The market for employment in the UK has been significantly hit since the banking crisis.
This has coincided with the growth of the ability to work from home online.
If someone has basic computing skills and some common sense can they develop an income from home? Why isn't everyone doing it? I have started an experiment over the last 5 months to see if I could extend my home computing and marketing skills into online marketing.
I have done this really only out of interest, however it would be good to develop another income stream.
The first obstacle to overcome is the amount of opportunities there are online.
If you carry out a search online you will find millions upon millions of marketers trying to sell you either their products or their knowledge.
The knowledge marketers claim to have developed systems that can aid your business along.
Some claim to have full proof methods of earning you money.
But which system should I go for.
The first rule I decided to follow was that if it sounded too good then it must be too good.
I'd often heard this said in the past and it usually stood me in good stead so around half of the schemes I found were rejected straight away.
The second criteria I made was you don't get anything in life without hard work, This doesn't have to be hard labour but usually it does require a reasonable time set aside for learning Basically an apprenticeships requires to be served..
So any get rich quick claims were rejected.
This left around 3 or 4 out of the many my search found.
I also had to find a solution which I could start on a relatively small budget.
The obvious solution was through a blog and to market product and services from that blog? Whether I am successful in it is still unknown.
The cost of setting up the business and if you take into account buying the hardware and software then you will be investing the best part of one thousand pounds and about twenty man hours per week.
This is just in the initial learning stages.
Many of these systems say that you can set up and let run.
I haven't found this.
It takes dedication and night after night to develop your sites.
All in all I have been doing the experiment for around 5 months and I'm not at the break even point.
However how many other traditional businesses would have been at this point too.
The main point to it all is that its fun even if I haven't given up the day job yet.
Alexander