The scent from the lemon and orange trees fill the early morning air. The sky is clear blue.
A gentle breeze comes drifting in from the sea, clean and refreshing.
The laptop computer on the table in front of you hums quietly into life. You tap the keys to access your website to find out how much money you made overnight whilst you slept.
For you it’s just another day in the office.
Is such a scenario really possible?
Is such an opportunity available to ordinary people, or is online business still the preserve of the geeky few?
Today, earning a living and building a lifestyle around an internet-based business is open to everyone. The only barrier is your willingness to give it a go. Indeed, there has never has been a better time to set up an online business than today ... and there probably never will be a better time in the future.
The internet continues to experience rapid growth.
The global audience is huge, and just about any specialist subject can find a large enough following to become profitable. The technology is reliable and the software is so simple that anyone can master it. Yet the competition in most areas is still low, giving you a great chance to succeed.
Hundreds of thousands of people around the world are building their lifestyles around running their own profitable website. They’re not geeks or serial entrepreneurs. They’re not experienced publishers or computer whiz kids. They’re ordinary people, like you and me, who are passionate about what they write about.
You can write about your hobby, which could be anything from collecting fine wines to collecting Hornby trains; from hang gliding to building garden ponds. You can call upon your past business expertise and write a website about running a business (‘Running a Successful Restaurant’) or create a specialist site about your industry (‘Beer Distribution Bulletin’). Or you could call upon your experience to find your perfect subject, how to raise money for small charities, retiring to Spain or making money on eBay.
Anyone, anywhere in the world, with just a computer and internet connection, can run a profitable website based on a subject they love.
How Can You Start a Website About a Hobby?
I’ll illustrate with an example.
Let’s say that you spent many years researching moving to Spain.
You spoke to lawyers and bankers, accountants and tax advisors. You travelled up and down the coast visiting different towns and cities. You quizzed estate agents and developers.
Finally, you chose where you wanted to live.
You then faced all the challenges of relocating to Spain, including buying a house, dealing with the local authorities, setting up a bank account, hiring a gardener, finding a school for the kids ... and thousands of other little hurdles.
Even now that you’re settled in, you still regularly learn new things about living in Spain and have to deal with issues you hadn’t encountered before. Luckily, you have a network of friends and contacts you can call upon for help.
If you sat down and thought about it, you would realise that you are an expert on moving to and living in Spain. Your knowledge and experience is hugely valuable to anyone else thinking about doing what you have already done.
You have the knowledge to run a website to help people wishing to relocate to Spain and then help them once they have made the move. Think back to when you did, and whether you would have benefited from this type of advice.
You could write articles about:
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Finding a house
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Dealing with estate agents
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Getting a mortgage
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Buying furniture
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Having a phone installed
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Building a swimming pool
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And much more ...
There are hundreds of topics you could cover that would be useful to people following in your footsteps.
Take time to think about subjects you are really interested in and how your knowledge could benefit others.
How Do You Make Money?
Once you have a loyal audience of regular visitors to your website, making money is the easy bit.
You can generate revenue from advertising, affiliate marketing, subscriptions and ecommerce. Or you can use the website to promote an offline business or event.
On a website about moving to Spain, you can place adverts from dozens of different companies who want to target your visitors, including banks, mortgage brokers, estate agents, lawyers, removal companies, etc. Or if you don’t want to sell ads yourself, you can automate your advertising for free with Google Adsense or a similar advertising programme.
You can strike affiliate deals with local companies where you get paid for leads and introductions that you source via your site. Or you can automate your affiliate program by choosing affiliates from sites such as Commission Junction .
You can create a members-only part of the site to develop a community of people moving to Spain or for expats who are already living there. The community could share knowledge and information, arrange social events and offer discounts to its members in exchange for an annual membership fee.
Your site can sell guides to moving to Spain, checklists to make the relocation process easier, DVDs about individual areas and much more. A simple shop on your site can quickly grow to generate significant income.
You can use the site to sell seminars about moving to Spain. I can think of no better way to learn about the risks and rewards of moving to Spain than listening to people who have already done it.
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Everyone has knowledge that is valuable to someone.
An experienced parent can help new parents. A carer who has nursed a terminally ill person can help other people who have found themselves in a similar position. A successful entrepreneur can help people setting up their first business. An expert on fly-fishing can share his knowledge with fellow experts or people taking up the sport for the first time. And so on.
How Easy is it To Set Up a Website?
For non-technical people, the internet can be a very confusing place.
Indeed, recent research found that 76% of people considering setting up an online business gave up after looking into the complexities of building their website. The technical challenges scared them off before they even got started.
What a waste of their talent!
It was for this reason that SubHub was established in 2005.
The company provides a complete service for people wanting to start and run their own specialist information website. The service is simple for beginners to learn and SubHub continues to manage all the technical side of your website so you never have to worry about hosting, bandwidth, maintenance, upgrades and backup.
They’re all taken care of for you.
If you can use Microsoft Word and send an email, you can run a SubHub website.
The service enables you to generate money from advertising, affiliate marketing, subscriptions, an online shop or by promoting offline events.
You just have to add your passion and expertise.
Next Steps?
Spend time reading the many articles on the SubHub website that cover everything from choosing a subject to marketing your site to your target audience.
Hopefully, this will make you excited and curious enough to want to find out more.
To contact us to learn more:
For both US and UK offices email: [email protected]
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