Reasons To Start A Part-Time Internet Business

• Extra Income

We can all do with some extra income, however much it is. I was listening to a recently retired man in his early sixties complaining that he only had so much to live on every week and the good days had gone. He’s still stuck in the old mindset that once you retire you have to rely on your monthly pension and that’s it, finished. This is wrong. So wrong in today’s internet dominated world. It’s not difficult to earn an income over the net; even a small income will add value, even if it pays for a holiday ever year.

• Independence

Having an income generated by your own efforts from a small business will insulate you from the ups and down of the markets. Many retired people who depended on the interest their savings earned to fund their retirement, have found themselves in trouble as interest rates have plummeted. Insulate yourself from the effects of corrupt bankers and politicians by setting up your own wealth creating business.

• Unlimited Potential

You may not become a millionaire from starting your own business, but then again you just might. The point is the potential is there. You are in control, you can jack it up or down depending on how much time you want to put in it. With an internet business the cost base is low so you don’t have to put the hours in to cover costs like you would have to with a brick and mortar business.

• Low Start-up Costs

It’s never been easier or cheaper to start a business thanks to the internet. Before the internet, in the dark old days, if you wanted to start a trading business, you either had to find a shop or get into a market. Either way you had to lay out a reasonable amount of money before you even got started. You had to find money for rent, fixtures, rates, tax and then stock. It could cost you thousands before you even opened. Today, you can open an online shop for very little cost. You don’t even have to carry much stock if you do your sourcing right. If after a few months you decide it’s not for you, it’s a simple matter to close it down.

• Fit The Business to your Lifestyle

The internet allows you to fit your business into your lifestyle. Unlike a brick and mortar shop where you have standard opening hours to honour. With an internet business you are in full control. When you go on holiday there’s no worrying about who’s going to run the shop in your absence. Just close it down for a week or two. It’s a simple matter of clicking a few boxes.

• Reach Out To A Global Market

The internet provides you with a global market to sell to. All those potential customers that you can reach. Admittedly you will have to learn the skills and techniques required to reach them, but that’s all part of the fun.

• If you’re retiring a small business will help to keep you engaged. There’s plenty of evidence to show that staying in the game and using your mind increases your longevity and boosts your health. A part-time internet business will still leave you plenty of time to do the things you love.

It’s great fun. Launching campaigns and following them through, setting goals and seeing them come to fruition is a great feeling. Building something, watching a vision turn into a reality is an amazing thing and will boost your confidence.

Reasons To Start A Business In Middleage

Times have changed and everything has been affected. I’m not just talking about technology changes; there’s been huge social changes in our lifetime. Take retirement. It was set at 65 for us men. We were supposed to leave school, get a job and sit tight until we retired at 65 when we would get an allotment, go fishing,, build models or just sit down and fade away.

Today people are reaching middle age much fitter and stronger than our parents. We can expect to live much longer and the 65-year old retirement date is looking dated. There’s also the fact that we need to fund our retirement and the state pension isn’t going to do it. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life, counting how many watts of electricity, you can afford to use each day. If you haven’t spent your life working for the state, and you’ve never been an MP, it’s almost certain that your private pension is not going to bring the returns you expected after Gordon brown’s frequent tax raids on it to fund labours social experiments.

There’s also the consideration that we don’t all want to down tools at sixty five and visit the coast or go walking in the countryside every other day. Middle age offers us wonderful opportunities that may not have been available when we were younger. It’s a perfect time to start that business. The kids have grown up and gone (hopefully) so you have more time to spare. Now’s the time to challenge yourself and become the person you know you can become.

As a middle-aged person you are equipped with great skills, ability and experience that they can’t teach to the clones coming out of business school. Here 10 reasons why middleage is a great time to start a business. Part-time or full-time:
It’s the best way of producing an extra income.
Forget wasting your money in a building society for a meagre return. Invest £100 in something and sell it with a 40% mark-up. Repeat and watch your income grow. If you started a part-time business in your fifties and grew it, imagine the extra income you will have for your retirement if you choose to retire.
Work at home using the internet.
You don’t even have to leave the house. The internet has made it easier than ever to earn an income
It’s a great way to challenge yourself and build a business around something you love. .
Here’s your chance to prove to yourself that you always had the skill and drive to become successful now you have the chance, take it.
Become your own boss.
Even if you start your business on a part-time basis while continuing to work you will be in control. As the business grows and your income increases, you won’t worry about redundancy, you’ll pray for it.
Learn new things. .
Life’s about learning. Some people are happy to have spent all their lives in one job. There’s nothing wrong with that as long as they realise their life experience is limited. By stepping into your own business, you will embark on a great learning journey that will fill you with satisfaction. And believe me there is so much to learn that you will spend a lot of time reading. You’ll have to learn about marketing, pricing, negotiating, buying, shipping and a multitude of other skills if you are going to succeed.

Bullet proof yourself against age discrimination
I know age discrimination is supposed to be illegal but so is speeding but we all do it. Let’s face it you can’t legislate human nature out of a situation. If you are made redundant at 55 and go for another job. At the same interview is a 23 year old. Whom would you employ? The 23 year old will get it every time. If I were a 25-year-old manager having to make the decision, I wouldn’t be employing anybody old enough to be my dad. When did your dad ever do anything you told him to?

