing.  

7) Trying “Secret” Tools 

This goes hand-in-hand with the previous mistake. There are no secret formulas for gaining an edge over competition. If there were, do you really believe that the one who found it would tell you? Of course not!  

In reality, there is only you, your knowledge, and your commitment. Trust me, those are the only tools you need. The fact is that many fail because they try some kind of secret tool without learning about it. These so-called tools are often black hat techniques (breaking the rules for an advantage) and in the end, will cost you everything. If something seems too good to be true, it often is. 

8) Always Using Free Solutions 

Sometimes free can be a good thing, other times it can be outright devastating. Sacrificing professionalism in order to use a free service will actually cost more in lost profits than it would have cost to use a paid service. The way to avoid this is to always research and test anything that is free before letting it be seen by clients. One example of the absolute worst free solution on the internet is free web hosting. These so-called free services will place ads all over a website, usually not even matching the niche. Imagine how your potential customer would feel if they were visiting your website and got bombarded by adult advertisements! There are some things that cost money. Nothing is ever truly free. 

9) Poor Investments 

This can be directly linked to a lack of a plan. If an individual has no idea where they are headed, they are likely to binge shop. Having a plan in place will avoid this. Only spend money on things that will help accomplish your overall goals.  

10) Frustration 

Now we are starting to get deeper into effects of previous mistakes. Frustration is caused by having unrealistic expectations and no plan. If one is working hard and can’t see results, they will start to stress themselves out. Don’t join the roller coaster ride. Start out on the right track and you will avoid frustration altogether. Contrary to popular belief, working hard does not automatically lead to success. Working smart is the true path to achieving success. 

11) Shifting Blame 

One bad habit that I mentioned in the previous section is shifting the blame to another source. Some go as far as to bash books, media, even politics in order to shift the blame for mistakes that were really their own fault. This leads to another mistake, not learning from a mistake. Like dominoes falling in a perfect line, mistakes can quickly compound. Shifting blame leads to lack of learning. Lack of learning leads to repeating the same mistake again – the cycle continues. Each revolution leads to more stress and frustration. Never shift blame. Even if you feel that it was not your fault, go ahead and take responsibility anyway.  

12) The ‘Broken Record’ Syndrome 

There’s nothing more annoying than someone who constantly pitches their business. These people never talk about anything else. I’m sure that you’ve met them at one point in your life. Don’t become one of them. Build relationship through value, not repetitiveness. Learn when to pitch and when not to.  

13) Under Marketing 

For most home based businesses, marketing is the key to future success. You will have to spend most of your time marketing. Marketing leads to long term success. Therefore, those who under market often do so because they don’t see immediate results.  

These are the biggest mistakes that are made and will lead to failure. However, you shouldn’t be afraid of them. Learn from others and avoid these mistakes at all costs. Upon doing so, you will be one step closer to successfully generating a home based income. 

Why Work from Home?

The biggest advantage you will gain from starting a home based business is that you will be forced to expand your mind. You will be forced to learn proper money management practices, time management, and controlling income. Naturally, money management is a key to security for everyone. Those depending on week-to-week income are not very secure. The same goes for time management. Those who don’t effectively manage their time tend to resemble crazy chickens, stumbling along, never really knowing what they are doing. Income management is a skill that most individuals don’t even know exists. Income can be controlled. This is the key to unlocking true success. Only when you learn to control your income will you be able to control your entire life. Individuals working from home are forced to learn this all-important skill.

Have you ever heard someone say, “I wish I had a tree that grew money. I would be set for life!”

Every time I hear that, I have to keep myself from asking them:

Would the money tree grow ones, fives, tens, twenties, fifties, or hundreds?

How are you going to prevent vampires aka lazy freeloaders from stealing money from your money tree?

How would you harvest the money?

How big is would this tree be?

Really big?! Then (assuming it’s outside) what would you do during winter? You know, when you can’t harvest money from it?

You see, even with a magical money tree, one would need to learn how to manage it. I’m not trying to burn your money tree fantasy. I’m just making a point. Now I’ll make another one.

Business owners do have money trees – no really, they do. In the beginning, they plant seeds. They then nurture those seeds until they sprout. After which, they cater to it until it starts to flourish into a full-fledged business. At that point, they are growing money and harvest it at certain intervals. Those harvests are better known in the business world as profits. So in essence, something they planted many years ago has grown into a system that automatically generates money for them. How is that different from a money tree?

The whole idea of working from home is to plant seeds that will eventually grow into profits. Think of every opportunity as a tiny seed. You need to take care of it while it grows. Then at the end, you are the proud owner of systems that are churning out money on a regular basis.

Advantages from Working from Home

Working from home has its perks. Some are obvious while others take pointing out in order to see the true benefits. I will start by saying that individuals who work from home are looked at much differently than those who work the typical nine to five.

The friendlier of the misconceptions is that those working from home have more freedom than others. For example, your friends and family will tell you that they understand that you’re working but in the back of their mind, they will think that because you “work from home” you’re always available to do their bidding. While working from home does allow for much greater flexibility with their scheduling, you must still put in the hours if you expect to get paid. 

The other forms of misconceptions are not so friendly. Larger businesses have spent millions to convince the majority of citizens that those who are not going to work on a daily basis are lazy and will be unsuccessful. So when starting out, you might find judgmental eyes glaring in your direction from time to time. Just ignore them. When you become successful, those same people will still glare at you – although the reasoning changes from judgmental into jealousy.  

Why would I open up a section on the advantages of working from home with this? The perception that those who work at home generate is not always friendly. It’s important to understand that all of the negatives that larger businesses have spent millions to instill upon the world are in fact, the greatest benefits. Learning to turn them to your advantage will get you started down a path to success.

Let me take one more moment to explain why this instilled opinion is wrong. Business leaders don’t want people working remotely because it removes productive individuals from their employment. Look at it this way. Just because someone works eight hours a day doesn’t mean they accomplish eight hours worth of work. In reality, most people accomplish four to five hours worth during the course of an eight hour day. Those who work from home are forced to manage themselves. So if they work for eight hours, then they must accomplish eight hours worth of work. They set personal goals. They manage their time better and learn how to avoid distractions. If they don’t do these things, then they can’t possibly be successful. This will be discussed in more detail later. For now, it’s important to understand that individuals who are successful by working at home actually have the talent to be managers.

Large corporations want this caliber of employee on their payroll – and they want them at a discount. Imagine how many people are working an average paying job that have the potential to be making much more money. These larger companies are truly getting a great discount! That’s why they are so desperate (and willing to spend millions) to force their opinions on society.

With that said, some of the advantages of working from home should be obvious by now.

- Higher Income

- Getting paid for your talents

- Learning to manage your life

Some of the more informal beliefs are:

- More freedom

- More family time

- No boss

Those informal beliefs should not be used as motivation. In fact, I would go as far as to say they are the biggest myths surrounding working from home. For starters, you will be required to work just as many hours as a nine-to-five job. Second, everyone has a boss. Customers are the equivalent of a boss in that you must meet their demands. Starting a home based business for any of these three reasons is the prelude to a huge letdown. In fact, that letdown is the most common reason for failure.

Instead of focusing on motivation that is not true, sit down and make a list of what advantages working from home might have for you. Some examples are:

- Better hours (not less hours)

- Better work environment

- More productivity

- Controlling your income

- Save gas

- Learning experience

There are hundreds of possibilities and each person’s life will lead to different discoveries. Write down the things you seek most. One example might be if you’re working night shift and you really hate it. Although working from home will still require you to work for eight hours a day, you can choose which eight hours it will be.