When people I meet ask me to name a business they can start on a shoestring and eventually build into a full-time income, large enough to retire on, I always recommend the same business.  It’s a company I believe in that manufactures products I personally use.  The company was founded in 1868 and manufactures 350 products for sale by its sales force of 50,000 independent  Watkins Associates. 

Yes, the company I speak of is Watkins Incorporated.  And just why would I recommend Watkins to others.  Well, for one thing the minimum startup costs required to become a Watkins Associate is only $39.  Thank about that for a minute. Just how many businesses can you name that you could start for as little as $39?  Not many, I’m sure.

There are 50,000 Watkins Associates selling Watkins fantastic line of 350 different personal home products in the U.S., Canada and China.  The company was founded in 1868 and is proud to call the small town of Winona, Wisconsin home.  Watkins has been selling its products to consumers for 140 years without missing a beat, and every product comes with a moneyback guarantee.  You can’t go wrong using Watkins products yourself and you certainly can’t go wrong selling Watkins products.  The company offers a moneyback guarantee on all 350 products it produces. 

I invite you to take a moment now to read a free ebook that provides more insight into this fantastic moneymaking opportunity.

It’s difficult to start a work at home business unless you have a product to sell. Most of the get rich quick guys operating on the Internet push the idea of selling your own ebook. They will have you believing that its simple to write an ebook . . . that anyone can do it, and that people will be beating your website door down to buy it. However, they overlook the fact that most people simply don’t have something to write about, or if they do, its not something people will want to buy. They also fail to mention that you might create a great product, but you simply know so little about Internet marketing and SEO skills that you don’t know how to drive the traffic to your website. And if people can’t find you, they obviously can’t buy what you’re selling.

I for one love to write and believe that everyone has enough material in their personal knowledge base for one great book. But the problem with trying to make a living selling ebooks is that it takes time to create your product and it has a limited shelf live. So much work can go into creating it that your interest level fizzles and you never get your business off the ground, or if you do, it is short-lived.

Working as an affiliate marketer, building information sites around one theme or another and displaying affiliate ads that are relative to the theme are an excellent way to make money online. Like anything, it takes work, patience and some midnight oil to turn this business model into a rip-roaring financial success, but tens of thousands of Internet entrepreneurs are doing it. Over time, as you become an expert on the subject you’re writing about, you may end up producing enough content for an ebook of your own that you can sell on the same site.

But what if there’s an even better way to make money online? What if I told you that you could have hundreds of products at your fingertips, a distribution organization that can take care of shipping and delivering what you sell, a sales organization that costs you nothing out of your pocket and overriding residual commissions on everything they sell, and all from running just one great information website that you write and manager — would you believe me? You probably would conclude I’m either crazy or smoking something funny, but the truth is all of these things are possible.

Over time I plan to share this business model with you. But what I want to focus on now is to point out that it is far more easy to achieve financial freedom if all you have to do is promote, sell and mentor than it is if you have to design products, manufacture products, distribute products, etc. It is also far more easy to make money, really big money, if you can leverage you incoming making ability by having a free sales force out there everyday selling products that you earn a commission on simply by recruiting the sales force and mentoring them as they come into your sales organization.

Why beat you head up against the wall trying to come up with a product of your own if there is a way to selling hundreds of quality products that can start earning you money today? When you look at it from this perspective the idea of spending time and money to develop and manufacture products seems quite silly, doesn’t it? Keep reading my blog and you’ll soon learn more about this great work at home business I’ve discovered through research and due diligence.

I’m pleased to say that I’m very close to launching a new domain name sales site.  I’m postponing the launch until mid-to-late January to give myself plenty of time to propagate the site’s database.  I’ve continued to purchase many great domain names to sell and now have almost 5,000 domains.  Finding the time to add information about each domain has proven to be my bottleneck, for the actual web application programming was completed about 45 days ago. 

Once the new site is ready to launch I will announce it here and give you a head’s up on having the opportunity to purchase some of the best domain names you could imagine for only $99.  Many of these domains are already getting traffic and earning daily ad income.  Over 4,800 of my domains are dot com’s with no hyphens or odd spellings.  They are all keyword based and easy to remember.

I have created an affiliate program for my domain name sales site and will pay affiliates regularly using Paypal.  All funds will be distributed directly into your Paypal account.  More news about this program and how it works will be posted after my official launch of the site.

The first real money of any significant size or consequence that I made online was with a 2-tier affiliate program for a private membership site called Desktop Money Machine back in 2000.  Prior to 2000 I had been making affiliate income from online marketing since 1997, but nothing had compared to what I experienced after the startup of Desktop Money Machine. 

The site was created by my good friend Bill Burdin from Australia.  Payment was through Paypal and you got a $15 commission for every sale you made, plus $15 from any sale made by someone who became an affilate under you (i.e., your second tier). 

I joined the program, then turned around and spent $150 to run an advertisement for the program in two popular ezines or electronic newsletters geared to the business opportunities and work-at-home markets.  The ads were to begin on the following Saturday — about a week away from the time I purchased them.  My wife and I had already made plans to drive to my parents home for a weekend visit on the same weekend the ads were supposed to run. 

We arrived at their house late Friday night, close to midnight.  When I awoke the next morning I was eager to see if the ads had run and if I had any email.  For I knew if I had made any sales that Paypal would be sending me notices of receiving $15 for each sale.  My parents live in a rural area and access via modem was quite slow in those days.  I was so anxious to see if I had earned anything and was walking in circles waiting for the computer to boot up, and then later waiting for the modem connection and download of my emails.  And then suddenly, much to my amazing surprise, my PC literally turned into a Desktop Money Machine.  My inbox was immediately flooded with 17 emails from Paypal, all saying that $15 had been deposited into my Paypal account.

By the end of the first full day I had made 166 sales totaling $2,490 in commissions.  Needless to say, I was hooked on Internet marketing and I’ve been hooked ever since. 

Within a few short months Desktop Money Machine had become “old hat” to the professional Internet marketing boys and they were off and running on the next latest and greatest money plan to hit the Internet.  After chasing that crowd for a while I realized I needed to have more control over my future earnings online.  I begin writing and marketing my own e-books and this worked out quite well.  But I’ve always enjoyed writing and when Adsence was introduced by Google I knew that all of my prior writing efforts and love for writing would pay off.  I begin creating rich content sites and continued to research and work in other areas of online marketing — but concentrating my efforts into three areas:

1. Adsense
2. eBooks
3. Affiliate Marketing (mainly Clickbank and Commission Junction)

My income from these efforts is now in the six-figure range.  But its been a real roller coaster getting there.  I’m had some great moments along the way, but I’ve also made a lot of mistakes and wrong turns as well.  With this site I hope to steer you in the right direction, avoiding some of the wrong turns and pitfalls I fell victim to along the way.

Until next time,

Steve