This is a daunting challenge. There are an incredible number of options to start a business. The challenge is to find the time when you have a full time job. Time Management is the critical skill you will need to answer the question of How To Start A Business While Working Full Time.
Time Management
Say your job is 8 hours. Your time at work is actually 9, to include an unpaid hour for lunch. Add an average of 1 hour to drive to work and another hour to drive home, you are actually away from home for 11 hours in a workday! Yikes!
8 hours is recommended for sleep tine. But who has 8? I think that on average people are fortunate if they can manage 6. Let’s add another hour for dinner and 30 minutes for breakfast, assuming you have one. And 30 more minutes for washing up in the morning. If I did my math right, that leaves you with 5 hours left to do other things. I am going to reduce this to 4 as something unexpected always rises up that requires our attention.
OK so you have FOUR hours in each weekday to divide on other activities. My recommendation is to devote 2 hours to family time. And 2 hours towards your business.
Does this make sense to you? Can you do me a favor and analyze your typical day in this fashion and come up with how much time you will have for your business. Notice I have not addressed the weekend. This is time to relax and recharge your batteries for the upcoming week. If you have kids, now is the time to take them to their scheduled events. Spend time with your spouse. This is where your weekend priority should lie.
You should have some time left over to do what you enjoy. My advice it to devote as much of this time towards building your business.
The big question is what kind of business can you build having about 10 to 14 hours a week? Let’s look at the options.
Strike When The Iron Is Hot!
I am going to tell you a story of a Doctor Kalyampur. When I was a kid, she ran her Homeopathic practice from her home office. But this is not the home based business I am going to tell you about.
A Math test was in my future that I had to pass to get promoted. I was very weak at Math at the age of 9. My mother mentioned this to the Doctor and she offered to coach me in the few evenings remaining before the test day. I didn’t have to go far. Just two flights of stairs down.
Her living room was so clean and calming. I took my text books and notepad to the coaching session. Whatever she did to help me navigate the Math questions worked. I did well in my test. The fees the Doctor charged were so reasonable that my mom asked if she would continue to coach me and my younger brother too. Instead of every evening we settled on twice a week.
When my mom told family friends about this situation, they wanted to know if the good Doctor would coach their kids too. We were amazed that Dr. Kalyampur agreed! Very soon she had a room full of young students focused on their studies in her calm living room. She moved from one child to another to assist. These sessions evolved in to tutoring more than just Math.
Eventually we left the area to move into a larger apartment far away. My brother and I were scheduled to attend a boarding school in the Himalayas. Our sessions with the good Doctor were at an end.
However, she was ever so grateful to us as we had set her up with a brand new business she was able to fit in, after her medical sessions ended. And she really enjoyed doing tutoring. She earned more from this than her medical business.
The moral of this story is you never know when an opportunity to create another stream of income will arise. You have to be prepared. When opportunity meets preparedness, that is the definition of LUCK!
Home Based Business Options
These fall into two categories.
1 – Immediate Income Businesses
You can use a skill you have to help others, like in the story above. This category is one where you get paid immediately. In other words, you are exchanging your time for money. Some of these skills can be used totally via the Internet. For example, accounting, copywriting, creating blog posts for others, etc. There are others but I think you get the idea.
If you chose to tutor, one on one coaching, music teaching, you may need to have a place at home where you can conduct these services. Or you can travel to your clients home instead.
Regardless what skill you market, there are many online services you can use to advertise your services, like Craigslist. You can also use word of mouth and local ads. The main advantage of this kind of home based business is you can get paid immediately, or almost immediately using monthly billing for services rendered.
Everyone has a skill or experience that can be marketed. Think of all the skills you have and Google it to see what the business opportunities are. Who knows, you may become so much in demand you may be able to do what you love full time and quit your day job. Wouldn’t that be life changing?
2 – Long Term Passive Income Creation
Examples of this are writing a book. Creating an online instructional course. When you are devoting time to this pursuit, you do not get paid. However, once you have completed your offering, if you have done a good job that solves a problem for others or meets a need, you can sell this on eBay or Amazon. The income you will earn once published, is called passive income. You expended the effort first, and then get paid for that effort over and over again. Even while you sleep.
There are other business you can do that will fit beautifully within the time available while you are working full time. And I am not referring to Network Marketing or MLM if that is what you may be thinking. By the way, I have nothing against a legitimate MLM business. It takes a skill set that most people are not willing to learn and apply.
