The Internet Work From Home Evolution
If your first taste of the internet work from home industry was a sour one, you are certainly not alone. The industry has become far more transparent in recent years but there is some baggage around from the bad old days. That can be off putting for newcomers. My first experiences of what I now know can be a wonderful, life-changing career path were not good. But through perseverance I have found some amazing, inspirational people of integrity who have helped make my internet work from home journey a positive one. I’d like to share my own experiences with you here and introduce you to those mentors.
I first started looking for an internet work from home business around 2010 when the recession was making lots of people around me redundant. I was pretty sure my turn would come (as it did) and wanted a back up plan. My research revealed a lot of scammy looking, hyped up get rich quick nonsense that I was way too sceptical and sensible to fall for. I eventually settled on a franchise based e-commerce store. The franchisor was offering these stores in all sorts of niches, complete with training and ongoing support.
When It Got Tougher But Better
My scepticism caused me to procrastinate however and I missed out on some niches that would have suited me well. After a number of conversations with the franchise people themselves and some existing customers I took the plunge. I bought one that sold wines and related products. Essentially these were comparison style affiliate businesses. You selected and sold products from a range of sellers and earned commission on any sales made.
The video training modules that came with the business talked you through the set up process and how to start choosing and promoting the products. It then went into setting up social media accounts, blogs etc and then to the business of actually marketing online. It all seemed very well put together and I made some early (though small) commissions.
The main thrust of the marketing training involved getting free traffic. That involved writing articles and using software to “spin” those articles. It then spread unique versions of them all over the internet. That’s where the fatal flaw in the model lay. You see before Google introduced key updates to their algorithms this was ok. As long as you chose relevant keywords for your content it didn’t really matter if the content itself was pretty poor. I like to think mine was pretty good. The software I mentioned took your original article and created 100’s of slightly different versions of it. It then automatically created accounts for you in numerous article directories, blogs and bookmarking sites and posted those “unique” articles to them.
The End of the Get Rich Quick Mentality
This all seemed very clever. In those days it could get you on the first page of search results for Google, Bing and Yahoo quickly. After Google’s infamous Panda and Penguin updates however, it actually turned your business into enemy number one in the big G’s eyes. Then and now an article or blog post that isn’t actually readable, just a vehicle for a mass of keywords, is a very bad thing indeed.
Those updates by Google were soon adopted by other major advertising networks like Youtube and Facebook. This heralded the end for a lot of internet marketers. No longer could keyword stuffing get them the top search rankings. Gone was the cheap advertising that created the whole get rich quick mentality.
Ironically it had actually been quite easy to make a lot of money with an internet work from home business pre Panda and Penguin, so not all of those claims were hot air. But internet marketers who had all of their eggs in that particular basket (like the franchisor I bought my store from) were back at ground zero.
Ironically again, if I’d known what I know now my e-commerce store could actually have been quite viable. E-commerce is a superb internet work from home business model. Many platforms like Amazon, Ebay, Etsy and others taking care of most of the heavy lifting for you and offering affiliate income potential too.
No one could have predicted how quickly the internet would change the world. Few foresaw the impact it would have on how we do business. Google, Facebook and Youtube have become advertising behemoths and we as consumers have become extremely net savvy. If you are doing business on the internet now you play by the rules and the rules are pretty strict.
Why Mentorship Is Now Crucial
The big players want to protect their consumers – the people who are using them to find information, goods and services. To that end they insist on quality – “does what it says on the tin” – experiences for their users. They check where advertisers links take us. They have very particular guidelines on what’s Ok and what’s not ok. Sadly my e-commerce store fell on the “Not Ok”, side of the fence. As this affected every franchisee who had bought such a store, the Franchisor was forced to close it’s doors.
I was lucky with the franchise as I was able to get my purchase price refunded. I’ll never get the time back I spent on it or the additional cost of software and other bits and pieces. Luckily I didn’t lose my lunch completely. Neither was I put off the Internet based work from home industry in general. I’d had a taste of making sales in my sleep, working from anywhere I could access the internet, and having a lot of time freedom. I just needed to learn better ways of marketing online. Where better to learn that than from the people who have already built 6, 7 and 8 figure internet businesses?
Getting A Head Start In The internet Work From Home Space
There are a lot of those people out there but very few are prepared to tell you how they did it. It’s not yet something you can find at college or university. Yes you can spend a few years and a lot of money on a marketing degree and that might get you a job. It won’t, however help you to build a profitable home based internet business from scratch. I know people who have done that and agree with me whole heartedly.
For the last 5 years I’ve been a full time member of the growing internet based work from home industry. This came about when I discovered a couple of extremely successful internet entrepreneurs and the education platform and affiliate opportunity they have built. I also decided to partner with them as I liked what they do so much and had benefited from it myself hugely.
If you’d like to know more about them, subscribe for their free introductory video series on the link below. I’m pretty sure you’ll find as I did, that its exactly what you’ve been looking for.