Inspirational Story: Homeless to Happiness Through Online Business
By Dave Blake | December 3, 2007
Today I want to tell you a true story about a dear friend of mine that I can honestly say made it on his own. He started life out rough, but through countless months of hard work, he became a very successful online businessman.
For his own privacy he asked me to not use his real name or disclose his identity in the article, which I will respect. For the sake of this story I’ll refer to him as John.
A bit of background
John was brought up in a lower middle class family. His family was definitely not wealthy, but they had a roof over their heads and food on the table for every meal. John was an only child to two people that were not quite fit to be parents. Like I said before, they put a roof over his head and fed him, but other than that they had no real connections with John. If they ever went anywhere he was left at home, they would not support him in any of his activities, nothing. Other than the food and housing, John supported himself with part time jobs since he was 12 years old. John eventually became very depressed because of the rejection he felt from his parents. By the time he got out of high school, John knew that he would no longer be able to live at home or he would end up killing himself because of how miserable he was. John moved out into a 1 bedroom apartment on his own after he graduated. He was barely able to pay for food and rent with his job at a nearby market. After about 3 months out on his own, John lost his job. The market he worked at closed down and left him jobless. After weeks of searching for a new job unsuccessfully, John decided he may have to move back home. He went to his house to talk to his parents about this, but shockingly they no longer lived there. He had not kept in contact with his parents while he was on his own for obvious reasons, so he had no idea that they moved away. John was now 3 days away from being homeless, and 3 days later he was.
Being homeless sets in
John was literally homeless now. He lived out on the streets just like you would imagine. The thing about John is that he had never been lazy by any means, he was a very hard worker. He spent his days looking for work. Within a week he had found some opportunities that looked promising, but he didn’t have any reliable mode of transportation and this was not attractive to employers. After about a week and a half of not finding work, John had nearly given up. He literally didn’t have a penny to his name. With such depression and discouragement setting in, John found himself in the local library looking for self-help books because this was the only thing he had access to without paying for it. Since John wasn’t much of a reader the book thing really didn’t work out for him, but the library offered something else that was of interest to John, free internet. Free internet access was great to him, he could keep himself entertained and get his mind off of all the problems he was having in his life.
Finally some hope
After a couple days of hanging out at the library, John stumbled upon an advertisement stating “Click here to make money.” Normally he wouldn’t have been at all interested in something like this, but at the current state of his life, he certainly was interested. Now this ad he clicked really wasn’t any good for him, it was just one of the millions of get rich quick schemes which he figured out after about 2 minutes. But the idea of making money on the computer really got his brain thinking. John hadn’t ever been very computer savvy, but he really was interested in the idea of making money while sitting in front of the computer screen and had all the time in the world to learn how to do so. So he began researching on the internet how people are making money off of their websites. Luckily for John, he was a quick learner. Within a couple of days he had started his own website using a combination of free utilities he read about while researching beginner methods of making money on the web. Although still homeless, things were really starting to brighten up for John. He had something on his mind all day to replace a lot of the thoughts he had about being homeless. For the next couple of weeks John would spend most of his day at the library learning everything he could.
John finally landed a part time job at a restaurant washing dishes and clearing tables. He was able to make enough money to finally get a place to live, but this did not stop him from pursuing his online ventures. Being the hard worker that he was, John would work his day job and go to the library immediately after work to continue his online work. He had to do this for several months until he had saved up enough money to buy a computer of his own. Once John had enough money to buy his own computer, he really began to get things going for himself. His day job was now full time, and he spent at least 8 hours a day working on his online business. This meant very little sleep and very little fun for John. He really didn’t mind though, the online venture he had kept him very excited and eager to learn.
Success feels so good
After a year of working non-stop, John was finally making enough money with his online business to quit his day job and concentrate solely on the internet work. This was the greatest accomplishment John ever had. He worked his way from off of the streets to being completely self supported by an online business. At this time he wasn’t rich by any means, but he made enough money to pay his bills and have a little bit of fun. He always tells me that feeling is much greater than anything he has ever felt.
Today John is extremely successful at the age of 26. He owns hundreds of websites and even bought the restaurant he worked for after being homeless. Making over a thousand dollars in a day is nothing uncommon for John’s online business. Although John could literally sit back and not work ever again, he chooses not to. The struggle he went through instilled a sense of hard work and drive in him that he’ll never lose.
Topics: Motivation | No Comments »
Making Money Online: Where You Need to Start
By Dave Blake | November 28, 2007
There are a lot of ways to make money online, but many people may have a hard time deciding what they want to start out doing. In this article I would like to go over a few possible ways you can make money.
1. Make Money Filling Out Surveys
Surprisingly, the web offers you the ability to make money off simply filling out surveys. All you have to do is a find a company that pays you to fill them out (which there are a ton of), and you’re set. The main problem with this method, however, is simply that a lot of the times it doesn’t pay well, or pay at all. You have to really do your research if you want to make good money on this, and find the best companies.
