So I've gotten myself into a bit of a mess....

I know where you're coming from, I've been there once upon a time.

Also, just a warning, you're probably going to get a lot of "tough love" coming in this thread, so be prepared.

But anyway, what I would first do is make sure you are right emotionally. Because the last thing you want to do is make serious decisions when emotions are involved.

Take some time to relax, exercise, meditate, spend some time with your family, ... and ... breathe... seriously.

I wish I could give you a full fledged game plan, but I'm in no position to do so, and the last thing I would ever want to do is steer someone in the wrong direction.

But the best advice I can give you based off your current situation, is to make rational decisions away from emotion. I've made a few TERRIBLE decisions a long time ago from the base of negative emotions, and myself and my family are still paying for it.

Calm down, think smart, act smart, and stay patient, and then everything will become clearer (and there will be some rough patches), but you'll at least have the drive to keep going.

By the way, you have skill sets that many Warriors and other Internet Marketers can certainly use, so if you have talent, then you have something you can bring to the table. Perhaps right here in the Warrior Forum?

I wish you the best of success.

One option would be to build sites for businesses. Maybe choose a specific type of websites, such as websites for restaurants, put up a good demo site with a bunch of examples.

It's possible to get other people to cold-call businesses (from Fiverr, UpWork or whatever), and finding suitable businesses with no website is easy enough (look on Yelp or Manta etc. for listings with no website, check Google pages 1 and 2, for any website, and you'll find plenty that don't have one). I'll give you a good sales-script that I found here years ago, if you like (email me).

Or as an alternative, I have a different way of of finding businesses in a particular area, who actually WANT to communicate with you about getting a website made. (email me if you're interested in that).

Or sell websites on one of the website-selling places . . . I think there's one on this forum if you have a look, or Flippa. Look at what's selling for a decent profit and do something similar.

Or get work on one of the outsource sites, such as UpWork. There you'd be competing with designers in 3rd world countries who will work for small money, so you need to offer something they can't do, like better quality, better service or something. Do a few jobs for little money first, to get good feedback, then you can charge what others are charging.

Or find a business selling some kind of service to other businesses, but not web-design, an offer them commission on any web-design work they can get you.

Or all of the above

Hope that helps.

Chris

That sucks that you are getting overwhelmed with your current job situation. But take it as motivation to get your mind going and your ideas flowing.

If you are a good web designer you can make a lot of good money online on your own.

I'm making okay money online by offering simple WordPress Gigs. If you have more skills and more experience with Web Developing - then you have all the advantage to succeed here.

You can also start putting together your own team of web designers and developers. There is a huge demand for website building. Trust me, I turn down a lot of clients online who want very advanced web designing. I only work with the WordPress Platform.

I see there is an abundance in clients for web designing and building.

At the same time you can also start building your own sites for passive income. I just wanted to point out the big opportunity you have to make a lot of money on your own as a web designer.

I'm sure you know the prices you can charge for these services. So, instead of working for the company of someone else, why not start your own?

There is enough for everyone here.

And actually, the demands are growing rapidly. The progress of technology and the internet marketing business model is the one to blame for such growth on this demand.

I see that you are looking for a "quick return" online and that mindset already can get in your way to get far. Don't think for quick turnarounds. A lot of success takes a lot of action and time.

And I am very sure you want a lot of success and not just a one hit wonder, right?

But to keep it real with you here, one of the fastest ways you can make money online is with your web designing skills. Hands down.

Learn how to market yourself online and start getting clients. You can also start outsourcing some of the work as your client base grows. Grow your clients base, raise the quality of your work so you can raise your prices - and ultimately you can afford to pay others to do most of the work. This way you can start to relax a little bit more and enjoy life with your kiddos more often.

Start with your passion and your skills. I'm telling you, this is something you can definitely make happen in the next few months (if you really really wanted to).

Having good money coming in from this, you can start building your own sites, like a blog for instance. And start building Organic Traffic to it, monetize that traffic, build an email list, maybe offer your services and get more clients that way.

A blog that gets organic traffic and captures leads on autopilot for you (possible clients/customers) - is one of the best assets you can own online.

At this point you can start earning while you sleep.

This is internet marketing / making money online 101 - basically. LOL

I hope this helps!

Hang in there!

You will make things happen. You got skills, and you know it

Cheers!

Hi, I was in a similar situation many moons ago.

