It seems many people are heeding the call and forging their own path in the business world. Today we want to give attention to one route to starting your own business that circumvents many of the typical barriers to launch. Starting your own website and living the “internet lifestyle” can be a quick and relatively cheap way to go into business for yourself.
The most popular ways to make money from a website is to sell your own products via the site or participate in affiliate marketing. We will defer explaining exactly how this is done to the multitude of other sites about this subject that already exist. Instead we will focus on the pros and cons of this form of entrepreneurship.
The positives to the internet lifestyle are easy to understand, the word “freedom” explains it all:
-No boss – you are the boss.
-No dress code – work in your underwear if you like.
-No schedule – no alarm clock, no sales meetings, no 9 to 5.
-No working for the weekend – take off to do the things you love whenever you want.
-No commute – you can work anywhere there is an internet connection.
-Most importantly, you can make money while you are sleeping, your business can be run on autopilot.
The cons of living the internet lifestyle may include:
-No instant revenue – it takes time to build up a successful website (at least 6 months in most cases), it’s best to keep your day job and moonlight as a website owner at first.
-Long Hours – you may find yourself working more that the standard 8 hours a day to truly build a successful, profit generating website.
-No traditional benefits – health insurance and other expenses are paid by you.
-No equity building (perhaps) – if you were to sell out who would buy your website?
-Little human contact – you are “connected” but sometimes it’s beneficial to be face to face with customers.
-Resume builder? – your own website may or may not look good on a resume, something to think about if you ever want to get (back) into the corporate world in the future.
-Are you creating change? – most entrepreneurs enjoy creating some kind of positive change leaving things better than how they found them, will running a website allow you to do this? Maybe. (as a side note, if you become an affiliate marketing scam artists by sending spam to people’s inboxes and comment boxes you may be living the internet lifestyle but you are also extremely annoying)
At the end of the day it comes down to a personal choice. Is living the internet lifestyle appealing to you? Many entrepreneurs have gone on to make millions through this line of work. Yanik Silver, a business adventurer, successful internet entrepreneur, and proponent of the internet lifestyle sums it up with this quote:
“Personally, the Internet Lifestyle means being able to do pretty much whatever you want, almost anytime you want and let the Internet pay for it!”