The business I am referring to is Affiliate Marketing. You may have heard about it. For those who are not sure I will summarize it below.
Affiliate Marketing
In this business you can market products offered by other companies on your website using affiliate links they provide you. When a visitor to your website is helped to make a purchasing decision by your posts and clicks the affiliate company’s link and purchases the product on their website, you will earn a commission from that company.
As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. The following graphic visually explains exactly what I stated above, but in a way it makes it easy to drive home.
Training In Affiliate Marketing
How would you like to learn the details about starting an Affiliate Marketing Business? I hope you said YES! I want to talk about the learning process.
Have you been taught by experts and still had difficulty absorbing what they taught? With no disrespect to experts who learn everything easily, it is challenging for them to think from the perspective of a student who has difficulty learning fast.
When I was taught Math in school. I found it hard to understand what I was taught. So I had to go over the materials many times by myself as well as ask my friends for help. But once the information clicked, it all made sense to me. This experience enabled me to first define a problem and state the solution to students who like me, also have difficulty learning.
Hence, I created this website especially for you. If you happen to be a fast learner, this will also work as you can skip sections that appear too easy.
The business of Affiliate Marketing is a process that is defined in the graphic below:
It all starts with your website. You fill it with blog posts that provide valuable information to visitors who are interested in the products you are offering. They are looking for reviews and comparisons to help them to make an informed decision. When you do a good job at that. the chances are high they will click your affiliate link and make a purchase.
To help you with this process I have created this website filled with helpful articles, including tutorials. I shall share three of them with you using the clickable graphics below:
Ideas on how to pick your niche.
How to create a website for Affiliate Marketing
How To Add A Blog Post In WordPress
Monitoring Results
Google Analytics and Google Search Console are free tools you will need to monitor your online results. There is much to learn about these tools so I shall leave that for another time to go into the details.
For now, the most important metrics that need monitoring are traffic and the demographics of your visitors.
Taking Corrective Action
It is only by analyzing the performance of your website you will know what corrective action if any you must take. Obstacles will occur. The best response is to understand what they are so that you can find a way around those obstacles.
Enjoying The Results
When you achieve your goal of creating a home based business that provides you with passive income, enjoy the results. You will have earned it. How would you like to relax on a sandy, sunny beach in Hawaii or the Caribbean?
It may take months or even a year or two to achieve your goals. Those who succeed are the ones who never give up. Make a promise to yourself that once you embark on this amazing journey to financial freedom that you will never stop until you achieve that goal.
The strange thing is once you achieve your goal, you will be having so much fun. you will want to scale your business up. Success breeds more success.
I wish you all the success in the world on your quest for financial freedom and peace of mind. Please feel free to contact me anytime. My Email address is:
edwin@affiliatemarketingforleaders.com
I also welcome any comments or questions you may have. Those you can write in the comments section below this article.
I look forward to working with you in the future.
Cheers.
Edwin
Excellent post, Edwin. Time management is vital to anyone starting a business with limited time available to learn the skills and gain the knowledge to build a successful business. I think most people do not understand the amount of effort it takes. Consequently, they do not manage their expectations as they find success elusive. The best thing they can do is establish goals and plan of action that fits their schedule.
Hi Glen,
Thanks for your comments. Time is the most valuable resource we have. Once it is gone, there is no getting it back. This alone should encourage people to make the most use of it. Sadly, the older one gets there is less time left and that introduces urgency in what we do. Or it should.
I wish you all the best in your online business.
Edwin
I know of Affiliate marketing very well, it is actually the best I can suggest for now but there are other nice options I’ve yet to try.
This is a very educational post and its gonna serve as a blessing to people like me who need to double up our source of income. There are many opportunities online that are yet to be explored so we need to be prepared for whatever comes. Every online business needs focus and dedication no matter how short the time may be. I’m sharing this post with some of my friends who spoke about getting a side hustle. Its a really productive article, it makes sense.
Jones, thank you so much for your wise comments. Thanks also for sharing my article with your friends who are looking for an opportunity like Affiliate Marketing. I wish you much success in your online business.
Edwin
Hello Edwin, nice one you have written here. Many people think that it is hard to add another job to a days job where they work many hours.
I must say you did a great job blending out hours one spends in a whole day. That’s pretty accurate. You are right when you say that adding another stream of income isn’t a bad idea at all.
Nice one on this showing affiliate marketing as a good way to draw in that income.
Nice post!
