Starting with Nothin' and Ending up with Somethin' | My Journey Online

Clubhouse Fire

Our family owned business did well for quite a while. I think we came to expect it -- took it for granted. The trouble began one January morning in the form of a call at 3:20 AM from the sheriff's office. The main clubhouse was on fire.

Would stood helplessly on the driving range, a safe distance away from the flames as 3 or 4 fire departments worked together put it out. The good news was no one was hurt. The bad news was it burnt to the ground. 

Newspaper Photo

For the next year, we worked re-building. We attributed our business being down to the loss of income from the clubhouse but there was more to it than that. We were so caught up in rebuilding, we failed to notice the downward spiral of the economy. 

We built a bigger and better clubhouse and re-opened at the worst possible time. The rural area where we lived was losing jobs and population quickly. A couple of factories and a handful of small businesses closed. The county's population was just over 18,000 with just over half the population living in the town that was home to us and our golf course. 

New Clubhouse

As the economy worsened, so did our business. Exactly 30 months after we re-opened the clubhouse, our golf course because a casualty of the recession. We lost our business, jobs and only income in September 2009.

We moved south and started from scratch. Finding jobs was the hardest. After 7 months of unemployment, my husband finally got a job -- I was still looking.  

Having been a brick and mortar business owner for 20+ years, I was having a problem wrapping my head around how - the process by which you make money on the internet. It's different than a traditional, physical business and it wasn't computing for me. 

Paula, AJ and Bev were very patient with me, answered my never ending questions, reviewed my lenses for effectiveness. I continued writing and posting but my click through rate and traffic weren't great. I needed to understand the process in order to execute it properly. My analytic mind wouldn't have it any other way. 

We got into more detail about the who, what, when, where and how's of writing online to make an income. The only point I absolutely hated and could do nothing about was the time factor. Paula kept telling me that age of lenses and articles is a factor. You need to build authority in a niche and that takes time.

Slowly, the light began to break through. The lessons I was getting were making sense. Then, one day I had my "light bulb" moment. It finally all made sense. I was so excited, I wrote a blog post about it. Paula had to laugh but she was there saying "See? Now you can make money too!" Yes, I could do this.

Applying all I had learned from the 3 Musketeers, I started seeing results. I was getting traffic, clicks, sales and the whole shebang. I was finally earning some money online. I teared up with my first Squidoo payday 5 months after I had joined. It was the best $38.15 I had ever earned! 

There is no reason to re-write what has been written. Everything I learned, Paula and AJ have already written about. All you have to do is read. Below are links to articles that explain the same lessons they taught me.

My best advice is the same thing my dad used to tell me. 

"If you don't know how to do something, talk to someone that does. There truly are no stupid questions -- just stupid people that won't ask questions."

If you have the drive to want to succeed, ask the questions and put some time into research. Knowledge is the payoff. 

There are no "Get rich quick" schemes that work. If they did, we'd all be millionaires. ;D

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