For the past three days I’ve had very limited Internet access at home, which for me is a problem because I run my business from home. I called the cable company and they sent a technician out to fix my problem. While the guy was working, he was asking me a bunch of questions. You see, I told him that it was urgent that we get this problem fixed because I work from home. He wanted to know what the, “secret” was to making money from home. “How do you do it?” he asked me.

I told him that I work for myself. I’m a writer and web developer/marketer and I run my own company. He looked crestfallen and he said, “My wife’s been trying to find a good, ‘work from home,’ opportunity, but all she keeps finding is these scams.” I told him that if they were looking for a way to work for someone else, it would be a challenge to find a legitimate work from home opportunity. “My secret,” I said, “is that I started my own company and I get my own clients. It takes effort and energy.” He went on to tell me that he has paid over $1,500 for a website business that was supposed to be, ‘turn key.’ He’s got the website all set up, but nothing is happening. I told him it’s because he needs to generate traffic to his website. Nothing happens until you start attracting traffic. He was quite irritated at the prospect of how much time and effort he would have to put in to start getting a good flow of traffic to his site. He thought that he would just get the website built and set up and that the people would just end up there and buy stuff. That elicited a good belly laugh from me, but he was serious.

I shook my head and wondered to myself, “Did he really think it was going to be that easy?” The reality is, if you want to build a business whether online or offline in a brick and mortar shop location, you’ve got to market your business to attract traffic whether it happens to be foot traffic to your store, or search engine traffic to your website. Yes, you can make money working from home, but you’ve got to be willing to put in the energy, effort and commitment to making it work. Don’t expect that you can set up a shiny, new website and instantly have people visiting it and buying from it.

When I shared some effective website traffic strategies with my cable guy, he said, “No way do I want to do all that work.” I told him about PPC, but he said he’s not investing another dime in this venture. So, unless by some feat of magic a bunch of people happen to stumble across his website it’s not going to do any better than it has been.

In my business I create content for clients who are using a content marketing strategy to attract traffic and leads. Today I just sent off a report that I wrote for a client who is going to use it to attract traffic and new subscribers to her newly launched website. Content marketing is a proven, effective strategy where you offer value first and give your visitors just a taste of what you have to offer. If what you have to offer resonates with them and provides an elegant solution, they will be back and they will inquire about your premium products or programs.

Running an online business is not easy, but it’s incredibly rewarding if you adopt a resourceful mindset and if you’re willing to be committed to doing whatever it takes to achieve success. Contact me today if you need fresh content for your blog or website. Please share your thoughts in the comments.

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