I started setting up my business after hours and taking on a few client projects here and there and doing them after hours. It wasn't easy, I had to be very planned and I had to be very patient.

There is no quick fix and you may need to work two jobs while you get this set up. I would recommend setting up a bit of a plan and working towards it with a focus. If you quit too quickly it will make it challenging.

I left my job after securing a client who coulud basically cover my rent each week, from then on my business grew from strength to strength and now I have a few people working for me. It was not quick and it was not easy, but if you have drive and you do it properly you will get there.

May I suggest you have a frank and open conversation with your employer to ensure they aware of your goals and that you feel overwhelmed, they might be able to help out or provide some more support as well.

Good luck.

You all are awesome I appreciate the encouragement very very much !!!

I've got to get a game plan nailed down, that's what I'm going to start on today.

Based solely on this post, I'm guessing that writing, editing and proofreading gigs are off the table.

From your later post, it sounds like you're on the right track. I'll just echo the advice to make your decision with your head, not your heart or your gut.

Heres another thing I was thinking about, and I hate to slip my ideas out- BUT I feel as though everyone here is in it to win it and if they decide to do what I want to do and profit, thats bad ass

Anyway this is my idea -
Creating viral facebook pages, You know the types, Funny pages, Fan pages etc etc.
Then creating Tee-spring(or something similar) campaigns to go with them ( I LOVE art and graphic design partially what got me interested in web design way back when )

I often suggest that people begin their online career from a point of their own strengths and experience. One easy way to approach it is to make a list (an inventory) of your personal strengths. List your education, your training, your hobbies, your skill sets, your work experience, your abilities, your passions, things you enjoy doing, and things others would say you do very well.

By focusing on these areas, you will be starting your new career already knowing a good deal about the subject of your business. You may already be an expert in something (like web design) or at least experienced enough that you can help and teach others about the subject.

Do some simple online market research to validate that the niche you're going to enter already has a pool of willing buyers. Your research will help you to see what problems in the niche you might help others solve.

Selling your products or service online is much simpler and more profitable when you are responding to market demand.

The very best to you,

Steve

Don't listen to the people telling you that you'll make lots of money on your own as a web designer. That's unlikely at best.

I'm not saying you can't make a decent living on your own, but consider two facts:

1. Building up a clientele takes time. And the best jobs come from referrals, not from putting up a website about yourself and not from creating a profile on Freelancer or Upwork.
2. You'll be competing with bargain-basement priced designers all around the world. So unless you can position yourself to offer something that they cannot and that your clients actually want, you're going to have a hard time competing.

That said, there are certainly designers who do quite well for themselves by striking it out on their own. But to do that, they usually do what most independent consultants do: they work for someone else for a while, build up a reputation and then take a bunch of clients who already know them and like their work when they leave their jobs.

My first advice is to talk to your boss. Tell her or him that you enjoy working there (assuming you do), that you think you've been making a great effort to make the company a success given its recent changes, and then tell him what you said here: that you're feeling overworked; that you're not getting to spend enough time on the work that not only would be beneficial to your career, but also to the company. Then say what you want. Do you want more money? Do you want less administrative tasks and more time for development? Less work in general? Whatever it is, give your pitch see what your boss says and negotiate.

If you're already doing good work, the worst that will likely happen is you'll get a "no". But at the very least it'll give you a chance to practice your sales pitch, which will be good practice in case you do try to strike it on your own.

Good luck!

When I worked in IT I would find things I could do while I was at work. I mean, no one in an office really understands what IT people do all day so I ran a few web servers, they were non the wiser. So long as I looked busy they left me alone but I was building my own business on their time. It does help if you can sit somewhere where people can't see your screen but there are always ways around this.

I also used to work with an IT technician who traded forex and shares while at work.

The trick is though not to let your job related duties fall behind or people will start asking questions.

For now: stick to your strengths.

You have a mountain to climb.

It looks like this:

• On the way up the mountain: everything you need to know and do in order to work from home in IM.
• At the summit: a diverse portfolio of secure and growing IM ventures and the knowledge to expand upon them.

You need to keep in mind what you want:

• You want out of the 9 to 5.
• You want to provide even more for your family.
• You want to work from home.
• You want to keep working from home.

