At the time of the creation of this post, I am enjoying full-time RV living in my RV. The media is presenting nothing other than a crashing world economy, COVID-19 issues, mandatory lockdowns, and hoarding going on at stores.
But, it did not take a crisis like this to get me thinking about alternative ways to make money from home!
Make Money From the Home
If people are lucky enough to be able to make money from the home working their job in their home setting, then things are not so bad for them. But, if people’s normal work involves a service industry where the job must be done outside the home as it involves contact with the public, then those folks are out of work.
Since the statistics show that a high percentage of people work from paycheck to paycheck, this can be devastating for their financial situation. The ability to have the money to purchase the day to day supplies they need to live may not be available without a paycheck coming in from their job.
Wouldn’t it be nice if people who have jobs that require they work outside the home had a way to make money from the home? Are there ways to be able to create income with nothing more than a computer and some personalized training?
How is This Situation Affecting HMRVI Corporation?
HMRVI Corporation is a home-based business entity and it has been so since it was created in 2014. Howard and Pam run their business and make money from the comfort of their RV. Even before that, a large percentage of their income has come from activities related to working at home.
In the past few days, even given the economic upheaval, when accounts for HMRVI are viewed, items are still being sold and money is still being made! For example, someone bought a scope for their rifle. Someone bought a roof sealant product. HMRVI does not even mention these products in their services that are offered!
Other purchases in the past few days were a dehumidifier, an infrared space heater, and a battery charger just to name a few. These are some products that have been mentioned on our website.
And, nothing was done to create this activity other than work was put in months ago to set up systems for products to be sold and money to flow into an account. How is this possible?
Small Business Startup Ideas
As mentioned in our How it All Started page on this website, Howard and Pam have had an entrepreneurial mindset since their twenties. To allow someone else to dictate their income was not something that was going to lead to work-related satisfaction.
So, from our story, you can see that over the years, and because of advancements in technology, running a small business and making money from home has become so much easier than it used to be. There are many ways that a person can operate a small business from their home! It just takes finding something that you are passionate about and developing a business around that passion.,
HMRVI Corporation was developed around the passion that Howard and Pam have for the RV industry! Through that passion, ideas were developed to create income through multiple sources. How did they come up with these small business startup ideas? How can other people do the same? Well, that is what we hope to assist you with here on the HMRVI website. We hope that some of the things we share here will steer you in a direction that will move you forward into small business ownership!
So what are some small businesses that you could start and make money from the home?
How about some of these:
- Launch a money-making website
- Do online surveys
- Narrate audiobooks
- Become a life coach
- Set up an online course
- Become an online Bookkeeper
- Write an ebook for something you consider yourself to be an expert at and sell it
- Become an online transcriber
- Offer freelance proof-reading services
- Tutor others in a subject you know well
- Teach foreigners the English language
- Learn how to develop websites and sell website creation services
- Create how-to videos
So, depending on your skill set, there are lots of options! But, as I counsel people in business sessions that I teach, having a home-based business should be one that you are excited about!
As mentioned earlier, Pam and I love the RV lifestyle. When we decided to adopt the full-time RV lifestyle and had sold our home and non-RV related business, we still knew we needed to start another business. But what could we do living in an RV? That’s when we came across the idea of marketing products that we use in our RV lifestyle.
But how would we set that up? I knew nothing about website creation and online marketing back in 2011. So we put moving forward with the idea for a little while. My ignorance, fear, and paradigm prevented me from moving forward. Then in 2013, with a good income, but no deductions, including no business deductions, we had a BIG tax bill! It was now time to take our idea more seriously!
I went looking for a way to create income online by creating my own website and store that I could sell RV products. My idea was that if I had personal experience with products I use and like it would be easy to talk about them and share my opinion so that when people searched for them, they would find my website.
With that idea in mind, I found a platform that would be able to teach me how to set up a website, host the website, choose the right website URL, how to launch the website, choose mobile device efficient website templates, understand keywords and SEO, how to use Google analytics, how to write website content, social engagement and marketing, and all the other tasks that are needed to launch a successful online business.
Launch a Money-Making Website!
So that is what I started to learn how to do! I wanted to launch a website that would create income twenty-four-seven, three-sixty-five while working from the home.
Website hosting services range in price from a few dollars a month to almost one-hundred dollars, or possibly more, a month for a full-featured service. It really depends on what you want for your website and how much storage that website will need. In today’s online world, web server security features are a big consideration in choosing a hosting service. If they are not truly secure than a website will be subject to persistent hacking and website downtime.
