The Plan

First things first. The first step to any successful business is to have a business plan. This is mine. It may not be as in-depth as it needs to be, but that will come later. I will be starting out by creating web content that I can monetize. This blog is the first content that I have created, but it will not be the only one. From the research I have done, I believe it will take many different pieces of content at many different sites to create any income at all. I will be attempting to make a profit from this blog, however, I will not be pushing it too hard here. This blog is more of a tool to keep me on track and to help others who want to follow along with starting their own online business. But, in the interest of full disclosure, I will tell you that you will see ads on this site and if I'm talking about a topic, and I have an affiliate link for a relevant product or service, you can bet I will be using it. That is the point after all. I do, however, promise that I will not recommend any product or service in my posts if I haven't tried it and found it to be useful. In future posts I'll let you know what I'm doing to create content on other sites. Once I have a little income coming in, I will move on to the second step: Creating my own hosted website. I have not decided on a topic yet, but I am throwing around a few ideas. Since I am avoiding spending any money that I don't absolutely have to, I will be designing and creating the website myself. This means that before I reach this phase, I'm going to have to learn to design a website. I have a little bit of knowledge on web design, but not enough to make a high quality site, so I will be doing a lot of studying. Once I have a few successful websites running, I will move to the third step: My own online store. This, again, will take some time to build up to. I may start by selling locally sourced items on ebay, and then move in to drop-shipping and light wholesale. Hopefully, by the time I reach this point, I will have enough income to leave my job and start working for myself full-time.

So that's it in a nutshell. Now, I'm sure there are easier ways to do it, but this seems like a workable plan for the time being. The most important thing about the plan is that it is flexible. It will probably change many times as I progress along this journey. I have many other ideas that I may attempt along the way. If one works particularly well, I may change the entire plan. If you have a plan of your own, please share it in the comments section. If you have any suggestions for a different approach, then please share those also. Thanks for reading!