One of the things that is really important about working from home is starting to make some money. If you spend day after day toiling at your new craft and you see nothing for your effort, you may become discouraged and give up.

DON’T DO IT!

You see this is one of those things that can get you in a lot of trouble with yourself. You must be able to see some progress. There are some measuring tools, like Google analytics or statcounter, which you can use to see progress. But money is number one.

When I first started I tried a few things. Remember I used to get over 200 e-mails a day from all the gurus lists that I was on. Each of them telling me just what it was that I needed to do, and what latest must have product I needed to buy, with money I had not yet earned. Well what did I learn?

Of course, I already told you to get off those lists! They are sucking you under, they are killing your productivity and they are breaking your spirit. Is that clear for you? I mean it.

But logically why is that the wise thing for you to do? Well, we have already spoken of in some length about time and how little of it you have when you are working at home. Remember, you are a mother or father, breadwinner, housecleaner, teacher, peacekeeper, and veterinarian. First of all, just when will you spend some of your precious online time reading emails that are truly just sucking the life out of your internet business?

And second of all, Every time you choose to try something new, you now have to invest your time and effort into learning it, getting together whatever you need to put it into play and then put it into practice. Now you are spending precious time to learn a new task, and you are not doing anything to advance your business that you have already established.

Remember, and this is key to your online success, so wait for it…

You need only three things to become successful online.

1. You need a product in a market that has buyers. (market/keyword research first, then product)
2. You need a place to sell this product (website of some kind, blog, lens, hubpage etc)
3. You need people to sell it to. (traffic)

Pretty easy huh? Well if you said yes to that question, you really need to rethink a thing or two.

No! it is not easy. But it is doable.

More on the details of the above later, but now we need to start seeing some money.

This is what I have been doing and I am starting to see some money. Squidoo.

Squidoo is a website that allows you to build a “lens” (the name they use to describe the website you build) The lens can be on any subject you like, writing about something you know and then expanding the lens into all kinds of fun interactive “modules” or pieces of your lens. It is great! However, this is not play time, you are an internet marketer. So if you want to use your lens to sell something so you will earn some money, keyword research would be good, and then build the lens around that keyword. You can also put as many links into your lens as you like pointing back to your main site if it has anything to do with your keyword.

That is an advanced thought. If you had taken the thirty day challenge you would know exactly what I am talking about. You still can, just go over to the Thirty Day Challenge and sign up. It is free! This is not an affiliate link, I get nothing but the count of the number of people taking the challenge through my link. So check it out.

But for now I just want you to focus on making some money. You can just build lens and not sell a thing. You see Squidoo has Google adsense on them and you can earn money from just that. Or if you put a Amazon or ebay module on your lens and sell something, you earn additional income. You have to tell Squidoo when you make your profile that you want to be paid cash or they will give it all to charity, so don’t forget that.

Now the catch here is that you only earn of percentage of the whole pot if your lens are ranking well. They need to be in the top 100 of your category. There is a ton of stuff you will learn when you sign up to Squidoo, which by the way is a FREE service. 100%! Getting them into the top 100 is the fun part. You have to be interactive and give a little. You know look at other people’s lens and vote on them and favorite them and duel on them. And join the forum, to learn from as well as to interact some more. All this behavior is rewarded by Squidoo. Plus your nicely ranking lens that are interesting and interactive can earn you some cash.

Some people on Squidoo are earning hundreds of dollars every month. Some even over a thousand. Could you use that? I know I can. Just to start reducing debt or replacing JOB income

Here is an example of one of my lens. CLICK HERE, and by the way, vote for it if you like it while you are there. I hope you will take the time to look into Squidoo, it has turned into a way to lighten the load for me, and it is fun, filled with genuinely nice people. And as an added benefit, well loved by Google. A win-win situation.

Until next time,

Susan

Technorati Tags: A Blog for Baby Boomers, Google Adsense, internet marketing, lensmasters, make money online, squidoo, squidoo lens, work from home

I believe that we all have dreams. I know I do. I am still working a JOB, but am closer to becoming full time in Internet marketing. How about you? Are you pursuing your dreams?

