How I learned to make Home Based Internet Businesses work - and the tools I used to make it happen.

I tried to make home based Internet businesses work twice before...

The first time - well - lets just say I had a lot to learn. I put together what, for the times, was a respectable looking site. My plan was to increase the income from my current business through online affiliate programs and ad sales, but the cash just didn't roll in. Instead, I averaged about 150 hits - and $7.00 - a month. My site, by the way, was costing me $20 a month. It was 1997 - and I had just received my first lesson in how not to run home based internet businesses.

I did much better the second time. I took what I had learned and subcontracted with a large DotCom. I was pretty happy. I was working from home - 100% online - and earning good money. A laptop allowed me to log in and work from anyplace I could find a phone line. I had it made... until the infamous DotCom crash shut down the company I worked with. It was 2000, and I had just been handed another, even more valuable lesson, on how not to work at home on the Internet.

Third Time is a Charm...

What had I learned?

First; the internet doesn't work like an off-line business. If you open a retail business off-line, you find a good location, put up some signs, advertise, and the cutomers show up. On the Internet, when you first build your store you're not on a busy street, or inside a popular mall. You're not even on a paved road. You're in the middle of the Sahara desert, and people don't walk around in the desert.

A Needle in a Stack of Needles

In October 2005, NetCraft found 74,409,971 active websites - and that number is growing everyday. If you want people to find individual home based Internet businesses in a pile that size, you have to make use of the Internet's travel guides - search engines.

Off-line, people use travel guides to help them locate the best hotels, restuarants and attractions scattered across the globe. You tell the travel guide what you are looking for in a destination and they present a set of suggested places that match your travel needs.

Online, people use search engines. You tell the search engine what you are looking for and it goes out and finds websites that match your search criteria. Just as a tourist destination has to rank highly with the travel agents to be recommended and often visted, if you want to be a recommended, often visited website you have to rank highly with the search engines.

Fortunately, this isn't hard - IF - you have the right tools

If you aren't working to build your own dream you are busy building someone else's...

Secondly, I learned that just like the 3-D world, job-security in the virtual world rests on being in control of your income stream. If someone else can turn off my cash flow, no matter how well I have done my job, I have no security. The only real security life has to offer is the ability to control when, where and how you make your money. Having your own business, online or off, gives you that control. After all, when you work for someone else, you are still working for someone's business, right? If they don't manage it well, you end up without a job. Manage your own business well and you always have income.

Lastly, I learned that when it comes to home based Internet businesses it's not what you don't know. Its what you don't know you don't know that sneaks up and bites you when you aren't looking.

I realized that to be successful I still needed to apply what I knew. That was a given. Of course, I also needed to keep learning new things. But most importantly, I had to make sure what I didn't know I didn't know couldn't sneak up and bite me again.

Fortunately, I found the complete construction set for Home Based Internet businesses - SiteBuildIt

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