People searching for small business ideas might well benefit from my experience with the financial collapse of 2009 which almost erradicated my retirement plans ...
Please forgive me for writing about my personal
experiences for a bit, but I'm not a politician, and I don't presume
to know what your problems are, or promise to make them go away. What I can do is relate my story and if you're
considering a home based business, suggest that what happened for me might work for you, too.
The way
I weathered the financial collapse of 2009, was fortunate but has
nothing to do with financial genius, inside information or even a
superior education. What saved me was a
hobby which I had been tinkering with for several years.
I reached retirement age in 2009
and was hoping to
make a transition into a more relaxed and less demanding life
style called retirement, but
I was blocked by the plummeting of the stock market and the financial
disasters which rocked the world during the late part of 2008 and early
2009. A large part of my plans depended on my investments.
I still can't do an accurate accounting of how much
of my nest-egg disappeared but, in global terms I know that after the
major collapses started to quiet a bit, my total "wealth" (if you can
still call it that) was less than half of what it was
before. The ideas I had for retirement would simply have to be
scaled down or on hold!
Then, I realized that my hobby could be my salvation.
Without hardly even realizing it while I was "playing" I was actually starting a business. As it turned out this hobby of mine was producing an ever-increasing income which, by the end of 2009 looks like it could compensate for much of the losses I had suffered during the financial melt down.
My hobby of several years was my silver
lining in the dark clouds that filled my skies. This web site
is the result of this but I'm not writing to brag about my
good fortune nor to crow about how smart I was, but rather to show you
that this is one of those rare home based business ideas that you, too,
might be able to exploite, if you want
to.
You see, I started and ran this web site as a hobby going back to
about 2004. Over that time, I've been through some major health
challenges, but have used this activity as a way of keeping my mind off
my burdens and to provide me with some entertainment that I could pick
up when I felt in the mood to, and leave aside whenever I had to.
There's a direct relationship in a well planned web site between the
time and effort you put into it, and the amount of traffic it
receives. You can see below the reflection of the little effort I
made in the first years.
You can see from the above that some degree of real growth started
in 2007 and continued on through 2008 which coincides with my own
recovery from my heath issues, too.
Now, you may have noticed in various places around this web site,
references to Site Build It! (or SBI). Perhaps you may have even
wondered why I would be promoting my web-hosting service, or simply
concluded that it was a free hosting service which placed advertising
throughout to offset the service it was "giving-away."
To clarify this for you, I pay
for SBI services, however, by promoting the use of their services I was
able to offset the cost of what they charged me by receiving a
commission on the occasional person who would decide to sign up for
their own websites. When all the services which are
included in SBI's
package are added up and compared to other providers they do offer
a reasonable deal. If a person were to follow my example and also
promote SBI on their site, it is quite conceivable they, too, would end
up with a full service web site which virtually pays for itself.
One of the very unique features of SBI which no other web host anywhere offers is an Action Guide which teaches users how to build a work at home business on the internet.
They go to great pains to make it clear that what they teach is not a get-rich-quick scheme, but one of those rare home based business opportunities that will pay off handsomely if the required time and effort is put into it.The success of this web site is a testimony to this plan and
process. For the first four years it managed to more or less
finance itself through the occasional referral commission I received
and I played around with my hobby, mostly doing things my own way,
enjoying my association with the tremendous folks I became acquainted
with in the process, but without really paying more than passing
attention to the Action Guide.
I believe it was the financial crisis in the world that finally made me wake up an start to pay attention to what the SBI Action Guide teaches. I had personally met a number of SBI's "star performers" and knew from first hand knowlege that these people were honest, sincere and un-remarkable folks, just like you or I, but who had taken the SBI formula and put it into practice.
Beginning in 2009, I was receiving cheques every month of over $100.00. I started applying more and more attention to using the principles of the action guide and by the end of the 3rd quarter had managed to double that. In the 4th quarter, the income was again doubled and has continued to grow month by month. This was starting to look like a real star of small business ideas!In the process explained in the Action Guide, it makes an analogy of
a snowball rolling down a mountain side to describe how the growth of a
business based on their modle will result. This is perfectly
matched by my own experience. Four years of a very small hobby
site which I played with from time to time. Then with some time and
effort it started to increase in size and still needed some effort to
get some velocity. Then, as both size and movement start, the
snowball begins to move seemingly on its own.
Using the techniques and tips taught allows a person with a web site
to create a direct link between web site traffic and
income. The chart
below shows how visitor traffic to the site has grown during
2009. Pay particular attention, as I do to the the number of
Visitors. There is a very definite link between the number of
visitors and monthly income. Also note that October in the following chart is only up to the 22nd.
I decided to tell my story because I believe it might help others
who find themselves in a situation similar to my own. I'm not
ashamed to reveal that I
stand to get a commission if you decide to enroll in
SBI's program as a result of reading this, because I believe that
if
you do decide that this is for you, you will likely thank me for
bringing it to your attention. (Besides that, SBI carries a money-back
guarantee that allows you to try out everything without any risk).
The traffic charts above show a long process, which most people are
not likely to endure. Nice people say I'm persistent, other
people say I'm stubborn, but the point is that I stuck this out and
kept adding as time went along.
This is one of the real nice things about starting a business which
you own. If you don't feel like it you don't have to do
anything. Just realize, that it you don't do it, then you're
going to have to wait longer before you see results.
Much of that depends on you. If you're smarter, or more hard
working than I was, your progress will be considerably faster.
However, if you decide to take time off ... an important thing to
remember is that nobody is going to take away what you've already
done. It will be put on hold and can be picked up whenever
you're ready again.
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