Increase your self-esteem.
How? Think about it. You’ve spent most of your life kowtowing to others who were supposed to be better educated than you making decisions that directly affected you, usually for the worse. You’ve listened to a lifetime of bullshit from bluffers and sycophants. Now you can be the boss. You can read all the spreadsheets and predict monthly growth rates. You’ll be the head buyer negotiating with suppliers. You’ll be the marketing director dictating marketing policy. You’ll be the CEO and you don’t have to waste time worrying about the arse kissing bluffer trying to oust you.

Statistically you are going to live a lot longer than your parents.
Can you imagine anything worse than 20 years of visiting the same places, going for the same walks or sat in front of the TV. Take up the challenge and prove you can become more than you thought.

Planning; don’t make it an excuse for inaction

We know the old clique about how failing to plan is planning to fail. And it’s true, we can’t move forward confidently without a plan. Every business book emphasises the need for a plan to enhance our chances of succeeding in our venture. What I don’t like is the insistence of some of these books that a plan has to be detailed and run into tens of pages. Containing detailed financial calculations.

This didn’t work for me. I just don’t see the point of spending days and possibly months writing a minutely detailed plan with forecasted financial data laid out on a spreadsheet. The figures can only be guesses. Some of the plans I’ve seen in books are like something you would do to impress a tutor on a PHD course. . Personally, I don’t see the need for such in-depth planning.

In fact, I believe it can be counterproductive and sap the energy out of you. After reading, as much as I could about business planning I decided to discard most of it and improvise with my own plan. The first question I asked myself is “what am I aiming to achieve?” I stated this clearly. My main goal.

Once I’d stated my goal, I needed to break it down into smaller goals that could be measured. I needed to know that I was on the right track to achieve my main long-term goal. By setting smaller goals, each with a target I can see my progress visually. This is important for moral. We grow in confidence when we are succeeding.

Having laid out my long-term goal and broken it down into smaller measurable, goals, I then broke the smaller goals down into targets. This is my plan. Once I had it written down on two sheets of A4, I launched. Once I launched my business, I was immediately getting feedback from the market I was in about my business strategy. My plan allows for flexibility. I have nothing set in stone apart from my long-term goal of creating wealth.

Certain strategies I deployed didn’t work, but I expected this and just changed them. I also saw opportunities that had never occurred to me during the planning process. The feedback I was getting from the market was real, not forecasted, so my decisions were based on concrete facts.

I recognise the importance of a plan but we can get caught up in planning to the point where we become paralysed, afraid to move until certain conditions are just right. It can become an excuse for inaction. If we wait for everything to be just right, until all the heavens have aligned for us, and our own position is perfect we will never launch.

I believe that taking strong positive action with a bad plan is better than sitting on the perfect plan. At least your bad plan will soon become apparent and you can make the necessary changes that will propel you towards your goal. The perfect plan will never happen because there’s too many variables coming into and out of play all the time. Don’t let planning become an excuse for inaction.

More Focus Pays Off

I’ve been allowing myself to get overwhelmed recently with too many projects. I’m working on rebranding my eBay shop, this involves relisting every item, between 250 and 300 products.

I’m using a standard template for all my products so they will look more attractive and contain all the information about the product and terms clearly stated. It also requires me taking new pictures.

This is all a part of my rebranding strategy. I’m also doing some work on my website, keeping my blog going and I’m working on some internet marketing which involves me learning new things about building sites. It’s all so time consuming.

Over the last week, I’ve become a little frustrated because I was trying to do a bit of everything but felt like I was achieving nothing. So, on Friday, I decided to take some decisive action. From now on, I’m only going to concentrate on one project at a time.

I’m going to focus on it totally until it is completed. I will of course, still have to do day to day things, like keep my blog up to date and deal with eBay, but as far as projects go, I’m going to pin them down until they are done, finished, before I move onto another one.

I’ve implemented this new system this weekend and I’m pleased with the results. The hours that I’ve been working I’ve focused totally on one project, forgetting everything else. The project in question involves me building a little site, which has meant I’ve had to do some learning as I’ve been going along. I’ve now reached the position where I’ve almost completed the site. I’m amazed! I’ve done this by focusing for small amounts of time on one thing only. I broke my time down into forty minutes of total focus on the job I was doing. After forty minutes, I took a break then started again.

I now actually feel like I’m accomplishing things. I feel like I’ve achieved a lot this weekend without impinging on my family time. I also took some time out to do some housekeeping on my computer.

I had accumulated over a hundred EBooks on various subjects; I decided to throw them all off along with everything else that was sucking time from me. I’ve unsubscribed from all but a handful of my favourite business and life interest blogs.

So, it’s been a good weekend, I’m writing this post with my feet on the desk after just returning from an hour and half cycle ride. I can feel the sweat running down my neck and my body is encased in a warm glow, one of my dogs is staring at me, wanting to go out, and my wife and son are arguing downstairs.

Life! Love It! Live It! Well better take the dog out then.

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