IM with a full time job, family, and kids...is it possible to make good money?

Well said JaRyCu i agree

Well said Jary. I am married, I have 3 kids, I spent the last few years in college and working AND doing IM and I wont lie.. I was doing too much. You have the advantage to work hard now, and start making an income before you get married. There will never be a point where you do "nothing" but you can get to a place where you can maintain with less time and give yourself hours.

You need to remember though that IM or a JOB it can be easy to get wrapped up working too much. You need to give yourself hours and stick to them like.. Mon-Fri 9am-5pm is uninterrupted work time with a lunch break and then spend evenings and weekends relaxing. Or if you work better on weekends give yourself hours those days. To avoid burnout you NEED to give yourself breaks to relax and spend time with your lady.

J brings up some good points above and if I may add I think it is MORE than possible to make very good money with IM. I have actually been in both positions - I work full time IM now with my own limited company but started off doing IM part time while working for someone else.

The hard part is working out whether you have the skills to be successful in IM and that is only found out through trial and error.

The qualities needed to be successful self employed in IM are far different to a 9 to 5 and in my experience I have still not found an "internet lifestyle" where I can work 2 hours a day.

Yes there are times when I can take time off and no one can tell me to work overtime etc... but most of the time I work 12 hour days.

The beauty of it is I enjoy what I do - for me the great thing with IM is that you are constantly creating something from nothing.

There is also NEVER been a time when I can throw my hands up and say "Yes, I have made it!"

IM has enabled me to buy my own house, a decent car and lots of other toys but it is HARD work with long hours!

Give it a bash, give it 100% and find out whether it is for you first.

Good Luck!

Chris

You can always carve out the time to do IM even with a wife and kids.

When I first started, I gave up all of my TV time and some sleep time and as things started to take off, I reclaimed some of that time.

Look at how you are spending your time now...I would bet you could temporarily cut back on some time wasters.

It's perfedctly possible to make money online, even with a lot of other commitments. My advice is find a good, hands-on Internet Marketing course for beginners, or a good Mentor, to teach you what you need to know. Good luck

Nearly all of it can be outsourced, so its only as time consuming as you want to make it.

Let me answer that. Yes, it does. As a part-time Help Desk Associate for Content Writing 360°, I am earning a residual income.

Well, yeah, definitely. It's possible, and people do it everyday.

Every day we see people who have been at this for YEARS with no success to speak of, or people who hit it out of the park in their first month. On that same note, there are people putting in a couple hours a day and just KILLING it, and people doing fulltime hours and barely scraping by.

Not having the same commitments of family, bills, kids etc can be an advantage for sure - as long as you're still hungry.

I'm a single mom with 2 kids working online full time... and overtime... and more. It would be impossible to survive with a regular day job here, realistically I could make no more than 300-400 EUR per month and that is hardly enough to support the three of us.

When I first started out, I thought working online means more time left to spend with my kids, housework, garden and maybe even time for myself. I was so wrong, now I spend every minute online and spend much less time with my kids than I ever did with a "real" job. But at least now we are not starving and I can send the kids to all their school trips and buy them school supplies and clothes that they don't have to be ashamed of.

I am always thinking positive and I'm sure that in a year or two I will have more time and need to work less. I will get to travel and buy a house that's our own. I could never do that with any other job, I like being my own boss and I love everything I do. I have never liked any other job I have ever done as much as I'm enjoying learning and writing and IM.

I think that it is possible to be in IM and have a family. It may be tough at first but in a few years time, you never have to miss your child's school play or a basketball game because your boss didn't let you leave your workplace.

It is possible, but you will have much less time for your family. You should be very organized and manage your time, so you have time for everything.

I've worked fulltime in IM for a bit more than 2 years.

Now, the interesting thing is, I have 3 IM oriented businesses running,
Earn a reasonable full-time income, and I only work part time now.

So, I definitely think it's possible to do well.. just takes some direction, focus and perseverance.

Well, I would simply recommend you follow your passion! There are too many people who exist, not ever following their passion (whatever that may be). If you love IM, then go after it, come up with plan that will transition you from your full time job to IM. Just make sure you have time for the most important things that are in your life!

If I had a choice between no money and lots of time, or lots of money with very little time, I'd pick the latter, every bloody day of the week.

I agree. You need someone in your life who will support whatever it is you do.

Whatever you choose to do, just know that the ONLY way you'll be successful at it is through hard work. Sometimes that means being willing to work long hours whenever necessary.

Your last GF is a fool, sorry to say that, because IM is the best place to earn huge with a small effort- once you are on good track, also no need to spend a lot of time. Here, you have freedom of choice, thinking, planning and implementing. Once everything starts running smoothly, you had nothing to do other than monitoring and taking money !!!

I can completely relate to this and know how you feel. I work full time, have two kids under 4, am in school full time and study martial arts 4 times a week. Yet, I still have time to run my business and promote it. Where there is a will there is a way my friend. All you really need is a solid 2 hours of your time to work your business productively each day.