But then there is learning how to do all that is necessary to get a website set up and launched so that it attracts the attention of the search engines once it is out there in the online world. Anyone can launch a website. That can take five minutes to do on GoDaddy. But until best SEO (search engine optimization) practices are adopted, the website will just sit there without traffic.
CONFUSION?
Once you start digging into all this you will start to feel inadequate in the online world. There is so much to know! That is why I chose to find a kind of online university that would walk me through the process. I am a visual learner so I wanted more of a step-by-step video process to take me through the process of setting up a website from before actually launching it through the process of building it into a large full-featured, page-one ranking website. No website hosting services offer that kind of service, for free to start, and forty-nine dollars a month thereafter!
Any hosting company will be happy to set a website up for you, but that will cost big dollars. Plus once created you don’t have complete control of the website to constantly add content and change it at will. I have to go into my website at least once a week just to update plug-ins, respond to questions, and add new material. This is what leads to an engaging and page-one ranking website!
Website Security Equals Business Stability
I hear so many other people with websites sharing how theirs got hacked, that they get constant spam comments to their website and a host of other issues due to insecure servers. Website security is essential in the hosting world! Hackers constantly try to take over websites to use them for their own gain, and they can do that without you evening knowing it. Others just want to wreak havoc on your website and cause downtime. They may even try to gain access to your personal details.
With my hosting network, there are incredible security protection technologies that help to keep it safe, protected from botnet attacks, and private data is kept secure. Most attacks go unnoticed by me and other end-users, because of the security measures that are in place on a network-wide basis. This is very comforting for me to know as a WordPress website user.
Website Speed Helps SEO
When it comes to a website achieving page-one rankings, speed is everything when it comes to search engine optimization. If your website is slow and inefficient, website visitors will not stay! That can lead to lost revenue for you. Also, poor user experience is one of the most critical factors as far as website ranking when it comes to Google. No matter what the supposed experts say, a website plugin cannot take the place of a good hosting network platform!
Website Reliability
Another ongoing focus is the reliability of your websites and overall network “uptime”. If your website becomes unavailable to your users, or you potentially do something that “takes your website down”, then it can have impacts on your website revenue and your rankings in the search engines.
Many things are being done within this hosting network that leads to greater reliability. This includes full redundancy, which means that at all times websites are running “mirrored” versions, so if one server goes down, the other one will go live. This is incredibly expensive to implement and to operate, but this is a service that is included with all websites hosted within this amazing platform.
Redundancy, back-ups, powerful hardware (servers), and real-time network monitoring on all websites are just a few of the ways that can mitigate any downtime and ensure maximum uptime with all websites hosted within this platform!
Support When You Need It!
Hosting support is the key to online success when building an online business. WordPress templates can become problematic, plug-ins will create conflicts, the website may get damaged by something you inadvertently do, or you just may need a question answered on how to create a more advanced feature on your website.
Having access to a website support group that is 24/7 is essential! Unlike most hosts that have some sort of front line or intermediate support, I have direct access to server administrators. These folks are server technology experts that can quickly fix issues. I have been super impressed with my response times. The average response time from Site Support is five minutes! This is the service that I receive from a high quality managed WordPress Hosting company.
How it Works!
When I started my website, I began by using a free trial to test out all the features and training modules that were available. Within a few days, I upgraded my membership to a discounted premium 30-day offer where I could continue to build my website and take advantage of the awesome training.
My chosen niche market was to share information about living the full time RV living and products that we use and like. I am an affiliate with companies like Amazon, Outdoorsy, Workamper News, Techno RV, and others. When I discuss a product that I use and like, basically a product review, and I include links that go to the affiliate company website that is tracked back to me, and people buy products, I make a small percentage from the sale. It can range from three to ten percent.
Sales can range from a few dollars to thousands. It just depends on the products I discuss and that people decide to buy. But here’s the cool thing! Once they are on the affiliate company’s website, it does not matter what they buy. I get a commission from the sale because they visited their website due to my referral. Some affiliate companies even hold that referral link in a record for a period of seven to thirty days. That means if your website visitor comes back to the referral site and buys, you get the commission for the sale!
How cool is that! This is the kind of income I have been enjoying for over six years. And in addition to that, my websites are also a portal for other business activities that I choose to offer. Some are outside the home, but they pay much larger dollars. But, these opportunities occur because of my website business.
Here is what a part of the training platform structure looks like:
Here’s an idea of what is possible from just one affiliate company relationship when you have a website to promote a product you like, discuss it on your website, and refer people to their website.