2. Make Money Reading Emails
One way to make money on the internet is simply to read emails. Sounds too good to be true right? Well, maybe it is. There are many companies that will pay you to read emails. They can afford to do this because advertisers pay them, and then they give you part of that money. However, a whole lot of these “Paid to Read” companies simply don’t pay, or pay practically nothing per email. One of the major ones I used to use paid like 1 cent or less per email, and with only a few emails a day tops it was pretty much worthless unless you managed to get a gazillion referrals. I guess the point here is that you either have to do really good research, or score a whole lot of referrals with one of the larger “Paid to Read” companies if you want to make decent money.
3. Affiliate Programs
This is the main way I make money online. Affiliate programs pay you either on sales commissions, 1000 impressions, per click, or per lead. The best way to make money off these programs is to develop websites with heavy traffic flows that have affiliate links on them. This will give you an income that is continual and may only require maintenance, rather than one that requires you to read emails or fill out surveys every day. However, it will also likely be harder to get going.
4. Selling Products
Selling products online is a great way to score some big time green. However, there may be a lot of complications you will have to deal with. Are the products real or virtual? If they’re real, where are you getting them? Can you get them cheap enough so that you can mark them up and people will still buy them? How are you going to deal with shipping, warehousing, billing? As you can see, selling products may not be the easiest way to make money online. However, it may yield the greatest return.
Topics: Strategy, Principles | No Comments »
Is Online Business For You?
By Dave Blake | November 27, 2007
A problem with all the hype about starting you own inline business is this idea that starting one is the perfect opportunity for everyone. In some ways I find myself in agreement with this assertion, and in other ways I find myself at odds with it. Thus, I now wish to further articulate upon this idea.
An online business gives you the opportunity to pick and choose something you are interested in.
Starting an online business can allow anyone to create his or her very own business that is aligned with personal interests. This alone is the main reason I personally find online businesses to be my favorite career choice. Doing something related to your interests ensures you being able to maintain a happy outlook on life. It is the exact opposite of sitting in a little grey cubicle doing pointless tasks that have been delegated to you.
Everyone knows that a bad day at work tends to drag over to your personal life. The main benefit to online businesses in my eyes is the near-full to full elimination of those bad days. You are picking something you LIKE to work on! You are having FUN! Your online business can be likened to the career of a professional athlete. Professional atheletes make their livings doing what they love, and so can you.
But then again:
We have this issue where for some people online businesses simply may not be the right choice.
This issue stems not from the idea of doing what you love for a living. Rather, people should always try to persue a career they find intriguing, for the sake of maintaining personal sanity. What this issue really stems from is the simple fact that many people are not cut out to make a living online. Yep, I said it. I admitted the one thing that most online business advocates will never admit. Online businesses are NOT for everyone.
The reason this truth is kept so “hush hush” is that an entire online industry has emerged which has the sole purpose of promoting online business opportunities. This industry basically acts as an online business opportunity middleman. It provides you with things you could obtain free of charge, makes these things sound better than they really are, and subsequently makes a killing! Avoid this “middleman” industry at all costs!
There will always be a few success stories used to attempt to reel in you and your money. Some of them may be real, some of them may be fake. However, you simply don’t need to pay for the things this industry offers. There is plenty of free information available on any subject you can think of.
Now, let’s go over why online businesses aren’t for everyone.
There’s a certain mentality that goes along with successful online business owners. Part of it is a strong will to succeed, part of it is taking a constructive approach towards failure, part of it is not putting all the eggs in a single basket, and there are other parts as well.
However, there seems to be one main issue I think is many times overlooked. Typically, in order to be successful with an online business you will need to be business-minded. If you don’t know much about business in general including managing a business, running a business, starting the business in the first place, getting a business off the ground, etc., you can’t just expect to waltz into the online world, throw some money at a potential opportunity, and then succeed. That’s simply not how things work. Online businesses are no different than real life businesses other than the virtual aspects. It’s still a business, and it still entails the general things any normal business entails. The specifics are where the differences lie, and they many times give online businesses the upper hand when it comes to things such as overhead and product replication.
So what if you aren’t business-minded? What if you know nothing about businesses? Well, I personally think you are better off not wasting your time trying to start an online business. Can you become business-minded? Sure, I believe anyone can change. And if you do, by all means go ahead and give online businesses a try. However, for those of you who simply aren’t business-oriented in the least nor think you want to go through the effort to change, I would say you’re plain outta luck. Leave online businesses alone, and try to find a stellar job. After all, everyone desserves to be happy in life 
Topics: Motivation, Principles | No Comments »
Are You At The Mercy Of Computer Geeks?
