Boost Your Pension - Make Money Online

Seniors - Add to Your Pension While Working From Home.

Have you ever wondered if you could make money online? You can – and with very little investment.

If you need to boost your pension, are over 50 or a senior citizen and have some time available, you need to read this.

How has the credit crunch affected you?  If you are like me, the stock market has left many of our savings in a laughable mess. House prices have crashed, wiping out our savings of the past years. There just is not enough money to pay pensions we have saved for never mind those we just sort of hoped would happen.

For many of us this is quite a frightening situation. I know I am worried about my pension and looking for ways to increase it. That is why I am here on the internet. That is why I am learning about making money online while working from home and passing it on to you.

Anyone Can Make Money Online While Working From Home

I completely believe that anyone (including seniors and those approaching retirement age) can make money online to replace their lost pensions or investments. Now almost everything you need to make money online is easy to do if you know how to use a programme like MS Word. You can build sites, put them on the internet, get people to come to them and update them with hardly any technical knowledge and very, very little money.

However… there is always that however. You will need to invest time. And you will need to invest determination and stickability. And you will need to learn a a few new things.

But hey, we aren't the same as our parent's generation are we? We know we are not old at 50 – no pipe, cardie and slippers for us. As seniors ( or semi seniors) we are brave, adaptable and we can learn easily.  We know how to change to face a different world.

The doctors say that when it comes to mental fitness and capability, use it or lose it.  Isn't it better to use it learning how to increase your own income rather than playing some electronic game that increases someone else's income?

Don't Get the Wrong Idea

I am not promising that you could be a millionaire overnight. I am not even promising that you will make more than a small extra residual income. But I am sure you can use the internet to increase what money comes into your household. And if you, like me, are dreading the heating bill  for the coming winter, that can only be a help.

Two Ways To Go

There are many, many different ways to earn money on the internet. But here are two that are simple to set up, do not involve you in any business dealing and can be based on any existing interests or specialist knowledge that you have.

1. Become an Affiliate

Becoming an affiliate is a fairly new way of making money online, but it is an interesting and very cheap way of doing it. This is how it works:

You find a subject that you are either really interested in or really knowledgeable about or both. Let's say you are passionate about cooking or car maintenance.

1. You find a company that is selling products or services that fit into that area. Let's say a great cookery book or a series of videos that show you how to maintain certain types of cars.
2. You sign up as an affiliate and they give you a link, personalised for you, to their web page / product details / service description.
3. Your job is to get people interested in going to the website where these items are sold.
4. But you do not sell these items. Your job is to interest and amuse and create a place where people who are also interested in these things want to be.
5. The best way to achieve your aims to set up a blog, a website or some other form of communication and make sure it is really interesting to the potential customers. As they read your content and take part in your discussions, they will begin to trust you and your judgement. So when you say that 'X Cookery Book' is great they believe you.
6.  In that part of your site where you say 'X Cookery Book' is great; you include the link you got to the sales page of X Cookery Book. If your readers click through to that page and buy the book, you get a commission.
7. No selling. No stock. No staff. No premises. No complaints. Simples!

 Of course it is more complicated than this. But this is the main outline. And I must emphasise, you are not selling the product. You are creating an interesting place where people who are keen on that sort of thing want to be. Your job is to make friends with a lot of people who think like you. Hard eh?

If you want to learn a little more about this way of doing things:

2. Drop Shipping

The second way to make money online that I want to talk about is drop shipping. This is a little more commercial but again can be set up with very little knowledge or money.

Drop shipping is more like a little business than being an affiliate. It gives you the opportunity to sell on auction sites and/or to create an online shop with a wide range of products without the hassle of having to hire staff, keep stock or manage deliveries.

How Does It Work?

• You set up an e-commerce website that has a suitable shopping cart and credit card processing facilities. Don't worry about the technical side of things because nowadays if you can read and type, you can do this easily. Or you can hire people on the internet for very little money.
• You use your favourite Search Engine Results Page engine (Google, Firefox Yahoo etc) to search for drop shipping agencies who sell things you are interested in. Drop+ship+cooking or Drop+ship+cars for example.
• Check out the sites that come up for the stuff that interest you, and choose those products / services you are interested in. Try to get recommendations from other drop shippers if possible so you know what type of customer service the organisations you are interested in provide.
• A great resource if you are looking for a drop shipper are drop ship resource directories. A good one is OneSource http://www.worldwidebrands.com/?kbid=6114. This website lists over 8,000,000 products from 234 categories.
• Open an account with the drop shipper of choice.
• Put images and information about your chosen products on your site and incorporate it with your chosen shopping cart. It sounds complicated, but if you have ever sold anything on e-bay you can do it. Actually, that is not a good example. Every time I put anything on EBay, it takes me far longer than I expect.
• Or sell on Ebay and/or other auction sites.
• Getting people to come to your site is one of the tricks of success. Don't worry about it how to do this though. There is loads of free information on our site and on the internet showing you how to do this, and you will find the whole process really fascinating.
• Now you just have to wait for people to buy things. Don't forget, they pay you as they buy so no worries about bouncing cheques. Crucially you get your customer's money before you have to pay the supplier. It is this fact that makes drop shipping a great route for people starting out in this type of activity. No need for big investments no left over stock; nothing wasted.
• Send full order details to the drop shipper company. They will bill you at the price you have agreed, and then they will complete the order sending it to your client. In most cases the labels and paperwork with any packages will indicate it comes from you.

A good drop shipper will provide you with everything you need to know in terms of how to pass orders and payment back, how to follow things up etc. Indeed a good drop shipper will work hard to help you create a great sales site. After all, for every sale you make, they also make a profit.

Do I Have to Pay to Join a Drop Ship Supplier?

A question that often comes up is whether you have to pay to join a drop shipping programme. The answer is that you do not with most programmes as their profit is already ensured.

Some programmes charge for joining 'higher' levels. Again I would think hard about this. If you are a good seller, they should pay you, not the other way around.

There are many ways of setting up your ecommerce website. You can use the standard templates offered by many Internet Service Providers, you could design it yourself or have it designed for you by a professional company.

The one thing you must ensure is that you have the appropriate shopping cart to deal with drop shipping. These range from free software like PayPal and Google to things with bells and whistles all over. Research and find the one that is right for you. The website  has a great page reviewing such software and there are many such sites around.

Ever Onwards and Upwards