Having a full-time job should be used as motivation to work harder in IM. The better you do at IM, the more time you can spend on it. Hopefully, one day, you can do IM full time. It's all about developing that abundance mentality. Read as many great non-fiction books as you can.

JaRyCu - the guy with all the answers

Internet Marketing isn't for everyone. Yes it's true that it has great rewards in the long run but you have to have the passion to pursue this line of business. I also have a flexible time with my full time job offline, I was actually happy about it. Then my friend was looking for a partner since he's the type of person who has the skills but doesn't want to take all the risk especially when it comes to finances, so I helped him financially and also helped him with marketing stuffs. And then with all the hardwork, (my friend has a family that's why he was afraid to take all the financial risk) but it all paid off and right now we're considering of quitting our jobs and focus more of our IM business.

If you have a full time job, family and kids, you can learn the basics of IM. Just don't jump to IM full time without any job, you will need a source of income.

Now, once you are already earning steadily from IM then you can resign from your work. Again, before you leave your work try to determine if you can support yourself and your family from your online income. If yes, then you can focus on IM even without a full time job.

My advice is that in IM if you try to learn everything your self without anybody showing you the way, can get really hard and discouraging. Am in the exact same position with wife and kids plus a full time job. Best thing to do is a find a mentor who will coach you through all the components that are needed to become a successful marketer.This will save you time,money and frustration and give you a shortcut to success.

I had to sacrifice not seeing my family much in order to get my business where it is today. Necessary sacrifice because now I can provide way more in terms of quality of life. My children and grandchildren won't have to worry about college and I'm only 25.

If your spouse or family doesn't understand that you don't get paid every day right when you start, then your first investment should be an office even a really small one because your family won't take your time spent in front of a computer seriously. Equity is a serious investment if its being spent wisely.

Also, you don't have to be with your kids 24/7 and attend every soccer game and be apart of the PTO to be a good parent. You don't always have to agree with your spouse in order to be a good wife/husband, and you don't always have to answer to them either. Back when I started, my girlfriend literally said "That is stupid, you don't make any money doing this, just come out to dinner with me!" - Little did she know that I was only paying my basic living expenses while I reinvested my income into what is now a business worth over 1.5 million and employs 20 people in 2 countries on two very different continents.

Well, IM allows a huge degree of automation so in theory Yes, you could make money on a part-time basis.

The problem is not time per se, but focus. Sure, once you've figured out IM and you have your sites running and earning, you can probably manage them on a part-time basis... but getting up there will be difficult if you're constantly distracted.

I personally had to go full-time from the very beginning. I'm not sure I would have made it on a part-time basis.

The one thing I REALLY LOVE about working online is that whatever I do empowers me to make money for myself and my family not my employer!

You get what you put into what you do though... so you need to be doing things that will make you money not just surfing the forums :-) - crap... better get back to work :-).

But seriously... I would love to do this fulltime but like most people I have an issue of what do I do for healthcare. I would need to make over $10,000 to feel comfortable quitting my J.O.B. so I can pay for decent health insurance and to make sure I had enough for some dry spells.

I am up to $4000 pretty much every month with my ebooks on amazon and have been adding to my stories every week so that maybe... just maybe I can make my dream happen in the next year or two.

The great thing about creating ebooks are that they are residual in nature... create one and profit from it for years so I have been considering this more as an investment by taking my profits and rolling them back into more stories.

All I can say is... yes you can make real money online once you find something you enjoy doing and stick with it even if it takes years to start making a comfortable living.

TedK

JaRyCu nailed it

BIG time

In internet marketing you can find the thing that are dreamed by all people in this world.
What is that ? That's a freedom.

You choose your own income depends on the hardwork, strategy, willingness, and so forth.
Rather than doing offline job, internet marketing offers you much more flexibility particularly for working time.

If you have satisfied what you have got from your offline job, I am sure that you still don't get freedom. Everytime you work, you are always chased by deadline. Your boss keep pushing and pushing you to do all the task even right away.

Now the choice is in yours. Wanna get freedom or not ?

It's not about being an IMer,, It has everything to do with being an Entrepreneur.

Many non-entreprenuer believe people like that are only chasing a pipe dream. They say you need to get a Real Job. Work for someone and get a steady paycheck.

Unfortunately, when friends and family member doesn't see the fruit of your labor quickly they believe its a waste of time. It's not bad, that is just their mentality and they don't have the hunger of making money like you might have.

This is why you see many successful business people are a total failure when it comes to their personal or family life. ie, Alcoholic, divorce, bad children,, etc. etc.

If you think i'm wrong,, check out a few episodes of Undercover Boss. Most of the CEO's have serious issues.

the key is to create a balance in your work and work on your foundation. I have wrote post about this in my blog if you want more details Top 6 Core Principles to building your own business - Thomas Wooldridge

OP.

It can be difficult but once you get a plan and a schedule set out that you can follow it will become second nature.