The last item is the most important. Tell you why: I could give you a working method right now (I could give you thousands) but you must keep in mind obsolescence. Methods die. When you work from home, no boss cutting your checks every month, the last thing you want is to rely on a single method, lose that method, and find yourself unable to pay the bills.

You bring up some very good ideas: viral marketing, viral websites, Tee Spring. They're all good. Trouble is, they're also very complex for the newcomer. Hundreds, often thousands of moving parts, and before you embark on those ventures you need to be aware of those parts. The danger is this: devoting your evenings and weekends to a venture, only to be doing it wrong.

Wasted time. Wasted effort. Wasted money.

Which brings me back to my initial advice:

What you need:

• You need out of the 9 to 5, so that you have more time for IM.
• You need a stable out, because you'll no longer have those 9 to 5 checks.
• You need the kind of stable out that will afford you time for IM.
• You need to use that time to study IM, experiment, and then take the right kind of action.
• You need to work on one IM venture after another, outside of the work that got you out of the 9 to 5, with a view to phasing out the original IM work in favour of something (or some things) better.

In your shoes, let me tell you what I'd do.

I'd recognize that WF has thousands of IM newbies buying thousands of products and services and that most of these newbies require at least one fundamental, tangible item: a website. But not just any old website. A professional website. The mistake most of those newbies will make is to throw together something on Blogger or, often worse, hurl up a free Wordpress theme and trick it out on their own paid hosting. A mistake? Yes, a mistake. It takes a professional website (generally speaking) to optimize for conversions and traffic and asset growth.

You can give it to them.

• Setup a design business with IM newbies as your target audience.
• For traffic: WSOs, WF sig, WF classifieds, JVs.
• Offer a diverse portfolio: different types of website design, social branding, everything you're good at.
• Collect and look after your audience by encouraging social following and newsletter subscriptions.
• Enhance your perceived authority with a blog on your design website.
• Not only grow your audience, but - and this is far more important - grow your regular customers.

The above is a license to print money, but it gets better. A sole web designer can only earn so much. And it's a hard job, as you know. What you'll want to do, therefore, is evolve the business model.

• Secure reliable and capable virtual workers and phase out your own hands-on participation by outsourcing work to them, putting the right designers on the right jobs.
• Given the free time, set to work on building products that can generate you ROI without being hands-on each day: eBooks, Kindle eBooks and books, Wordpress themes, Wordpress plugins, information syndicated and monetized with affiliate offers.

You'll then be in a safe position. Whilst doing the above, you will have been learning different aspects of IM, hopefully taking action too in experimental capacities, and now will be the time to take serious action in well researched, well planned IM ventures. And it could be any number of models (you bring up some great ones). Point is, you're in a situation at this point where you can safely climb the IM mountain standing before you. And do so without tripping up, and falling on your butt - or worse, falling back down the mountain, and right through the door of that 9 to 5 job.

- Tom

We're in the same boat partner....Except you have Web Design going for you. You can design websites for people on Fiverr. You can register to teach people how to do web design on Udemy that might bring you closer to that $6500. The first thing you should do is not make decisions in a riled up mood. Simmer down a bit so you can think clearly then read the suggestions on your thread, but nothing good ever comes from making emotionally decisions. Believe me.

I don't know how much money you are making but I'll tell you this...I've made over $2k on fiverr doing email campaigns for others in about 1 month and the only reason I do it, is to build up my authority in that niche for my upcoming product, well...and of course I'm helping people in the process, so that's great.

The point I'm making here is maybe you should try a site like fiverr or one similar where that all you will do is website design. And you make your own hours and prices.

I'm sure it would be better then what you are doing now

You are a web designer- why don't you start doing some outsourcing stuffs for clients on upwork or freelancer. You can even arbitrage with some craigslist clients and so on. That way you can accumulate some cash in quick time to do something better.

So, if you all are still out there listening.

I wanted to add to this that I have great skill in SEO and great software to go along with it, so a lot of the usual foot work that needs to be done for SEO is done, I just have to implement it.

Maybe that is a service I can offer, in order to make some money.

If I were market to Warrior forum newbies, (re web designing for them) Where would I start? are there specific places and rules for this?

Ive obviously been sitting back and thinking , and again, appreciate the wisdom and advice SO much!!!!!!!!

Any MLM that requires that level of upfront investment in training and inventory is not something to risk your future upon unless you can prove it is a valid market through testing before investing. Buying a franchise and proven plans have their benefits, but buying inventory to sell is not how entrepreneurs start nor grow ecommerce businesses.