We baby boomers are really taken advantage of. We have been brainwashed into believing that there is no other way but to work work work until we are seventy or more!! Well it doesn’t have to be that way, I promise.

Yes, we must learn to think outside the box. And that is more difficult than you may think at times. Why? Because of fear. Oh my, what if I fail? or What if I am not good enough? or What if I look silly? or What will my friends think?

Well don’t tell them, and Of course you are good enough, and you will fail, at least in the beginning. There is a learning curve, which is only reasonable.

I have been a nurse for nearly 40 years. You bet I was afraid. I didn’t want to feel stupid. I was way outside my comfort zone. But you know what I am pretty tired of the same old thing. I am getting older now and really need to slow down physically, and
my brain is thriving on Internet marketing. I love it!!

I want you to love it too. There is no reason not to.  Don’t give up. Keep working at it.

Find someone that is already doing it right. Is already successful, and genuinely seems interested in your success and is willing to help. Then copy what they do. It really is a simple formula. I used to use it in nursing. You’ve heard of mentoring. I have mentored so many people I can’t count. But I also had the most terrific mentors along the way.

I want you to be successful in Internet marketing and quit your JOB, maybe in a few months or maybe a couple years. But when you are ready, and you have found your success you will do it. Me too

Today I a for your list, as a giveaway from your site or to attract subscribers. You can even sell it if you like. However you must not change it in anyway.

It is: How To Break Into The ‘How To Make Money Online’ Niche By Sara Brown (who is, BTW, one of my mentors)

http://www.jskmarketing.com/howtomakemoneyonline.pdf

It is amazing what you will learn in this book. The main thing is not to be intimidated and to not listen to all those people, gurus, that try to convince you can not do something. Well you can and this great e book will tell you how.

http://www.jskmarketing.com/howtomakemoneyonline.pdf

Also take a look at the other e book offered inside this

e book. It is one of the books that have most heavily influenced my decision to replace my income with Internet marketing and even more!

It is called ‘License to Quit’ by Sara Brown, You must check it out. It is worth your time. You won’t regret it. I didn’t.

http://www.jskmarketing.com/howtomakemoneyonline.pdf

Well until next time.

Get to marketing!!

Susan

Technorati Tags: A Blog for Baby Boomers, Internet Marketin, marketing, quit your job, work from home

Then you open your email. Wow, you say, I have 79 new e-mails. Yikes. Of course, you did just join that latest giveaway and they had some great free downloads and all you had to do was give them your email address. That’s pretty simple.

So now you are on their lists. And they want you to buy something… anything!  The next greatest and latest, the best must have thing for your new internet business. Well, what are you to do? What if they are right? What if some of the stuff they are selling really would help you in some endeavor you are aspiring to? What if it might save you some time or effort? What if it really would let you become successful? Afterall, you do have a limited budget for growing your business.

So…you start opening and reading and clicking…

what do you mean 4 hours have passed!! I must get dinner, the kids will be home from school, the dog needs to be let out.

How could this have happened. I had a list!

Sound familiar. Well it certainly does to me. This has happened to me over and over. I love those giveaways and I have been around long enough to have gotten on a few lists that keep me informed of the next one coming. It’s free! You have to check it out.

Or do you?

Here is my take on this. There are just a few things you must do to make money on line.

• You need a product, be it yours, an affiliate’s or google’s (adsense)
• You need a way of contacting people, be it a blog, a website, email campaigns
• you need people to sell it to

These are the essentials, albeit extremely oversimplified.

So you know you have an idea of what you need to to do to accomplish this, remember you had a list, but distractions are killing your efforts. Day after Day, and week after week and soon month after month of your precious time away from diner, the kids and the dog keep slipping away and you are no closer to your dream of working from home.

What can you do?

Well there is something you can do. It took awhile, but I finally learned this and it has made a huge difference in my online life.

You must be aware you are being distracted!

That’s it! That’s the big secret! All the internet gurus know this secret, but they will not necessarily share it with you. They figure you’ll probably figure it out but until then they will continue to be part of the distraction.

So are you going to ignore your email. Tape it shut with duct tape so it can’t get you again. No, of course not. But…

Have a plan…a little better than a list. Here’s what I do.