All that I focus on is 4 main things:

1. Fiverr
2. YoutTube for free traffic
3. List building with paid traffic and adswaps etc.
4. Product creation

I actually work about 10 hours per day but that is just because I am trying to be the best marketer I can be BUT you could easily do this with 1-2 hours per day 5 days a week.


Fergal

Sorry to hear about your break up but like others said, sounds like it was for the best. I’ve had 5+ girlfriend break ups back when I was young and dumb and now I’m married to a beautiful woman who is my best friend and have a wonderful 1 month old baby girl with that I get to spend all the time with during the day that I desire. (She runs an online wedding business that I created for her that's mostly automated and pays most of our living expenses by itself, - healthcare, cable, gas & electric, car etc.)

You’ve received some great advice on here already and I’m not going to tell you how to be a good father but I can tell you that it’s not only possible, but there are many like me who make a full time career in the broad term know as "IM" and have an awesome and prosperous life. I’ve put in my hard work (I'm in my very early 30's) and I’ve been married for 3 years but if I ever thought my career (whatever that might be) would compromise my relationship with my wife then I’d of quit a long time ago, life is far too short.

It's funny that your post was the first I came across today after lurking for years. Also I think it shows you’re a great person to be thinking ahead about your family (Kudos to you for that!) and I’ll give you a few tips on steps you can take now to be successful as your future self.

Diversify your income – And I don’t mean create 100 idiotic niche sites. You can get a blog going on a topic you love and slowly monetize it, start multiple dropship e-commerce stores to run out of your home, write and sell a series of kindle books, create an “offline” business using your knowledge to help local businesses market themselves. The possibilities are endless. I’ve further invested myself offline by buying investment properties with the money I’ve made in the online world. – You can never be too diversified and now I also have a wife and a child to motivate me to do so as well.

Treat your IM career like a real business – Don’t do anything to any of your websites that you wouldn’t do to a real business. Would you spin articles to make them unreadable and put them in the local paper to advertise your business? Would you try to trick people into coming into your restaurant when you know the food sucks? Create something you’re proud of and you’ll be more excited to work on it and grow it in the future.

Work smarter, not harder – You’ll see people on here chasing their tails all day doing stupid stuff suggested by stupid people and setting themselves up for failure after failure. I can write one great post that performs better than 100 of those 500 word outsourced posts because I care about who is reading it and truly want to help them better their lives through my words whether it’s a product review or business motivation. Quality over quantity wins the race in any business.

Lay your head on the pillow at night feeling proud of the work you did – Does Stephen King outsource his books to be written by some random guy in china? No, and people can tell that when they read his books which is why he’s a raging success. Did Timothy Ferriss buy into a backlinking program to make his book “The Four Hour Work Week” a raging success? He probably doesn’t even know what a backlink is. He got an idea, researched the hell out of it and wrote a fantastic book based off his real life experience.

I’ve met many business owners over the years and I can tell you that the way they conduct themselves in their business affairs trickles over to the way they act in their relationships. Get into some good habits now and you’ll be successful as both a future husband & father and a financial provider for your family. When you meet your future wife don't you want to be proud to tell her and her family what you do for a living? This is going to sound strange to many but if you keep at it and give all you have to offer to people you’ll eventually have your own “holy crap, I get it!” moment and you’ll find the wealth starts coming to you instead of you having to chase after it.

I'm at the point now where things are on autopilot and I'm semi-retired but I'm addicted to business and love it so I keep creating. I simply make sure that whatever I create can be put on autopilot and now I'm working on a new diversification course, books and blog to teach others what I've learned in business (not just IM) along with my life experience to get to the point where I'm at today. My goal is to bring back some good old fashioned integrity to the IM world - hopefully more will join the crusade so we can get rid of the collective dirty name this business has and all the misleading advice that comes with it.

Get up, dust yourself off, and get to work!

- Nathaniel

Totally agree with JaRyCu post

I would quit the JOB and go Full Time with IM. Much more freedom and imagine the time you spend at the JOB, if you applied to IM, it would be money...so to speak...

It's all about managing your time.

Use the Pomodoro Method or something else. Whatever.

If you're not disciplined enough you need a time management system to keep you honest with your time. That way you can have free time once you get done with your work.

It's hard for most because their lives are usually scheduled for them in terms of work, at least. You have to be your own boss when it comes to IM.

Figure it out!

Being able to balance between job, IM and family is a tough task.
Try your best to not over do one and invite trouble from the other.

Without a plan and several unique ideas your just a lead on this forum destined for failure.

Everyone has 24 hours a day, to me it depends how you manage your time. A lot of people start up as part-timer, spending like 2-3 hours a day and still earn more than their full time job. I find that inspiring and I always tell myself, if they can do it then I can do it too!

All the best!

It is definitely possible because if other people can do it, why not me.

Good luck to all of use who are starting our online venture.

The first step is to go full-time and never think IM is not a real job, because it is and you need to be focused and creative all day long. If you will think IM is just an easy job that needs few hours of work you will not get far, you have to work hard and doing it part-time will not be enough or it might if you have good ideas.

With family and kids you just need to have a working space where you can work and not think of other things at the same time.