by Shannon
I really don’t know if this will work for everyone, but this is how I got started with my online business. One day I was just searching around on Google for a “How-To” Guide for creating an online business. I just wanted some help with how to start a home based business online. I stumbled upon a lot of online scams, and I had to research each one, but luckily there is a ton of information out there from people who are trying to steer you clear from those scams.
Unfortunately, there are also people trying to hook you into online scams so you have to be very careful to avoid them. There is no online police department and no one tells you what to do if you have been scammed online, so you are pretty much just screwed if you’ve invested any money out there. It’s very difficult to find internet businesses that are not scams.
Anyway, I stumbled on this site called Wealthy Affiliate. I am a born skeptic, but it’s pretty tempting to look for quick, easy ways to make money. Wouldn’t most of us love that? I searched around the internet and I found that people were asking, “Can you make money from Wealthy Affiliate?”
So I decided to read their advertising info and see what it was all about. What I found was that first off, you can sign up for free, which is very different from most online scams that require you to pay something upfront. What you should be looking for is online businesses with no startup costs. I took a chance and just signed up since it was free.
Secondly, it was very easy to use, and right when you log in there is a tab that says “Get Started Here”, which takes you to 10 free lessons on getting started with setting up a website.
Then, there is the Activity Dashboard which is kind of like a Facebook feed and shows you what other members are working on, or questions they’re asking. There’s also a Live Chat where you can ask people questions and I have used it so many times to get help when I’ve been stuck on something. There are literally hundreds of people on the site at any given time and I have found that so many of them are super helpful and kind, especially if you are a newbie. They have been there themselves and they understand how daunting and frustrating it can be when you are just starting out and you don’t fully understand the way everything works. When you are brainstorming for a business idea, it helps to have people who may be able to throw suggestions your way.
Another thing I really love is that we all have access to the creators of the site Kyle and Carson, and they actually welcome you and help you to get started. They will even respond if you really need them and that is very comforting. I have reached out to them a couple of times and they were very gracious in getting back to me.
At this point, I have three websites that are hosted at Wealthy Affiliate, and after a few months of working on them, they are starting to generate traffic and income. I have the one you are currently on, bizonlinefromhome.com, and two others:
LEDLightingInfo.com (recently sold)
I have been in the lighting business for 20+ years, so it was a natural fit to get started with my LED lighting website. It’s something I know a lot about and could create some good content to get me going on my first site. I like being able to help people to find the right light bulbs for their application, and also helping them figure out how to calculate their energy savings. I also review fixtures and talk about lighting colors.
My other site, BaseballMomStuff.com is just a big passion of mine, so I decided to make a page that I could blog about Baseball Mom stuff and do reviews of products and recommend things that revolve around baseball. I think this one will be my most successful site and I really enjoy working on it the most.
All three of these sites were set up on Wealthy Affiliate and they are hosted there. I bought my domain names at NameCheap.com and then transferred them to WA. So everything is right there at one place and I have access to it whenever I want to work on it.
I have to say that reinventing myself with these new business has been a good thing for me. Doing the repetitive work of my lighting business for 20+ years has gotten a little old and I really needed something to challenge my brain. In order to succeed at it though, you have to be willing to put in the work, and make time to write several times a week. I’m getting pretty good at maintaining my websites now and a lot of it has become pretty easy, which is very nice.
All of the credit goes to the excellent training resources and helpful people that I was able to take advantage of at Wealthy Affiliate. I’m still learning things every day.
I highly recommend giving it a try. If it’s not your thing you can cancel at any time…there’s no long-term obligation and you really never have to pay for the premium service if you don’t want to. I found that after using the free membership for a while, that I wanted the benefits of the extra features that are available with premium, so I signed up after a couple of weeks. I really think you’ll be pleased!
Here’s a chart showing what you get with the service:
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