Retire Early!

If you clicked on this page, you must be interested in financial freedom yourself.  Who isn't?  Therefore, this page describes how we'll be "living the dream" of financial freedom and giving you some ideas on how you can do the same. 

We knew at any early age the importance of saving and living a frugal lifestyle in order not to work our lives away.  (We'll be linking to a future post about what we did).  It seems like common sense to save and be frugal, but most people just don't do it! That decision and lifestyle choice is what will enable us to retire early and go cruising in our 40's.  If you want financial freedom, you've got to save and be frugal!

After selling our house and paying off our rentals (after our recent landlord hell we're now considering selling these rentals), we'll have a little monthly income from the rentals to live off of while cruising.  However, it's not going to be a lot so we will supplement that income with money made from our own web sites.  After all, the internet is growing constantly and it can only get better!  Let me take this opportunity to note that we will supplement our income with our web sites.  We're not claiming to retire strictly from our sites, although we're sure some people do achieve that amount of success. We're just getting started.

In addition to saving and living a frugal lifestyle (do you get it?), here's how to make money with a web site? 

Create a Site based on something you really enjoy or have a lot of knowledge about.  Your site needs to have good content and be sincere.  How do you create a great site that will drive a lot of traffic and therefore income?  We recommend SiteSell!  This product helps you create the site, get the traffic, and provides support.  We know several people that are using this product with great results.  We wish we would have known about this before starting our own site!

Become an Affiliate!

After you've created your site, you want to think of products you really like or that you've heard great things about and see if those products offer an "affiliate" program. Becoming an affiliate means that you place an ad or a link on your web site about the product, and whenever a viewer clicks on it and makes a purchase, you will receive a small percentage of that purchase. The buyer WILL NOT PAY ANY MORE than if they went to the company's site, and you'll receive payment from the company for making the sale. You can find a lot of products/affiliate programs at Commission Junction.  This makes it easy, as you sign up with Commission Junction, choose from hundreds of companies, then apply to those of your liking.

If you want a variety of products and only one affiliate account, Amazon.com is a great choice!  From books to electronics to clothing ... there's all kinds of items you can offer on your site through this one affiliate program.

Products that we highly recommend and are affiliates of are as follows and in no particular order, as the list will continue to grow over time.  By the way, if any of these products are to your liking please consider purchasing them here.  We'll make a little profit, and you'll be helping us out.  Just click and buy!

                                                   

   

                                                                                                

As you see, there are plenty of companies that offer an affiliate program!  When choosing your products, choose those that you really believe in and that complement the material in your site. You want your site to be sincere and to promote good products that your readers may be interested in.

Recruit Others: When you've done all that and want to go one step further, you can also recruit readers into becoming an affiliate for certain companies that will then reimburse you for the new recruit.  This concept is called a "2 Tier Affiliate" program.  Not all companies provide this.  In fact, the companies above do not except except for one, SiteSell!  If you check out the link below and decide to become an affiliate, you'll be helping us out as well.  See how it works?!



We're researching other 2 Tier programs, but until we're comfortable with what they provide we do not want to post them.  Remember what we said about knowing your product?  So, at this time we only have one that we recommend.

In our opinion, the 2 Tier Affiliate program of SiteSell! Affiliate is probably one of the best. SiteSell! not only has a great affiliate program, but they have a fantastic product - web site design and creation.

Google Ads:  You've probably noticed on almost any site you view the little text and/or picture ads placed by Google.  When a person clicks on the ad, the site owner is paid a few cents .. whether or not a sale is made.  We have these ads on our page, and we're talking pennies here.  However, it all ads up so feel free to click all you want! =)

Have a Donate Button: Through PayPal, we have a "Donate" button.  This allows readers to donate whatever they like, and prevents the awkward interaction of, "You shouldn't have"!  We haven't received many donations, but a couple were from people we actually know and that live nearby.  We really don't think they would have donated to us in person, but the button made it easy.  Keeping up a web site takes a lot of time and dedication, so some readers look at the donation as a subscription and are happy to donate.

We hope that this information will bring you the success that it is bringing to us and you will be able to enjoy financial freedom. Now, we're not saying that you're gonna get rich from this so don't go quit your job! Making money on the internet not only takes a lot of motivation, but a lot of patience. In our opinion, most good things don't come easy, and you've got to work (and wait) for it. However, the internet is full of opportunity, you just have to grab it! Good luck and best wishes!