My sole aim in starting an online business was to create a separate income from my day job; I wanted to build some independence from the corporate world. Like most people my entire income depended on my job. When the place I worked at got orders to fulfil they offered overtime. In my younger years, with a young family and mortgage I did the overtime.

Working seven days a week, twelve hours a day brought my income in and provided for my family. After years of doing this I realised financially I was no better off than when I first started working. All the money I earned went into bringing up my family.

As they got older the expenses increased, university fees and all the other expenses that people who have teenagers know about.  One day I looked at my pension figures and realised they were not very good for a lifetime of work, so in my late forties I made a decision to take action to increase my income.

The only way to do this was to start my own business. I didn’t want to work for anyone else where you just get paid enough to live on. I had to move out on my own.

Fortunately the internet provided the opportunity for me to start my own business. There are no barriers imposed on you by the internet. The internet is the great leveller, it doesn’t care where you have come from, what qualifications you have, what experience you have.

The internet looks at you with fresh eyes. You can be reborn on the internet, you can reposition yourself.

It doesn’t matter how old you are, the only thing that matters is that you are prepared to take action.

Like most people who run online businesses, my first step was through EBay. EBay is the fastest way into business, and, despite the increased charges on EBay, it still is. The start-up costs are small. All you need is some stock and you are away.

Of course it’s not quite as simple as that. You also need to believe in yourself and you need to take action.

My first steps on EBay were full of mistakes. Despite this I made money. I sourced a supplier for the products I sold and setup a shop on eBay. Business was quiet good and despite some setbacks I made a profit.

After a year trading on EBay I decided to get my own ecommerce sit. I found a web designer and hired him to create me an ecommerce site. This cost me just short of a £1000.00 the money came from the profits I had made on EBay.

I launched my ecommerce site and used EBay to bring customers to it. Throughout all this process I was constantly learning new things. Building a new skillset, you can’t succeed online or off line without applying good fundamental business principles. If you are new to business then you need to learn these principles.

An ecommerce site is just a store online. It requires that you know about business methods, marketing, sales, accounting and building relationships with customers to name a few of the skills you need to master.

Much of my time was spent learning new things and there was, and still is, a lot to learn.

Being willing to learn is a mind-set you need to approach your online business with. The good news is you can make money online. The reality check is that it is not easy and requires effort on your part. If you put the work in though, you will succeed; it’s only a matter of time.

I got my ecommerce store running smoothly, almost by automatiOnce I started to build trust the customers came back to me and before I knew it I had a large database of customers who were buying from me. This sent me on another learning journey.

How to direct market to my existing customers. Every business person knows it’s easier to sell you your existing customers than get new customers.

So I studied direct marketing.

I had to have a method to direct market so I studied HTML so I could create a newsletter. I kept my business running on eBay because every month eBay brought me more customers.

Once I got the customers I set in motion my customer relations machine which ensured they moved to my website for future purchase, meaning I didn’t have to pay eBay fees and giving me more profit.

My business began to grow fast. When I first started I wondered if I’d ever have a decent amount of money in my PayPal account. Now I empty it into my business account every few days and it’ tops right back up again.

As time went on I became more professional in my manner and the way I worked. I learned to work on my business not in it. It didn’t control me, I controlled it.

I played an imaginary game with myself where I appointed myself CEO of the business with targets to reach over the next quarter. I even wrote out strategy reports to present to my imaginary board.

Sounds crazy I know. But it worked. I played this game like some people play computer games, only this game had real tangible results and real money coming in.

By pretending to be an appointed CEO I disassociated myself from the business. It wasn’t personal and when problems arose with difficult customers I dealt with them logically and dispassionately. I couldn’t afford to take it personal, after all I had a board to answer to who could sack me any time I upset them.

I got familiar with Excel (another learning curve) and produced graphs and profit and loss statements. I produced targets and monitored them daily. If I failed to meet a monthly target I had to come up with an explanation to my imaginary board.

This was a great exercise because it forced me to look at what went wrong and come up with a plan to eliminate the problems that had prevented the targets being met.

The targets were never too high but high enough to pull me from my comfort zone, it was my failure if I didn’t meet them. Putting myself under pressure like this worked. It kept me sharp and when I made the targets, I had a real sense of achievement.

Today my ecommerce business is providing me with the extra income I sought. I have a database of thousands of customers who return to me for their art products and I am still learning every day.

The most important lessons from my own experience are: you need to be prepared to learn new things. Enter the online world with a flexible mind and be ready to learn the new skills you need.

It’s not easy and it takes effort. There’s no get rich quick schemes, and the people selling them on the net are like the old time snake charm salesmen that used to sell wonder potions.

You know you can’t get fit without exercising and you can’t lose weight without cutting down on your food, equally you can’t build a business without putting in the work.

The best lesson of all is that anyone can do it. The internet isn’t bothered where you started from, what qualifications you have, what school you went to. No one is excluded; the opportunity is available for all. All that is required is action and determination on your part and you will succeed.

To build a successful work from home business you need to ask yourself a few questions such as:

1. Do you have the determination to learn the correct methods and to overcome all obstacles?

2. Which things are you the best at doing?

3. What can you offer your customers that will satisfy their greatest needs?

4. Are you sufficiently knowledgeable in the area/s you would like to work, or is more research and training necessary?

5. Who are your potential customers and how and where will you find them?

6. Who are your competitors and how can you do things differently to gain the edge over them?

7. Are you self motivated and prepared to work hard?

8. Can you cope with all of the necessary tasks each day to make your business run smoothly?

If your answers to these questions were mostly negative then you are not ready to begin your business yet, and you need to do plenty of research in those areas and/or get some training. If your answers were all positive then well done, and what are you waiting for? Just believe in yourself and take all actions necessary to make your business prosper.

No job is safe from being contracted out. I was reading about a company in India, which specialized In western law. This company employs hundreds of Indian lawyers who specialize in the laws of western countries, mainly English speaking ones, and they offer their services for a fraction of the cost of employing a western-based lawyer. So out sourcing has even caught up with the lawyers now. No one is safe.

Using the internet for outsourcing work is a growing trend. It makes rational sense. There are websites devoted totally to outsourcing, where people put pages up about themselves and their skills. Most of these people are highly skilled and educated. You can, for example, hire someone with a PHD in physics, for a few hundred dollars a month from the Far East. These people prefer to outsource their skills and earn five times more money than they can earn in their domestic market and who can blame them.

They have created a good lifestyle for themselves. Working from home for western companies. Or even for people in the west running their own home business from home.

It’s from the internet that the threat to many traditionally safe jobs is coming. But every threat carries within itself a cure. It’s through the internet that middle-aged people in the west can fight back. If you’re approaching middle-age and you’re not familiar with computers and the internet start learning now. It’s the safety rope that may stop you falling into the depths of poverty in your old age.

The internet is threatening many traditional jobs in the west but it is also offering fantastic opportunities for middle-aged people to start their own businesses and earn their income without leaving their homes. There are literally hundreds of ways to make an income online. With the right mind-set and application anyone can do it. I’m not talking about making thirty of forty thousand a month, but you could, I’m talking about spending a few hours every day on an internet business that will return you an income.