Setting Up An Online Business – The Global Petsitters

I’m always really interested in finding out how all of the “digital nomads” fund their travelling and I’ve found that most have a blog of some description and have been building it over a few years, but I’m yet to find anyone who has completely shared how they actually set up a blog, how long it took to generate cash from it and how much time it takes to keep it updated. In my view and from experience blogs take a long time to set up, need lots of time spent on them to keep them current and have to be really informative to actually make much money from them.

Now this is a personal view and from someone with a very basic understanding of social media and web design but I would consider one of the best, quickest and if you’re lucky and do it right, easiest ways to earn a bit of extra cash while travelling is to set up an online business. Something you can take where ever you go as long as you can get an internet connection, easier said than done I hear you say!

Well, I’d be lying if I said it was easy, otherwise everyone would be doing it, but its achievable by absolutely any one who has a laptop, after all, I’ve done it and when I started had no experience of web design or the type of business I set up, so if I can do it anyone can! And honestly, our websites earn us less than my salary alone when I was a school teacher. But it took less than six months to set up and amazingly with a fair bit of budgeting and further development as we’ve gone along, it’s been enough to fund the last 10 years of winters in Spain, summers on the Black Sea Coast, 10 nights in New York, a 14 night road trip around the UK, 3 trips to Australia and our 2 and a half month backpacking adventure in Asia.

If you’re interested in becoming a Nomad then certainly consider starting an online business, they can be pretty easy to set up and with a bit of hard work and lots of luck it might just start to make some money …… so lets get started!

The First Step!

The key thing to setting up any online business is to choose a type of business. I would suggest choosing something you are interested in or maybe even something you have experience of either through work or a hobby. If you know something about the business already you will be strides ahead of me. The online business that enabled us to started our journey, I set up in about 3 months from just a few evenings a week while I was still a school teacher and it was a commission based holiday rental website. Since then I’ve had a go at numerous other holiday rental websites, selling a learn to swim book and swimming products, an advertising site for tradesmen and through our pet sitting experiences we are now starting a pet orientated online business ……. some more successful than others!

So get your thinking cap on and come up with that basic type of business. Lets say you’ve thought of something now, but even if you haven’t then why not try and replicate one of our ideas, I’m going to use a holiday rental website as an example to show you how you can set an online business up from scratch and how income can be achieved.

If I still have your attention and your keen to read more, then lets go!

The Second Step

So now we have to set up a website, don’t worry, as it’s not as difficult as you might think. We cover this in detail over at this blog post “Setting Up A Website“.

You’ll learn about:

How to set up your first website absolutely FREE!

Choosing a webname, what to think about, how to check if its available and actually buying your own dot com!

So pop on over and take a look Setting Up A Website and come and meet me back here once you’ve had a good read through.

The Third Step

So now we need to build your website into a business that generates an income stream. We’ll be using a holiday rental website as an example, but the concept is pretty much the same for any business.

Firstly, the easiest way to start building a selection of items/products or in our case holiday rentals to sell through a website is by using affiliate programmes. Simply put an Affiliate Programme is set up by the company selling the product, they provide you with a website link with a special piece of code, you put this link on your website and if anyone clicks on the link and buys a product directly with the company, the company can tell the lead has come from your website and gives you a commission for sending them a sale.

The beauty of affiliate programmes are that once the links are placed on your website, when someone visits your site and clicks on a link, everything else becomes automated as they go through to the businesses shop, product or in our case the rental property. So in effect your website is open for business 24 hours a day and could in theory generate income even when you are a sleep! In reality, however, its not quite as easy as that, but with a little bit of extra work and marketing it really is a possibility.

So lets give it a go and see whether you can make some money from your website. Setting up affiliate accounts is FREE and using companies links are all FREE to do. Lets start by setting one up with one of the agencies we use called AWIN.Go to https://www.awin.com/gb and then click on the SIGN UP button in the top right hand corner or alternatively click here https://ui.awin.com/publisher-signup/en/step1 to go directly to the sign up page. Follow the instructions to set up your account.

Make sure you make a note of your login details somewhere safe!

Now you can start to apply for some suitable business with products that you can list on your website. Make sure you’re logged in, then to find all the companies click the DASHBOARD link at the top left hand side of the page. Then hover over the ADVERTISERS button at the top of the page and select JOIN PROGRAMMES.

Now you can search different business sectors on the left hand side, you will see a list of advertiser (that’s what they call the business) in the Not Joined area, if you want to find out more about the advertiser (what they sell, commission info etc) then click on the magnifying glass on the right hand screen at the end of the advertisers details.

So if you select Toffs Ltd as an example and click on the magnifying glass of that advertiser, you will see all of the companies information. Should you wish to join this advertiser and sell their products on your website, click on the JOIN PROGRAMME link.

There are a host of affiliate programmes available to join to maximise the companies you can promote. Here are a few more:

Commission Junction ¦ Affiliate Future ¦ Click Booth ¦ Webgains ¦ Click Bank ¦ Trade Doubler

The Fourth Step

Now start to add each companies link on to you website. Make sure you wait until you have been accepted as an affiliate by the company, you will receive an email with confirmation by Awin when each advertiser accepts you. Now you can get creative with building your website. Here are a couple of examples to get you thinking about what might work for your business idea.

Example 1

You may want to show case your products in a simple shop format as the website below has done.

I set this website up in just a few hours http://www.dogsmyworld.com to give you an example of a very simple shop created using affiliate programme links to sell products online.

Simply done, you can see that each product has a unique link which lets the company know that anyone who clicks on the link on my page and buys the product through my website ensures I receive a commission from the sale.

Example 2

You may want to show case your holiday rentals in a online travel brochure format as the website below has done.

I set this website up http://www.holidaytorent.co.uk/ski-resorts/romania.htm which gives you an example of a very simple holiday rental website created using affiliate programme links to sell products online.

Simply done, you can see that each unique link lets the company know that anyone who clicks on a link on my page and buys the product through my website ensures I receive a commission from the sale.

I hope you get the idea and good luck with building an online business!

Thank you for visiting our Blog, we would really appreciate your comments, your thoughts on it, or your experiences to share and if you have any questions. There is a comment box at the end of this blog page and we will be so happy to get back to you, to answer and to give any help/advice we can.

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Disclosure: Please note that some of the links in this blog post may be affiliate links meaning that, with no extra cost to you, we earn a small commission if you make a purchase. We recommend only products and companies we use.