Out of work? Tight on cash?

Don't let your employer's money troubles become yours

These are hard times. Many are out of work, while others struggle to keep up with the bills. Are you short on cash? Worried about how long your employer can last without resorting to lay-offs?

Why not take matters into your own hands?

My year off work leads to a new opportunity

I took a year off work starting last July, because I wanted to live abroad for a year with my wife and children. Within a few weeks, I realized I needed something to keep me busy.

I've been unemployed before, and I know how demoralizing it can be to have no meaningful work. Guess what - it can even be demoralizing when you leave your job willingly! So I took matters into my own hands.

I decided to build a website.

Anyone can fail at building a website

I didn't really know anything about building websites. I knew there were people who made money through their websites, but I didn't know how they did it.

I did some research, and discovered that a few very talented or very lucky people have succeeded at this. But most people who try, fail. They sink a few hundred bucks, and a few hundred hours, into developing a website nobody visits. They don't even come close to covering their costs. You've probably visited websites like that before - they look like they haven't been updated in months. You can almost smell the mothballs.

Some of us actually make money at it

Then I discovered a process that, if you follow it, really does work. It takes the guesswork out of building a website, and saves you from many of the mistakes most new website developers make. I started my website using this process, and sure enough, things are working out exactly as I hoped - if not better:

Within six months of going live, my website was in the top 1% of websites worldwide, in terms of daily traffic rankings
Within nine months (by April 2008), I was making over $500 a month
Monthly growth rates for both traffic and income have held above 30%, which means the $500 I made in April became $670 in May and is headed for $1100 for June.

A few months of hard work has really paid off

This isn't a scam or a Get Rich Quick scheme - it was real work, and lots of it. I probably put over 20 hours a week into this website in its first six months.

But now I'm coasting - an hour here or there to update the odd page (like this one), or answer an e-mail, and otherwise the site just hums along, making me money!

You'll never worry about lay-offs again

If you're out of work, or struggling to hold onto a job, you could do worse than try your hand at a website of your own. You don't even need to know what your website will be about, when you start. If you follow the right process, you can turn something from your own experience - a hobby, a passion, your training, your work experience, your life experience - into a profitable website.

Within a few months, if you follow the approach I used, you'll have hundreds of visitors a day, and hundreds of dollars a month in steadily growing revenue.

Find out how I turned a passion into an income, or check out my review of Site Build It, the process I used to build my website.

Remember - no one can lay you off, when you work for yourself!