I've had a varied career online, and finally gone full circle to the network marketing business model – which has always been the most profitable way of running a home business for me.
Because according to Albert Einstein: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Source: Brainy Quotes
But so have most people, I guess. The thing is to make sure you learn something new from each mistake, and move on.
So, I'm going to use my experiences and new skills to change direction a little. To learn why, I'll give you a brief history of my online business history.
Why I Started An Online Business
Well, the short answer is to find a retirement business idea to earn an extra income to supplement poor pension prospects. But why online? I already have a successful offline business, and I would probably be better advised, and earn more money, by expanding that. But it has two big limitations:
- Geographical
- The number of hours in my day
To find clients beyond my local geographical area and to leverage the number of hours in my day (without the burden of employing staff) I turned to an online business.
How To Start An Online Business
I was interested in a nutritional service where there was very little competition, so I decided to 
market this online.
Producing my own website in HTML/CSS etc was beyond me – despite my background in computing. I hired someone to do it for me, but whenever I tried to make changes the site ended up looking like a dog's dinner!
(Hmm – Bailey can eat faster than I can take photographs!)
However it was a short step from HTML to discovering blogs, although I did have a few false starts with the blogging platforms and tools I chose.
Finally I settled on self-hosted WordPress.org (like this blog) and tried a few different models for generating an income from a blog.
- Some people swore by putting adverts on your own blog – I managed to get myself banned by inadvertently breaking Adsense's T&Cs
- Others recommended Affiliate Marketing – this is a good choice, but needs plentiful sources of interested traffic – AND products that make a decent return. $10 won't cut it!
- Many people told me I “must have a digital product of my own” – and because I enjoyed writing I decided to produce my own eBooks, and still get a little income from sales of books I wrote years ago.
Here are some of the ways I have made money online, and the experiences I have gained.
Produce Your Own Product
This was actually my first serious online venture and although I learned a lot from it, I was in complete overwhelm and never produced enough sales to even cover the cost of the course.
In recent months the market-place seems to have been flooded by a complete blitz of marketers being coached to produce digital products.
It seemed as if day after day the same tribe of marketers would blitz the Internet promoting the next new product, and trying to out-do each other with the shiniest and glossiest bonus to clinch the sale. And the joke of it was everyone seemed to be promoting to each others' lists. I just unsubscribed from the lot of them.
There were good products, and I reviewed some of them. Others were so flimsy I couldn't have written a good word about them. What was overwhelming was the number of emails all promoting the same or similar products – day after date, week after week, launch after launch. All really low cost – which is great for the buyer, but not for new authors. Who wants to develop new eBooks to compete with such a relentless onslaught of low cost but glossily produced products?
However, if you have the determination to follow a GOOD training course and produce your own tight niche product, here's a well-respected marketer who can help you. Click here for a free training webinar.
Income From Blogging
It's not the route to instant wealth, as many of my readers may have noticed.
Well – I know some people are doing very well, and these successful bloggers have generously shared some great tips. So I have had some successes of my own.
- I've made some sales from products I've reviewed
- I've been paid to produce blogs for other people
- People have even paid me to place adverts on my blog
But I have to face facts and say that, because my blogging is part-time alongside my main offline business, I need something that doesn't consume as many hours in my working day.
Blog Problems
I also seem to hit more than my fair share of technical problems.
- A couple of weeks ago my blog was displaying the sidebar widgets in the footer – turned out to be because I was using GoogleSpeed caching system Huh?
- This week there's another technical problem – I'll write about it when I've found how it can be fixed. It's not as obvious to the reader as the last one was!
But the point is, I enjoy writing, so I don't just want to spend my time fixing technical problems and feeling out of my depth. I do coding in my offline business and that's enough challenge for me.
And what if these technical problems had happened to one of the paid blogs I had produced for clients? I'd feel obliged to fix it!
So that is the sorry catalogue of what HASN'T been successful for me, and the reasons why I have gone back to ….
Network Marketing Business Model
I have gone back to my roots with network marketing, which is the model that – of all the businesses I have done on line – has made me the highest consistent income ever.
But this time I know all the pitfalls to avoid.
Update June 2021
Haha – well it was a Multi-level-marketing business – but that caused such negative reviews from ill-informed detractors that they changed their who business model to become a single level affiliate marketing program.
It demonstrates one of the downsides of MLM – that they can change the business model. But this is still my favorite online business and it's still making me a consistent monthly income, from work I did months ago.
It is a long-term business, a share club where get monthly shares in exciting real world businesses that sell a variety of in-demand products that are best sellers on Amazon and in retail outlets. I can be completely passive if I want to be – the shares are managed for us by the club. So as well as the income from inviting others to join the club I also benefit from increased share values.
(Warning – the value of shares can go up as well as down!)
If you'd like to find out more, watch the videos here. (Affiliate link)
