Earn personal satisfaction and riches with your own personal website
The year is 2015 and the World Wide Web is your playground. It’s a place of infinite possibilities! Seriously, there’s a whole world beyond just YouTubing laughing babies and finding yourself on page 13 of your ‘Blake Lively style inspiration’ Google search. Maybe you have a part time job and are looking for a lucrative way to spend your days off. Perhaps you’re a young mum with a suddenly quiet house now that the little’uns have started school and want to share your experiences with the virtual world. Or quite possibly you have a phenomenal idea for a business that you simply must share with every corner of the globe immediately.
Whatever your reasons for getting online, whether personal or potentially profitable, the answer could well lie with a personal blog or an e-commerce store. Time and inspiration already under your faux-croc belt, the next thing you’ll need is the web page itself. Where does one find one of these web pages, you ask? A hosting company like 1&1 is a great place to start; they’ll take care of all the complex stuff like website security, design and marketing, so you a) don’t have to spend precious time learning about technical things, and b) can focus on producing your inspiring content or gorgeous products.
Creating an e-commerce store
Handmade jewellery, vintage clothing and yet more tea light holders for the apartment: all things we find ourselves buying online (a little too regularly if we’re honest). All that research – ahem – could be put to great use setting up your own little e-commerce store; you already know your customer! Don’t underestimate the power of Twitter and other social media platforms to propel your business to success; an interactive and interesting page can grab the attention of a huge potential audience, direct them to your personal site, and catapult you in to the big time. The biggest boon to having your own online store? It can revolve completely around your schedule! Online retailing can happen day, night or any time in between!
Writing a blog
We’re not asking you to be the next Agatha Christie or Virginia Woolf here, much more important is having a passion or particular knowledge that you think the virtual world would benefit from hearing about. Bloggers like Metropolitan Mum write about what they know, offering down to earth insights into their lives, giving readers a chance to empathise or learn from their experiences. If the personal satisfaction of enriching peoples’ lives still isn’t enough for you then think about this: once your blog has a real following then reviewing products, contextual adverts and pay-per-clicks all become very real and practical ways to earn revenue from a blog. Just take a look at Zoella’s Instagram; what started as a humble blog is now her VIP ticket on to private jets. Just some food for thought.