Hey John,
Thanks so much for your kind comments. Glad you found my time analysis pretty accurate! There are only 24 hours in a day for everyone. It is how we divide up those hours that is important. Some of the time is not under our control, like our job and commute time. But the rest is.
I wish you much success in your online business.
Edwin
Since the evolvement of the world is fast changing, there is a need to create another stream of income that is totally beyond the normal daily job. Creating time to devote to it is integral to its development.
I think looking long term is the best way to create a business. It makes good sense to allow a couple of years before the business is in place and fully working to generate passive income. Affiliate marketing is worthy but what is critical is giving more time and dedication with patience to creating wealth through affiliate marketing. Though an easy process, it takes time.
Shelly,
Thanks for your kind thoughts. Glad you agree that it takes time to build an Affiliate Marketing business to the point it starts earning a decent income. If someone doesn’t have patience then Affiliate Marketing is not for them.
I wish you all the best in your ventures.
Edwin
Thank you for sharing this very interesting and informative article on how to start a business while working full time, because this is exactly what I am doing at this moment in time.
I am in the process of building my own online affiliate marketing business. It is slowly growing but I would like to try different options of making some extra income while my online business grows. I am so pleased I read your post here because I had never given any thought into writing a book and I must admit it has really struck a chord with me. I think this is something I would really like to do, thank you for giving me this idea.
Russ,
So glad that I was able to help you get motivated to write a book. When you get down to it, we do so much writing in creating our affiliate marketing posts, when combined and edited, we have our book!
I wish you all the success in the world in your Affiliate Marketing Business as well as in writing your book.
Cheers!
Edwin
Time management is the first and most integral part of making Money online through creation of a business. Definitely our daily hassles are normal, but maneuvering our ways to create that daily bits of time to the growth of the business is worthy.
Being opportunistic is also worthwhile by being ready to take up every opportunity that comes our path. Going both long time and short time are great depending on one’s demands.
I can make use of my skills as a teacher to tutor online and get paid ASAP but then, I can still build my affiliate marketing business over the years. Thanks
Hi Tracy,
Thanks for your insightful comments. It is possible to build an Affiliate Marketing business as well as tutor online. However, only you can decide on the priorities. If you need extra money fast, then you have no choice but to do the things that will meet that need. In that case, spend less time on Affiliate Marketing, but do it regularly. That is the key. Do not loose momentum.
I wish you all the success in the world.
Edwin
Hello there , thanks for bringing this educational post up. I am currently working 6 hours a day starting from 8AM till 2PM daily, and I get some good pay from it.
Although looking at a long term plan, I wouldn’t be doing such job in my 50’s, so I have said. Now looking at the great rate at which online businesses are growing, I have thought about affiliate marketing but i have had headaches thinking of a profitable niche. I hope you can help with that?
Hi Dane,
A appreciate your helpful comments. Glad to hear you have a well paying job, and still think it is a good idea to develop a business for yourself.
Glad to help you finding a niche. If you scroll down my article you will find three banners that link to other helpful articles in my website. The first one is to help people find the right niche for themselves. I also go into some detail on finding a niche in the second banner. To save you time I have added these links on my response here.
I hope this helps. All the best to you.
Edwin
Thanks for this educative post. There are clear advantages and disadvantages to starting a business while employed. But as long as I can reasonably manage both with the help of this post I would have to give the slight edge to retaining employment while starting a business at the same time as I have always thought of maintaining balance between both.
Thanks a lot.
Ho Seun,
Thanks for your great comments.
The key take away is maintaining the right balance between your full time job and building your own business at home. You can do it!
All the best to you.
Edwin
Hi Edwin. One more excellent article -Thanks.
In order to have a desirable online business, there are many factors that play a huge role on a daily basis. Many people come into this question asking how to start a business while working full time. Time management is absolutely one of the priorities. It is a crucial aspect that one needs to take into consideration.
You have clearly shown how to specify and allocate our valuable time on any tiny activity, so that we will have enough time to start and run our own business.
I have also gone trough your link about adding a blog using Word-press. it was great and I got a better idea about Keyword Research Tool (Jaaxy). It seems that Wealthy affiliate is offering a lot of stunning tools and tutorials to its members to make their life much more easy.
Best wishes
Shirian
Hi Shirian,
Glad to hear from you again! You make some great and relevant comments. Thanks for checking out my article on using WordPress to write a blog post. Can I ask you a favor? When you go to any of my other posts can you leave a comment down below? I would sure appreciate it.
I wish you all the success in the world in building your online business.
Edwin