Why Now Is The Best Time Ever To Set Up A Location Independent Business
Today I have a guest post by UK lifestyle designer Richard Adams. Richard has been building online businesses since 2000 and recently launched his own lifestyle blog, Lifestyle Design Unleashed. Leave your comments below and welcome Richard to the RSLD community. If you would like to write an article for RSLD, shoot me an email to rollettmarketing@gmail.com.
I first started to build websites as a hobby in the distant days of 1997. We’re talking about the days before most people had heard of Google. When the few people online had Yahoo email addresses and free web hosting sites covered in banner adverts were the norm.
In those days I taught myself HTML from scratch, and learned the basics of how to write and edit PHP and Perl.
It was a long hard slog and when I released my first “commercial” site in 2000, I managed to turn over a total of $20 in my first six months online. After all that hard work and months spent learning computer languages it wasn’t the most impressive result.
These were the days before building niche-specific sites were popular, when very little was understood about getting good rankings in the search engines and when the idea of internet marketing was using some software to blast out hundreds of classified adverts to every website possible.
Fast forward to today and the online business sphere is so different it is barely recognizable. You can set up a complete website in minutes using a variety of software such as Wordpress. You can add functionality in the blink of an eye with various plugins and change the appearance of your site with the thousands of free themes available.
Technology has taken over from the need to be a computer programmer and bought the potential to set up a website into everyone’s grasp.
We also know more than ever before about how to market a website and how to make a profit from it. There are hundreds of websites and ebooks out there teaching effective search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, sales letter writing and more - much of this information available free for anyone willing to go looking for it.
Competition in the market has also made setting up your own business more cost effective that ever before. When I launched my first “proper” website in 2000 I paid $400 for a year of web hosting, then I bought various pieces of software ontop so it all added up.
These days you can spend less than $10 a month for web hosting for an unlimited number of websites, buy a domain for the price of a McDonalds burger and basically be in business.
That means that the barriers are coming down all the time and it is easier and cheaper than ever before to set up your own business online.
On the other hand, this lowering of barriers means that more people each day are trying to do just that. Which means that while it gets easier and easier to get online, there is increasing competition.
In a few years time it may not be so easy to make a profit online; and of course the sooner you start your own lifestyle business the sooner you will start making a profit. Internet businesses rarely, despite some of the “gurus” saying so, make you a fortune overnight. They take time and effort to build and promote.
But it *is* possible to earn a living online; you just need to be patient.
Many business owners find that it can take 6-12 months to really build an internet business up into something great so the sooner you get started, the sooner you will start seeing those results. And when the results come in you’ll be in a strong position to consider giving up your job, paying off your debt and living the lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of.
In other words, *now* is the ideal time for you to get started on building your location independent business. It’s cheaper and easier than ever before, and the sooner you get started, the less competition you’ll have and the sooner you will be able to quit your job.
Don’t delay it. Don’t wait for some fabled time. Don’t spend months writing an ebook and never launch it. Dive in today. When six months have rolled by the only disappointment you’ll probably have is that you didn’t get started even sooner.
Again this post was written by Richard Adams. Go holler at him at Lifestyle Design Unleashed and leave your comments and questions below.
Top photo by biblicone.
I think you said it right brotha! The internet is where it’s at for business. So much money flows through the series of tubes it is crazy to think about. And we are just getting started because this internet thing is still really really young. There will be plenty of opportunities to earn a good living with the internet for the next long while, but the sooner you start, the more decent your living can be.