A large proportion of those seeking new and profitable business opportunities are also looking for ways to earn an extra income based from home. This may be out of necessity as they are unable to find a job, or it may be that they simply are looking for an extra income for whatever reason – to enhance their current lifestyle, support a hobby or raise cash to invest in more business activity. Whatever the reason, businesses that can be started and run from home are the easiest and cheapest to establish – and for that reason they are very popular. The trouble is that this leads to a massive market in other businesses offering “work at home” programs and “easy ways to riches” that the unwary are so vulnerable to.

However, there are many ways to earn extra cash from home. Without fail they will require effort and diligence in order to make them work and there will be no quick route to riches. However, starting small and building up was the route taken by every self made millionaire (and billionaire!) and so if you can find something you like or are interesting in, it is possible to invest time and any profits you make growing a home business as far as you like.

Internet marketing

You can earn extra income from home with nothing more than a computer and Internet connection. However, this is one area where there is so much hype and promise and the reality is very much different. You cannot simply pick up a program advertised on some web site, pay your up front fee or first monthly subscription and expect to be earning money within days. It is simply not possible to even start raking it in within months. It is on the other hand possible to start seeing some revenue after a couple of months, that then grows month on month as a result of regular and targeted work – but only if the course or mentoring program you have selected is realistic, achievable and reasonable. Otherwise even if you are seeing some results they will not be anywhere as big as promised, you will become disillusioned and quickly give up.

Those successful at Internet marketing will tell you of many months and years earning a few pound or dollars every month. However, with persistence and willingness to learn, experiment and monitor results carefully they were able to rise to the surface and earn a significant level of income.

WordPress blogging software

As an example a wordpress blog can illustrate the potential for making money. If you have a key word that Google’s Keyword tool tells you costs say $2 every time somebody clicks on it and that there is traffic of around 10,000 people using that keyword (on Google alone) then you can see that some $10,000 is paid by Google every month to web site owners that host Google adverts for that single particular keyword. Surely it must be possible to build a great web site and get 10% of the traffic? In order to build a blog site into a business that earns you say $1000 every month there is a long road that needs to be taken.

1. Setting up a WordPress blog is easy. You buy a web site domain name and arrange web hosting with one of the many providers on the Internet. You set up a SQL database on your new hosting account. You download a free copy from the WordPress web site onto your computer. You make a few simple changes to the underlying file structure of the program and upload it to your new web hosts. Then you configure your blog by downloading and installing a suitable theme to your site together with a number of other “plugins” (pieces of software) that are freely available on the Internet.

2. You now have a web site that you can write some useful and interesting content for, that you hope will attract people to your web site out of interest and curiosity. However, just getting visitors would be no point if the intention is for them to make you money. Therefore you need to set up an account with Google so that you can install Adsense advertsiements onto your site in order that you visitors will click on them to earn you you commission. Once you have done this you have a “monetized” web site that can make you money if only people will visit you.

Getting to this stage is incredibly simple, and currently takes me an hour or two which also includes writing 2000 to 3000 words of interesting content to go on the site and finding maybe a couple of relevant photos to add in also. However, to get to this stage for the first time took me around 18 months!

Now that I know what I am doing it is easy, but initially I went down so many wrong and wasteful paths that my enthusiasm waned on a regular basis. So finding the correct route can take time – everybody will try to sell you the best and quickest method but even the basics as described above can take time to master. For me the turning point was visiting the forums, learning from others and not trying to do it alone.

3. Ok, that was the easy part. You have a web site that is capable of making money but no visitors. Is the keyword that you are working with suitable – and is your site optimized for that particular keyword?

4. You have a great keyword and your site is completely relevant to it – why are you still not getting traffic and hence earning any money?

5. You need to impress on Google that your site is the number 1 site for the keyword you have chosen. With some keywords this is easy to do, with others, usually the more valuable in terms of earning capacity for you, can be extremely difficult if not impossible to do. However, again there are ways to boost your search engine ranking without spending huge sums of money that take time and effort but do work.

Getting to this stage has been something of a slog – don’t you think? And instead of earning $1000 from the keyword every month, I am earning $30. What to do?

6. Now I need to boost my site with many other suitable keywords, so that they all help to boost each others ranking and start to generate substantial combined revenues. If I want $1000, maybe $5000 every month from this site I might need 100 or 500 suitable keywords, each of which will require time and patience to boost it in the Google and other search engines. As individual keywords begin to be noticed by Google, they will in turn support other keywords within separate content on the site thus increasing traffic overall.

Eventually perhaps after 2 or 3 years, working full time with content writers writing for me (at a cost) I might be turning over a respectable business – then suddenly without reason Google decides to “sandbox” my website and my earnings dwindle to nothing. This would indeed be a late stage in the game to realize that in Internet Marketing it pays to spread you effort over several web sites and use different hosting companies for each (what happens if your hosting company goes bust?).

