Searching For What It Takes To Make Money Online

I was recently reading through my last post and started to kind of chuckle to myself. I re-read all the resolutions that I’d promised but never followed through on. All I could do was think to myself “how do you expect to make money online if you don’t do anything?” And now it’s almost a year since I’ve really done anything with my business.

Why?

To be completely honest, I lost the drive. I was going strong up until the summer of 2013, but soon dropped off the marketing scene. Every now and then I would make an attempt to come back (last one was in March, I think), but it was very inconsistent.

At first, I blamed it on the weather and seasons and I recall thinking it was too nice out to be inside writing. I’ll pick this up when the weather turns and I’m inside again.

Winter came and I started a new job in construction. Now my excuse was being too tired. I was going to bed at 8pm and waking with the baby every other morning at 4am before going off to work at 7.

Now, here I am, still thinking about a possibility of success in online marketing. I’ve come the closest to giving up than I ever have before, yet I haven’t. I’ve neglected to put the time into building my business, but all the while, I couldn’t give up the possibilities it offered.

Beyond having invested all this time so far, why wouldn’t I just give up?

Well, as I went in every day beating my body up from working construction, I’d dream about working at my desk and not worrying if I’m going to hurt myself. I’m 40 years old with a blended family of seven, so being out of work would be disastrous.

Then I start then I started thinking about retirement. I have no retirement so far and there’s no way I could continue doing what I’m doing for as long as I’ll need to work. With online marketing, I don’t think I would be concerned about a retirement age.

Becoming successful in online marketing would be a great skill to teach my children. If I could show them the proper steps, they could possibly live the life I dream of, just sooner.

And the biggest reason I want to succeed? It’s a big one, one I haven’t shared with my wife.

In ten years, I want to pull my youngest son out of middle school and home school him. Only this home school will be done in a RV, traveling cross country with a hands on approach concerning all subjects. The older 4 will be out of the house (fingers crossed), so it would just be my wife, youngest son and myself. Maybe for a year and we’ll see what happens from there.

Now, what makes this post any different than my declarations to retry from the past? Nothing really. I’m just going to try to be more honest with myself and remember why I’m doing what I’m doing. To make money online in order to do all the things I want to do.

2014 Is My Year To Make Money In Affiliate Marketing

It’s been just over a year since I began a subscription to Wealthy Affiliate, marking the point when I felt I could make money in affiliate marketing and wanted to pursue it very seriously.

My first six months were very productive. I started a couple sites and wrote articles linking to them. I updated my blogs and kept pretty well on top of things, keeping a log of publishings and posts so I could see my progress at a glance.

My second six months, not so much. Warm weather came in and I put off sitting at the computer for colder days. I just never realized how difficult it would be to get back into the swing of things.

But with a New Year comes new opportunities, so I’m going to hold on to my internet marketing dreams for a little bit longer. I’m carrying on into 2014 with the same desire to succeed, but looking back at 2013 to see what I can learn.

Here are my 8 “resolutions” I plan to implement and remember throughout the upcoming year, in no particular order.

1.Try not to take on too much. When I first started out, I never took into account there was going to be a learning curve. I may not have picked up as quickly as others, so my progress may be less. But not only was I trying to learn the business, I was trying to create content for two websites, maintain a blog for each website and submit articles two separate article directories for each site. All in all, I set myself up to have to create 8 posts and pages a week, never mind the learning I still had ahead of me. Slow and steady can win the race.

2. Focus on a niche. My first site, “Learn Meditation” was much too broad and I found myself going in way too many different directions. I plan on narrowing my next site to  a smaller niche, letting me focus a little better on the site instead of how many different variations of the site I can come up with.

3. Work on it every day. Even if it’s only 30 minutes a day, that time adds up. After a week, you could have more than 6 hours invested towards learning and creating, whereas if you waited until you had a block of time to work on it, you may never get to it.

4. Create a reasonable schedule. I have five children running around the house at any given time. I found it reasonable and necessary to take an hour a day away from the chaos and work on my writing, in private. I’ve tried to just “do it when I can”, but as you can see, I haven’t written anything in 6 months, so I’m hoping this schedule will help keep me on task.

5. Remember I’m responsible. There’s no one else creating and contributing content, no one else to push me when I don’t feel like writing and no one to hold me accountable for anything but myself. It can be difficult to self motivate sometimes, but there’s no way around it in order to be successful.

6. Have reasonable expectations. When I first started this endeavor, my hopes were to make enough money from affiliate marketing the first month to pay for any subscriptions or programs I was going to invest in. The fact is, I knew nothing when I started out and never took it into consideration. It takes time to learn and build a respectable presence online.

7. Make mistakes. At first, I was so afraid to publish something, re-reading it and constantly revising it. I would spend way too much time second guessing my work. This year I’m going to try to remember that I won’t learn unless I make mistakes.

8. Stick with Wealthy Affiliate. Even though I haven’t been working on my websites over the last few months, I maintained my subscription to WA for the day I knew I was going to start working on it again. So, here I am!

I’m looking forward to see what the new year will bring. These little notes may not seem much, but are easy to forget and frustrating when you let them get to you. And I do that way too often.

Have any ideas or advice to improve productivity? Please share below! I can use all the help out there!

Thanks for reading!