Organize More

We all have the recurring dream of only having to spend 2 hours per day in your home office and making $1,000,000 per year from that 2 hours of work.  It's a dream... yes, really just a dream.  There are lots of promises out there and lots of scams.  Great stories of people who "made it" with very tiny fine print saying that the person in the video is an actor.  MLM schemes, affiliate marketing ideas, using Adsense and Clickbank to make it rich... many of them may actually have a grain of truth buried in the idea but the promo your being offered is all lies, lies, lies!!!!

Read my lips blog: "You are not going to strike it rich using the internet."

You are not going to be able to replace your existing full-time income.  You probably won't even make thousands... but there is some money to be earned.  You'll notice I said "earned".  You will have to work for it.  You will have to follow-up and be consistent in your work.  But it can be work that is enjoyable and flexible with time (how much and when you work) and space (from your home office or Starbucks).

Working outside of a regular office environment requires a lot of organizational and time-management skills.  You have to create your own work rules -- your own parameters.  It will require some discipline and some chutzpah.  But, if you are looking for some supplemental income with flexible hours, it can be found in cyber space.

I can tell you these things from experience:

1) You must have a PayPal account.  Its free and you can open one at Paypal.com.  It is how most opportunities will pay you.

2) If you do a few legit online surveys, you can expect to cover the cost of your morning coffee.  I love Buzzback and Opinion Outpost.  I do 1 or 2 surveys a week and have $5 or $6 deposited in my PayPal account.  I enjoy their surveys and feel like I get to contribute to creating better products and marketing strategies.  You can do more and make more by signing up with multiple companies.  I just do it for fun!

3) If you write well and often, you can freelance some articles that you write in the evenings and on weekends and cover your car payment -- same with pictures if you are a photographer, or graphics if you are a designer.  Freelancing allows you to sell what you already do.

4) If you blog, provide consistent valuable content and run ads on your blog -- you will start seeing profit around year three (I'm not covering the cost of this site yet, but I get a little closer every day. Please use my links if you buy from Amazon and click on the Google ads just to keep things interesting).

5) There are also a host of opportunities for virtual tutors, virtual administrative assistants, and the like -- all outlined on eHow.com.  I am a virtual organizing and time-management coach... you can read more about this fantastic service on the coaching page.

6) If you are willing to do a little leg work, there is money to be made selling used books to Cash4Books.net.  I made $82 for some knitting books that I hadn't look at in years.  It's a free and easy service that even sends you the shipping label.  Be entrepreneurial and offer to clear out other people's old books for them, and then sell those to Cash4Books.

Whatever you decide to do, make sure you have a clean and uncluttered space in which to work.  Carve out your "work from home" time on your calendar and make sure it is really used as work time.  Persistence and perseverance add up, as do the dollars (one at a time) in internet money making.

There is a really great article on eHow.com offering 30 tips about making some realistic money on the net.  I didn't give you a lot of details or links in this piece, purposefully, because eHow did such a great job with them.

Good luck in whatever you do.