If you are interested in the type of Internet Marketing I have described above, and are prepared to risk $1 (yes one dollar) from your PayPal account – try following the program of work on the Keyword Academy. This is the only step by step “formula” for internet marketing that I have seen where you can learn all the basics (avoid the long learning curve that I experienced) for virtually nothing. If you stay in the program beyond the first month you will be charged $33 every month thereafter – I promise you that you can in fact learn everything you need, download all the webinars etc within the month. However the value comes with the forum which is only open to members, and the free tools that are provided. I got everything I could in the first month planning to quit my subscription (it is easy and secure when paying by PayPal to do this) then – now some months down the line I am still subscribing and not planning to leave!

Have you ever been in a doctor’s surgery and admired their tank of tropical fish? You may be surprised to know that providing and maintaining aquariums stocked with a variety of fish can form a very lucrative business opportunity for a practical person with a little space available in a box room or garage in which to keep their own fish tanks. This article explains how easy it can be to build a profitable aquarium rental business from a home base and how to earn extra money from it.

Ideally you will have some interest in fish keeping and perhaps have your own fish tank, perhaps in your own front room. It can cost very little to establish a rental business, adding a customer one at a time from a carefully planned marketing campaign. So where do you start?

You need to decide on the equipment that you plan to supply. There are a number of ranges of complete aquarium set-ups on the market that would be preferable to attempting to piece together units from separate sources. The latter may be cheaper, but to get started an integrated unit will give you less trouble. You may decide to develop your own range in the future, by locating the best sources and even buying wholesale. Try a good brand such as Juwel, Fluval or Rena.

To start with you will be looking at a complete aquarium kit for freshwater fish (filter, tank, lighting and stand) system that costs in the region of $200 – $300. You will be able to purchase kits that retail for around $300-$500 by negotiating with the aquarium shop for a bulk purchase of say 10 units. Before you throw your hands up and cry “I can’t afford this!” read on…you will only be collecting your tanks as and when you need them for your clients, at which point you will be collecting your deposit for the rental contract. The cash flow will mostly take care of itself!

So you will start with a brand new boxed aquarium set and your cheap stock tank at home. With marketing, stock fish and sundries this is all going to be an up front investment of not much more than $500.

Set up your stock tank at home with a dozen fancy goldfish. Do not bother with a heater unless you are forced to keep the tank out in a cold garage. And forget marine fish or tropical freshwater fish at the start. You are now ready to market your business.

Starting in your postal area you need to build up a database of all doctor, dentist and other medical surgeries that are likely to have waiting rooms. Add to your database every business that you can find on the various different trading estates in your locality. Hopefully you will be able to secure more than one customer on each trading estate which makes your business of maintaining aquaria much easier. You will need to start with a list of at least 200 businesses and surgeries, but remember you will be adding to these all the time.

Now it is down to you to sell your business. If I tell you that I am aware of two small but successful companies renting aquaria in this way were both started during an economic recession several years ago but are still going strong you can see that it is very possible to find customers. You need to be prepared to deliver leaflets, follow up with phone calls and visit every potential customer that shows some interest. You must be able to convince somebody of the proven therapeutic health benefits on staff and nervous patients of having a fantastic aquarium set up. Add to this the fact that you will do all the work, guaranteeing healthy fish and a clean tank 100% of the time.

Because you are managing your new business, you will be limited to the number of tanks that you can easily maintain comfortably. The upper limit is probably around a couple each working day, say around 40 per month.  However, if you were intending building an empire, and employing a couple of maintenance technicians, you will probably be able to hire out tanks at up to 200 different locations. This would be a $quarter million turnover per year business! And remember, if you are fortunate to live in or close to a city and are able to offer a great service, some customers may take multiple tank systems from you.

So what are the basic finances involved? I have said that you need a tank system that would retails for up to $500 in the pet shops as a starting point. This will hopefully cost you less than $300 to buy wholesale. You can expect to recover around $50 minimum per month for maintenance and should be able get between 2 and 6 months advance rental in addition. You need to decide how big your initial business will be – if you are trying it out on a part time basis 10 tanks might be a good number with which to learn the business and still make some extra money without having to give up your day job immediately! If you do the maths and manage to recruit one new customer each month – it would be possible to break even during the first year taking into account all capital and trading costs. One way of looking at this is that in one year you have set up a business machine that you fully own - and clears $500 in profits each month going forward!

There is much more to the finances than can be covered in this short article. There are ways to tweak the monthly revenue – in practice many customers pay $100 – $200 per month and some much more. You will find ways of setting up better and more reliable aquaria for the least capital outlay – and when interest rates are low it is best to actually borrow in order to buy the capital equipment. Also you will offer both aquaria rental and maintenance contracts – customers see more for their money. Once you get your business model straight you can consider gearing up, with rented storage space, delivery vans and maintenance staff. When you are sourcing your own equipment you will be able to branch into retail sales from your existing base. This is one business opportunity area that does have a wide range of ways in which you can expand – for the serious and practical person.

If you like fish keeping and are looking for a practical business you can build from a modest capital base into a substantial organization, aquarium rental may suit you. It is not an easy way how to earn money fast, but is a way to build a serious repeat business one step at a time.