Our First Steps To Making Money Online...and a little background During the past six months it has become clear to my partner and I that we need an alternative source of income like making money online. We have been in the Automotive business for many years and lately the industry has been in turmoil. We work in the Service Department and have worked side by side since 2000. Let me make it clear we both earn a reasonable income but is it ever enough? We looked at several options and came to the conclusion we had two problems: lack of capital to fund a business in our field of expertise and lack of time. We work 11 hours a day. What we were looking for is a way to make money in our spare time to capitalize a long range business plan. We are willing to work on this project 2-3 hours per night and 8-10 hours on weekends. Two highly motivated individuals who have been team mates for several years willing to work like dogs should be a no-brainer..right?


Not so fast! We both can navigate online but we have no technical skills in Web design, accounting management software, linking sites, advertising and a host of other skills required to make this viable. We do have the most important asset...the will to succeed. The rest can be learned, but where to start? I have looked at many programs since the mid 80's. I haven't found any that don't start you on a vicious cycle that leads to nowhere and with less money in your pocket. They never let you inside without first spending money, then they give you a method by which they make money while you spend yours advertising what you just purchased. The beauty of the Internet is that you can get inside to preview without spending the money up front, so I did a lot of research online. After about a week we realized that to implement our business plan we needed some structure, which was good because we were still researching the method.


We decided to incorporate our business from the beginning. It takes about 1-2 weeks to get the business registered and secure a Federal Tax I.D. number. The cost to do this is $500-$800.00 in our area utilizing an attorney. If you want to save some money you can file with a company online. We were fortunate that there was a family member in the legal profession so all we paid for were the registration fees. When you incorporate the government likes you to place money in a bank account to start your business. This leads us to the next thing we needed...a bank account. We committed a thousand dollars to the account which we opened when the tax i.d. number arrived. During the time we were waiting we checked into different affiliate marketing programs, e-bay, craigslist and blogging. I totally got lost while doing this research.


I awakened that old desire to get rich quick and got sidetracked delving into those programs. Let me state that we will never degrade anyone's system. Just because it doesn't fit our desires doesn't mean it won't work for someone else. Also, I believe some of what other people are doing to make money online are programs we will revisit once we have automated this process and can take time to explore some more. We decided to start with Blogging for several reasons. It's cheap to start, there is an incredible amount of info on the subject, we get a free web page and we can spend minimal time maintaining it in the beginning while we learn the other aspects of our business. It feels like tying one's shoes...first you have to loop and swoop...everything has form but it won't work properly until you pull it tight.


As we are truly beginner's, our journey in making money online is still in its infant stage. We are 4 weeks in and still setting up shop. Next time we will discuss the accounts we have or have had to set up and detail some of the issues we are facing.


Happy Holidays!