In this article, I am going to show you not only the best ways to be your own boss online but also the worst ways to be your boss online.
Are you surprised and maybe a tad shocked I would talk about the worst way? Stick with me as you will find out there is a method in my madness.
The Double-Edged Sword
When you work for a corporation, to some extent there is safety in numbers when things go wrong. Especially if you work in a team. Instead of focusing on one person, the team is held responsible and is assigned to fix the problem.
Being your own boss can be a double-edged sword. With the freedom to set your own work hours and schedule also comes added responsibilities. If anything goes wrong, you have nobody else to blame. The buck stops with you.
When Someone Else Is Your Boss
When you work for someone else in a corporation, your daily activities to a large extent are governed by forces outside your control. As long as you want to keep your job, you follow the guidelines set for you. You may have some control within your sphere of influence, but in general, you toe the party line.
What happens when you stray? You get a call to visit your boss’s office. The door is closed and he tells you off. Some bosses have the skills to do this gently, yet effectively. While others will give you the third degree and make you quake in your shoes.
The chances are after being chastised, you will make amends and try not to get into trouble again.
What Strategies You Must Use As Your Own Boss?
I would like to use affiliate marketing as your business model. Affiliate Marketing takes very little investment and can be run by only one person. Eventually, you can scale up by outsourcing activities. However, there are proven strategies you have to use to succeed.
Since the only thing under your control is your behavior and habits, that is where your focus must lie. Would you agree?
One way to learn what to do is to know what not to do. Let’s look at a scenario where you are a bad boss to yourself.
The Worst Ways To Be Your Own Boss Online
Characteristics to look out for wrapped around bad habits:
- Lack of discipline
- Random business planning
- Ill-prepared or no schedule
- Insufficient training for the business, in this case, affiliate marketing
- Lack of consistency in creating and publishing content
- Having hopes that everything will miraculously work out
- Not learning from other successful affiliate marketers
Now we can figure out the best way to be your Boss online. Let’s do that.
The Best Ways To Be Your Own Boss Online
The tips below are applied specifically to an online business. The sheer flexibility of working online can be a great advantage but also the root cause of several problems. You must develop good habits that help you to be disciplined and focused. It all begins with a detailed schedule
Detailed Schedule For The Best Ways To Be Your Own Boss Online
Your schedule should itemize daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual goals and actions. The following is a list of the key elements that should be in your schedule. I am going to approach this for a typical online affiliate marketing business.
- Commission goals for 6, 9, and 12 months. Rarely you can earn earlier.
- Working hours each day with specific start and end times. Depends on the day job.
- At least one 2 hours a week for training at specific start and end times. Include item 4 topics
- Niche, keyword, search engine optimization, social media, email marketing, online tools.
- Write 2 to 3 articles a week at a minimum of 1000 words each – allow 1 to 2 hours per article
- Research material for these articles, including the selection of relevant pictures and graphics
- Schedule a consistent publish date and time for each article.
- Schedule a consistent date and time for promoting articles on social media.
- Monitor traffic and rank of content once they are high enough to generate sales.
- Nightly review of activities performed and make adjustments for the following day if needed.
Introduction To Affiliate Marketing
Why did I recommend affiliate marketing as the best path to an online business? The answer is easy. You market products you don’t own that are supplied by a third party, the vendor. When you generate sales, the vendor will give you a commission.
There is a reason why this is one of the lowest costs of entry to an online business. You don’t have to spend money to stock up on products. Nor do you have to collect a payment, or ship the products. The vendor takes care of all of that.
Your most significant costs are related to learning the following:
- How to create a website
- The skills to create effective content that resonates with customers
- How to research and use low competition, high ranking keywords
- Various Search Engine Optimization techniques to drive traffic to your content
- Become skilled in using social media to promote your content
- How to build an email list of interested subscribers organically
- Optimum ways to provide information and marketing content to your subscribers
- How to scale up your business using pay per click advertising and outsourcing
Complimenting the learning process you will need to find a reliable, fast, and secure server to host your website.
Note that you only begin to spend money to scale up your business after your website starts to generate a recurring significant income.
You can find more details about affiliate marketing from this article I wrote. Click the banner below:
Closing Thoughts
Near the beginning of this article I wrote the following:
Since the only thing under your control is your behavior and habits, that is where your focus must lie. Would you agree?
I feel strongly that it is super important to work on building habits that can help you take the actions you need to succeed. May I help you to build good habits that are designed to make you a lot of money?
Please fill in the following form and I will give you a free eBook to download that, if you follow the guidance, will indeed help you to create the good habits you need.
This is a classic book you may have heard of. It is called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. It was written almost 100 years ago and is still relevant today. If you have the paperback, having the eBook will be an added benefit to you.
Don’t you like to listen to audiobooks and courses that can help you learn new skills? When you have this book in electronic form, there is text to speech programs that can enable you to listen to this book while driving.
Please also provide me with your comments below. I’d love to know what you liked about this article as well as what you didn’t like.
Your friend,
Edwin