Tired of the mundane and looking for alternate career options? In my late 30’s I realised I was in trouble. With no real income and a bunch of part time jobs, I knew things needed to change. I turned to the internet to find a method of making money which I could build around my other incomes. I had a sporadic career in the film industry and was about to start a martial arts school. However, I needed some alternate career options since mine were pretty unrealistic and the wolves were at my door! They had been for a number of years too and, it was slowly getting to me.
Alternate Career Options
I started develping an interest in the internet as a means to make an income several years earlier. I began with ebay. Initially I sold items from my house and then started buying and selling. I found a clever little ‘hack’ which allowed me to find cheap items on ebay itself and then sell them on at a profit. You can see the strategy I used here. The main problem was it was a time heavy strategy and I wasn’t making enough from all my efforts.
Everyone around me was starting families and buying houses. I was still trying to make a career out of the film industry but my spirits were low. I had struggled for too long financially and it was taking its toll. I needed something which could bring in a proper income. I had many jobs over the years but nothing seemed to work for me. I wanted something which meant something to me – meaningful work. I needed some alternate career options which had the potential to give me a solid income but also allow me the flexibility to run my other businesses.
I had bought an ebook from ebay which showed me a tactic to use to build an ebay business. (see link above). The ebook itself seemed like the perfect business model to me. I downloaded the book after buying straight from ebay. The transaction was automated and this struck me as the perfect business model. I later learned how this same model was being used by some very successful online entrepreneurs.
Alternate Career Options – Affiliate Marketing
The model of the ebook I downloaded led me to start creating my own ebooks. I tried to sell them but had no success. My first online sale however came from a business model known as affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is the process of selling someone else’s product over the internet for a percentage of the sale. Since there were already products selling successfully over the internet, it made more sense to sell those products than to waste time creating my own (not very good) products!
Digital products in particular offer a larger percentage commission – 40% in most cases. My first sale was of a website building program and it made me around $40 on a $100 sale. Physical products like those you might find on ebay or Amazon tend to pay much less, so digital products seemed like the logical choice. Digital products could also be accessed over the internet (globally) with no delivery costs or storage costs either. That’s why (in part) affiliates can earn so much from selling digital products online.
A digital business model allows anyone to work a business from home or their laptop while working their current job/career. But it also is something which can be built up over time and scaled. This is the huge power of an internet business which many other careers simply can’t compete with – the ability to leverage online sales to generate income.
A Scalable Business Model
Most alternate career options offer another opportunity to trade your time for money. Your income is usually capped too and you’re given only a couple of weeks holiday a year. I wanted something which I could build over time and which meant I was always developing. Many careers are so limited in their potential for both personal growth and income. I wanted both! Not only does an online business demand personal growth for it to work, but you can build and scale it from anywhere from a laptop. As long as you have an internet connection, you can start to learn the skills needed to get your own online business running.Â
You can’t scale your time. This means that if you’re working for a company, and selling your time for money, you’ll never escape! No matter how hard you work or how good you are at your job, you’ll still need it! An online business offers the ability to build multiple income streams from a laptop from anywhere in the world. You can automate sales of digital products and then scale up your business with online advertising and marketing methods. This is how people escape the ‘hamster wheel’ of trading their time for money and working in a meaningless job which is holding them from the life they can be living.
Start Your Own Online Business
I struggled for a long time looking for an online business model which was working and which had some ethos behind it. This online business system and education platform has made it possible for me to work from home and build up a flexible business which I can work around existing commitments and priorities. Most jobs and careers operate the opposite to this. They demand your working hours and limit your income.
An online business has flexible working hours and a potentially unlimited income. Affiliate marketing is a performance related income course however, so not everyone is suited to this business opportunity. For me, it has given me the ability to learn new skills, earn from the internet and access a community of online entrepreneurs who have helped me overcome obstacles to success and focus on the activities needed to grow an online business.