I've been making a living with online businesses now for nearly 3 years. When I first got the idea to try to make money online I had no idea where to start and the thought of building a website from scratch scared the hell out of me.



I came across a link somewhere that said “How to start an online business” and thought to myself, “that's exactly what I would like to know” so clicked on it. I read the entire sales pitch looking for a catch but, there didn't seem to be one so, I bought in to it for a whooping $125. It took nearly 2 days for it to be setup and once I got it I thought, “Ah man, that's the same site design I've seen a thousand times”. I thought I'd been had.

Well, I figured, since I'd already spent all the money I had available at the time, I'd might as well see what I could do with it. I figured that since it looked like so many other online business websites, it wouldn't matter what words of wisdom or sales pitch I used, visitors would leave it as soon as they saw the familiar graphics and wouldn't even read a single word.

If I was going to make this a successful at home business website, it had to have a completely different look. I had a friend that was pretty good with graphics so I bought a case of beer and paid him a visit. After he was pretty well primed, I asked him if he would mind giving me hand changing a few graphics on my website.

We pulled up my turnkey website and saved all of the graphics on his computer. Then he worked his magic on each of them. Basically he kept the same dimensions (height and width) so they would fit back into the website without causing any drastic changes and BAM!! It was beautiful!

Not only did it not look like thousands of other sites so visitors might actually read it now, it changed my entire attitude towards it. I was motivated even more now. I was determined to make a home based business with that website no matter what.

Well, I changed the wording on the site quite a bit but it was setup and designed to promote 6 specific items so I really couldn't change it much but, I did my best.

With the website looking like a legitimate business now and not like so many other sites, I was ready to make money online. I began reading everything I could get my hands on about advertising, promoting, and attracting customers. It didn't take long to figure out that the hardest part was still to come. Traffic.

I wrote articles, posted on forums, placed classified ads, basically I did everything I had read or heard of to generate traffic but, not much happened.

To make a long story short, I got discouraged and eventually gave up. But not for long. About 2 months later I received a couple decent sized checks in the mail. They were from a couple of the affiliate programs that were on my website. I ran to the computer to check the hit counter on my website. I can't remember exactly how many there were, somewhere around 14000 hits or so. When I checked to see where they were coming from and when it had started I realized that it had been picked up by Yahoo which caused a decent spike in hits but, then there were many different hits from sites I'd never heard of.

Anyway, that cranked up my interest in a web based business again but, this time I was a little wiser and knew I had to be a bit more patient.

I was afraid to touch the site that was already making money so I took one of the checks and bought 2 more turnkey websites. Actually, I only wanted to buy 1 more but the first one had the same affiliates on it and I wanted to try different affiliate programs this time so I ended up buying 2. Todays turnkey websites come with control panels that make it a snap to add, delete and change affiliates.

Alright, so I didn't make this long story short but, I'll will now.

The first site kept generating bigger and bigger checks, month after month, the second site took a little longer to get started and still hasn't been as effective and profitable as the first but, I've made 9 other sites the exact same way for a total of 11 different streams of income.

The new turnkey home based businesses are much cheaper and more flexible, which makes turning a profit much quicker, and are many times more profitable.

The points of the story is this:

1. Never, ever give up on your dreams.

2. When you find something that works, even if it's just a little, duplicate it, over and over again. A little X a lot = a lot more.

3. There are billions of dollars being made online, TAKE your share, it will not be given to you for free.

Ladies and Gentlemen, This shopping mall we call "The Internet" is enormous. The whole world is lined up at your doors, waiting for you to open up shop.