By Dave Blake | November 8, 2007
Many business owners are sabotaging their business without even realizing it. They are completely out of the loop when it comes to all technology aspects of their operation such as websites, computers and software. They become completely dependent on their technical people and naively believe that things are “being taken care of”.This “head in the sand” approach is very dangerous. Here are just a few scenarios of what can happen:
- Your webmaster is the only person who knows the username, password and other improtant settings for your website. If the webmaster suddenly stops responding to your phone calls or e-mails (which I’ve seen happen many times), you would have no idea how to hand off the website updates to another person.
- Your programmer no longer wishes to work with you. When you hire a replacement, it turns out that there is no documentation for the program, the code is unreadable, and it will be cheaper for you to buy a new program than salvage this “sinking ship”.
- The software that was developed for your business theoretically does all that was required, but there is one big problem: it is sitting idle because it is so confusing that nobody wants to use it.
- The web server crashes and your website files get erased. Then it turns out that nobody has a backup copy
- Your technical person realized how dependent you’ve become, and starts acting like a “primadonna”, and even blackmails you into shelling out more cash, “or else”!
So how do you protect yourself?
If you are now thinking that you need to become a computer geek yourself so you don’t have to depend on anyone else - that could not be further from the truth. If you spend all your time digging through computer books, writing code and working on the technical details, there will be no time for you to run your business.
Doing it all yourself is not the answer. Everyone should concentrate on doing what they do best. What you need to do is just take some measures to protect yourself. Just knowing and applying these few basic things that I’m about to describe will put you a giant leap ahead of most other business owners.
Here are the things you should do:
- Require documentation on all technical projects. Every technology aspect of your business should be documented in such a way that you can hand off this document to a new technical person and they’ll understand exactly how the system works and what to do with it.
- Let me warn you: you will encounter a lot of resistance from the technical people when you make them document things. However, you need to be firm and require documentation as part of the project before you release the final payment.
- When asking someone to develop a website or software, communicate exactly what you want and how you want it to work. Don’t assume that people can read your mind.Communicate all your requirements upfront. If you don’t tell programmers or designers exactly what you want, they’ll put together a project according to their own vision, which often does not correspond to yours.
Most problems with technical projects occur because of miscommunication.
- Make sure you have copies of all files and do regular backups. Don’t put it off until tomorrow, because tomorrow might be too late. Losing data can be absolutely devastating.The easiest thing to do to protect your data is to write those files to a CD on a regular basis. Also, don’t forget to store those CDs in a secure location.
- Keep track of all technical projects and know what’s going on. Being “clueless” should not be acceptable.Many business owners have such fear of technology that they just don’t want to understand the projects and hope that others will simply take care of everything. While you don’t need to get involved in all the little technical details, you still need to understand the process and “the big picture”.
Practice these simple strategies, and you’ll find yourself having more control, more piece of mind and more money in your bank account.
Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
All Successful Entrepreneurs Do This
By Dave Blake | November 6, 2007
Everyone wants to make money! Some want to make money by owning their own business. All successful entrepreneurs have the self discipline to build their business. Most of us have heard the saying “you need money to make money”. Basically what this means is you must invest money in your business if it’s to make money. Some 24% of all startup small businesses fail within two years. That’s because the life of your business depends on you during these early years. If you must depend on the business it will probably fail. The first years of a business rarely show profit, because you are re-investing your money back in it.
Most of us spend money on entertainment, whether it’s eating out at nice restaurants, movies, cars, bikes, games, big toys, etc….. Some of us can come up with cash for our online business by not eating out one time a month! That should not be so hard to do, as lots of us are spending more and more money on weight loss products!
If you want your business to grow you must feed it. You must spend money to make money, even if it’s a small amount, it will still grow some. You cannot win the lottery without first buying a ticket!
All successful entrepreneurs spend a certain amount each month on their business. Sure you say they are making money so they have it to spend. But actually you start out investing a larger percentage of your profits then you will later on as your business grows. Most people who start an Off-line business usually invest a large amount of capital before they see any money coming in. You have to continually re-invest your money.
That’s where an On-line business is unique. You can start with very little capital and invest as you learn. You do still have to invest some money and time, or you will not grow. You have to spend wisely though, where you will see results. You must read and do some research before you spend. There are lots of ways to throw your money away if you are new and not careful. There are also many ways to receive valuable information online that’s Free. One way is reading Free articles by those who are successful. You will find many of these Free articles at: http://www.best-home-business-ideas.net
Also if you’re in an MLM or affiliate program, you should have an up-line leader. They will help you along with good advice because it’s in their best interest for you to succeed!
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About The Author
The author, John Baker, is the editor of Best-Home-Business-eNews. A newsletter dedicated to supporting the home business entrepreneur. If you’re looking for some of the best home business opportunities, tools, thoughts, ideas, and support from a dependable source, come by, visit,and grab a FREE subscription today at: http://www.best-home-business-ideas.net or email your questions to: admin@best-home-business-ideas.net
Topics: Other, Motivation, Capital, Success | No Comments »