I’ve liked the idea of having some sort of online business for years. The only time I’ve gotten past the idea stage was several years ago when my husband was wanting to leave the company he had been with for over fifteen years and do something else. We paid some company a ridiculous amount of money to teach my husband and sister how to start an eBay business. ($7000.00-We should have had our heads examined!) We received software that did what the Google Keyword Planner does except it only searched eBay. We also received software that was supposed to help us create a website. My husband and sister sat through hours of telephone training sessions. Most of the information went over their heads. I don’t remember how long they worked at it, only that we never picked a product and we never started an online business. My husband took a real estate appraisal course and after about 3 years he was able to quit his job and start his own business. The start-up costs for the appraisal business were about $3000 and a two year apprenticeship, as opposed to $7000 and a whole lot of nothing.
Ever since this experience I have considered having an online business a “pipe dream”. We didn’t have the education we needed and we allowed ourselves to be scammed out of a lot of money. The company really did try to teach us (over the phone) but the amount of money we paid shows our foolish desperation.
At the start of the Bus 250 course, after I realized we were going to have to start an online business, I panicked and considered dropping the course. I thought, “I’ve already been there and proved I can’t do that”. Reading about all of the different business models kind of helped me to calm down. I had never really considered all of the options. I haven’t decided what I’m doing yet but I put a star next to the Affiliate Model. At least I have some ideas for that one like helping local seamstresses and interior designers get some work. I would really love to learn how to sell my sister, mom and my recordings of cover songs but I’m not sure I should try that for this class. Some of the class members have said it’s not as hard as I think but I don’t know if my confidence is high enough for that yet.
I like learning how to brainstorm ideas and narrow them down quantitatively, and not based too much on emotion. Looking at the matrix for Project 1, I’m a little more optimistic that I can choose a product and move forward. I’d heard about Google Ad Words before but I was afraid to sign up for something I didn’t understand. I feel like this class is giving me a great opportunity to learn different aspects of online business that have interested me for some time. When I search for information on my own I always seem to end up on some site that is just reproducing information they found somewhere else on the web and I don’t really learn anything.
Web Pages We Used This Week:
biz8821 