Are Work At Home Careers Really A Good Option?

Can you really earn a nice income working from home?

Have you ever thought of being your own boss and starting one of
the many available work at home careers?

The answers to the above questions are yes, yes, and do it! I'm
working from home right now, composing this article.

A larger and larger percentage of people are taking their computer
skills and their entrepreneurial spirit to launch their own home
businesses and begin new careers - work at home careers. 72% of
American households are thinking about starting a home-based business.

The biggest obstacle for most people wanting to start their own
business has been the high cost of starting a new business. However,
with new technologies available today, you can start and run a
successful home based business for virtually nothing. And you can do
so in an almost endless variety of markets.

I'll give you a brief history on how I got started with my work at home
career and give you some ideas and suggestions on how you can do the
same thing. There is nothing like the freedom of working from home
and being your own boss... and making a nice income, too!

A few years ago, I was laid off from my job. My unique positions
made it tough to find a something in my field. I was also stuck in
the position of being overqualified for a lot of the openings that
did exist. As I'm sure many of you can relate, this became quite
frustrating and I started to explore other avenues to making an
income, specifically working from home.

I realized a few things: I didn't much care for punching a clock and
having a boss to answer to. I also knew that I loved to write. But
getting a book or an article published is a long shot and you have
to be very, very successful to make even a modest income. So I did
more research on other possible work at home careers.

After a lot of research, I settled on a couple of areas that I wanted
to pursue. I did want to write and publish a book but I wasn't going
to do it the traditional way. Instead, my home based business research
took me to the Internet and I set about building my own web site on a
passion of mine, fitness. I also wrote a book on the topic, that I
now sell as an ebook, directly from my site.

I spent well over a year in frustration, buying thousands of dollars
of internet marketing products, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I've
made all the mistakes and now I want to help you avoid making those
same mistakes so that you can build a successful online business as
quickly and efficiently as possible.

My savior, what kept me from failing at my internet based work at home
careers, was deciding exactly what I wanted to do and focusing soley on
that one thing. It's way too easy to keep bouncing from one work at home
opportunity to the next, never sticking with something long enough to see
any positive results. All you end up with is a big credit card bill.

Don't let this happen to you. Decide what you want to do, put together
a plan, and follow through on that plan with massive action. This is
the only way you're going to see results working frome home.

Thanks to finally putting together a plan and taking action on that plan
and only that plan, my dream of working from home and selling my book is
a reality. I now get about 1,300 unique visitors a day just to this one site.

Before I learned to focus and put a plan together, I spent a lot of money
on work at home careers, but didn't make any.

I had to learn some copywriting to write the sales page for my ebook
and this led me to other work at home careers. I realized I enjoyed
copywriting, that it is a learnable skill, that you can do it from
home, and that it pays very well. So my work at home careers include
copywriting. In other words, once you see results with what you are
doing, you can branch out into related work at home ideas and leverage
your knowledge for even greater results.

I've always loved to teach, and now I've become a mentor and help others
build internet-based work at home careers.

There are a lot of get rich quick schemes on the internet and a lot of
people making a lot of money off of those interested in work at home
careers. But the truth is, it's not nearly as complex, or as easy, as some
people make it.

You see, work at home careers and making a living on the internet are
great opportunities. But some people give up because they wade through
scam after scam before they get to the gold. Others want instant riches
without putting in the work necessary to become a success. It's best to
keep things simple.

If you're looking to start a home based business, the biggest seller is
information, especially how to information. In the past, there was a huge
financial barrier to begin an information publishing empire. Today, that
is no longer the case.

If you have valuable information (experience, hobbies, etc.) that others
would be willing to pay for, you can start your own information publishing
empire for next to nothing.

This is how I got started with my first site, which was designed to sell
my own ebooks.

If you love to work with computers or you want to find a way to be home
and spend more time with your family or you just don't want to always worry
about whether you are going to be the next casualty when we are in a down
economy. If this sounds like you, work at home careers are for you.

The Real Secret To Internet Marketing Success

Those of you familiar with my previous writings on Internet marketing are well aware of the fact that I am a big proponent of the idea that the only "secret" to successful Internet marketing is this—there are no secrets! The very use of the term "secret" is a marketing ploy (and a very successful one I might add, and one that I utilize myself on occasion) that has been utilized since the primitive times of advertisement and marketing. (And the odds are excellent that this particular word is going to be found in advertisements and marketing campaigns of all sorts until humanity is no longer around to take advantage of it.)

Internet marketing, while having the potential perhaps to pay off in much bigger ways than other forms of marketing and business, still involves work, and lots of it. In fact, it has been my experience that Internet marketing is NOT a quick and easy path to "easy money." Rather, just the opposite! Generating a sustainable income via Internet marketing, more often than not, does not happen overnight. Success is fleeting, especially early on until you establish your niche market(s) and slowly begin to dominate them.

Internet marketing takes much hard work, persistence, knowledge, creativity, and, above all else, time. (And don't forget to throw in a little bit of luck for good measure!) Internet marketing is not the quick and easy road to riches that some would have you believe. It is much easier just to go out and get a "regular" job and get paid to make someone else rich.

Internet marketing also has a very high learning curve. It takes time to master. I have been involved with Internet marketing for quite a while now and have enjoyed some major successes of my own, but, even with my experience I still manage to learn something new about the business almost daily. Success in this field particularly requires that you become a student. You have to learn much about technology, marketing, sales, product, and so very much more. And all of these change almost daily! Educating yourself and staying abreast of developments is no easy task but it is a prerequisite to Internet marketing success.

Now, the above having been said, I want to say this—I love Internet marketing! I enjoy the difficulty, i.e., the challenge involved in Internet marketing. It is fiercely competitive and I happen to like the competition—no, I love it! In no other forum do you constantly have to evaluate and reevaluate your tactics and strategies as you do in Internet marketing. A competitor with a similar or same product is always trying to one-up you and you have to, in turn, one-up him or her! This cycle goes on and on, ad infinitum. More often than not, the most creative individual is the one who wins the customer and, subsequently, the paycheck.

Ok, so the title of this article is "The REAL Secret to Internet Marketing Success," so you want me to go ahead and give you that "REAL secret" right? (Hey—you weren't expecting this to be a piece on the difficulty of Internet marketing after all!) Remember though, I have already said that there are no secrets, unless the secret to Internet marketing success is a mixture of hard work, dedication, perseverance, patience, creativity, time, knowledge, etc. Of course this isn't a secret that would sell very well now is it? No one wants to hear something like that for free, much less pay to hear something like that! But I guess if there is in fact a secret to Internet marketing, then that would have to be it, in my humble opinion at least.

My parting advice is this, especially to those of you presently pondering "getting into" Internet marketing and those of you just starting out. Success is there for the taking, if you make up your mind from the beginning to see your endeavors through. Despite the claims of "easy money" being made by thousands of Internet gurus the world over, you WILL have to work hard and persevere. You can't do "nothing" and watch the cash roll into your PayPal account. It just doesn't work that way.

Study, absorbing all that you can. Find a niche and exploit it. Be creative—find something that hasn't been done before or find something someone else is doing that you could do better. Persevere. Success doesn't happen overnight but in increments. Set goals, small ones at first then becoming progressively more ambitious, and accomplish them. If you are serious about Internet marketing, no one can make it happen other than you yourself. Here, like no where else, you get to see the fruits of your own hand—whether bountiful or otherwise.

Copyright 2007 by M. Shane Huey. All rights reserved.