Agree. The way you start and grow product sales is: Learn how to test potential products and how buy advertising. When you find a product you think is a good idea, source it to determine possible profit. If you find a source that will enable you to get the needed inventory at a low enough cost to profit, then go to Walmart or somewhere else and buy a half dozen at full retail and try selling those as a (proof of concept) test.

That type of testing tells you how much to buy and what cash flow to expect (and this testing works for sales of services, also). Data is what provides safety for your future - know how well your offers sell before you invest in inventory. Do not buy 6k worth of anything just because it seems like a great idea.

Regarding the MLM: That is a specialty niche you could support with your website and SEO skills. Build yourself a sales site directed at that niche, a couple sample sites, then teach them people what they need for a Lularoe (or other MLM) business website. You could develop and support websites for MLM, be the go-to guy for those company's online services, and even host their sites as a hosting reseller to generate residual income. I'll bet you that once you make that extra $6500, you won't spend it buying some other company's product or service ideas

Sell your service in :
1. Fiverr
2. Craigslist
3. Wariorforum Classified ads
Or make a package and sell it as WSO

If you're skilled at web design then you are way ahead of a lot of people.

But as some have already indicated, you will be just another drop of water in a sea of competition. I get spammed pretty much every day by web designers looking to be hired. I never reply to a single one of them.

I would recommend that you use your skills to do affiliate marketing instead. I wish I was very skilled at design, and my web design skills suck, but I sill won't hire anyone to do it any time soon, especially not from one of those emails. And if I ever did, I would be very picky who I hired if at all.

But if you really want to be paid to do web design itself, then I would also recommend finding another job, not trying to compete with the vast multitude of those who are on their own. Something to be said for a regular paycheck especially if you are in a decent work environment if you can find one.

It does not matter what skills you have. Making money online is a process that takes time to learn and cultivate. I once had a job that I didn't enjoy. But I had to learn how to focus on the good aspects and have gratitude for that job (that I didn't like).

There is a lesson to be learned from every adverse situation.

And if you learn it, a better job will show up for you.

I'm going to give you advice on how to handle your current job, instead of getting money.

A friend of mine recently started a job working from 4am to 1pm. She has a list of things she needs to do on that job that would realistically require three people to do them. She showed me the list while she was crying. Why was she crying? Because she was stressed out and the list would be impossible for any one person to do.

I told her the same thing I am telling you: you are only one person. You can only do the job of one person. So work at your own pace, and do what you can do.

If they want you to work like three people they need to hire two more people to help you. Do not stress yourself out over a job that does not care about you. My cousin once told me "This is just a job. When I'm here, I do my job. When I go home, I forget about my job until I have to go back. My job does not run my life. It is just an unfortunate part of it."

Compartmentalize. Put your job in its place. Also, when you get home from your job, take at least 20 minutes to yourself to unwind. You will not be able to think straight or save money if you are constantly in a state of stress. It's as important to learn how to manage stress as it is to learn how to make and save up money on the side so that you can get your side business going. Once you learn how to do that, the ideas for making money will come, and you'll be able to execute them successfully.

While this is true for some broke people, many of us do it ourselves because we want it done right.

Here's a banner I made:


From idea to completion was about 10 minutes. It would take longer than that just to order from someone else.

Brent,
you need to work on that Banner or pay somebody to do it because I clicked on it and it was a dead
link

If you've noticed the IMers, and especially MLM types, don't want to pay for anything, there's a simple answer. Find a group of people who are willing to pay for design services and show them how you can help them get what they want.

A portfolio of pretty screenshots probably won't do it. Business people who want to succeed are more interested in results than pretty screens. That's where many designers fall short - they fixate on aesthetics rather than results.

Way back when, there was a TV ad about two design companies. One talked about things like page speed, conversions, security. The other had a flaming logo. Guess which one had the means to pay for the ads...

Maybe you could take the same path as the haircut place that had two competitors. The first advertised $5 haircuts. The second matched that, with a free shampoo. The third invested in a big sign and ads that all read "we fix $5 haircuts."

i know how you feel...

i use to drop ship diaper cakes...

it was full on customer service hell.

i fixed it, by taking the same traffic (baby shower traffic) and directing it to a printable product in the same niche....