1. I plan my time to do my online work every week just like a real work schedule.
2. I share this plan with my family. I, of course, made the plan with home life in mind so that no one is neglecte, not even the dog,  and everyone in the family can help me be successful by respecting the plan.
3. When I sit down to my block of time to work online, I have a designated 30-45 min of time to look at email. Now this means peruse. If you have 79 new emails. YOU MUST NOT LOOK AT ALL 79! You are going to have to good at glancing through them, prioritizing them and looking at the ones you feel are really important or interesting. You can always come back to this later and continue to clean it up while you are watching TV with the family with your laptop in use.
4. Here is where you list comes in. Nothing feels as good as being able to check things off your list. Let me repeat that. Nothing feels as good as being able to check things off your list. You feel like you are really internet marketing. You feel like this really is important and you are doing something toward your freedom from the JOB. You are really working from home. IT IS GREAT! Try it!
5. Work your allotted time for the day. Check off a thing or two from your list. Stand up feel proud and go cook dinner and oh, let the dog out.

Feel really good about yourself. You did it! You worked at your internet marketing business. You know you can’t help but be successful if you can behave as a professional and take your work seriously.

Give this a real concerted effort. You may not be perfect at it for awhile. It is really hard to get away from the email and distractions and it takes a minute for the family to fall inline. But it will happen. I promise. It did for me. It will for you.

Next time we’ll talk a bit about that next great thing, that must have something or other. Until then, please be good to yourself and keep working to quit your JOB.

Technorati Tags: A Blog for Baby Boomers, blog, blogging, internet marketing, marketing, quit your job, work from home

You see these are the things that make us baby boomers. Memories of a time gone by. We should all be proud to be of that post war generation. A difficult time our parents suffered through to give us life. I am grateful, aren’t you?

But now it is today 2008. I am 55 years old. I am still working. Really hard work.   I have been working for nearly 40 years. I am a bit tired. I want something else for myself. But…

I have two mortgages, credit card debt and a life style that I enjoy and am not willing to give up. So I continue to work. Cost of living keeps rising. I can’t afford to take a driving vacation anymore because of the expense of gasoline. Food cost keeps rising. Gas and electric are higher than they have ever been. In the city I live in it costs $9.oo just to go to the movies. It used to be $2, remember??

I can’t afford to quit working. I’m too young to collect retirement or social security. But I am a bit tired, (did I mention that already )

So, recently I have begun exploring new ways of thinking. New ways of making money. Attitude changes. Paradigm shifting. I have been doing internet marketing. I should say most of this time (about 6 months) I have been doing internet marketing education.

Unfortunately, you don’t just start doing something with no knowledge base at all. So I started learning. OMG! I have never had more information overload in my life. School for nursing was a bit challenging. Learning how the human body works and why, and then how to fix it. You would think that would be intense, which it was. But this is amazing.

Here is the problem. There are some shysters out there. They are no more interested in your advancing on their turf, than the man in the moon. But they say they are. They say they want to help you and all you need to do is buy this and that and the other thing and in the next week you will be a millionaire too. Well, before you know it you are more broke than you ever were. It is shameful. It is even embarrassing as to how gullible I was.

But finally I got connected to some really awesome people who although they admit they are making a living online, they are also really interested in helping you do the same. It is also amazing how much FREE stuff there is out there to advance your effort.

And you know what I learned from these people. You must care about someone other that just yourself.

So that is what this blog is for. I plan to journal my journey into the world of successful internet marketing. I may make some mistakes but I will become successful. I also plan to share some things with any readers I may have. I have learned a lot. I have some good recommendations and can maybe even help you avoid some of the pitfalls.

You see we have two choices. Keep working until we are seventy. Or get out of the rat race now and start learning something new.

I am getting out!

If you want to comment on anything about baby boomers. Internet marketing, or share your own experiences or things you have found please do. Together we will move forward!

To our success!

Susan

Technorati Tags: A Blog for Baby Boomers, Didem, Food cost, Human Interest, internet marketing, internet marketing education, marketing, president, The Organ, USD, work at home, work from home