In my last article I explained that I had decided to seek an alternative income to replace the work I was currently doing. I needed something that I could do from anywhere. That narrowed it down to using the internet.

I started looking at the alternatives and wow there was a myriad of them. I had no clue what to do but in my research I had come across some interesting blogs. The blogs peaked my interest. Most of what I read and followed was ordinary people talking about things that really interested them.

I decided I wanted to try blogging but where to start. I started with a blog about electrical work and electrical tools. Well it interested me but very few others. Next I tried a fishing blog. I offered fishing reports, marine weather reports, posted pictures and just talked in general about my love of fishing

Slowly I started to gain a following. Modest at first but eventually I had forty to fifty people a day following my fishing blog. The best part of it was I really enjoyed it. Now the question was how do I profit from this following?

I had heard a lot about social media but didn’t know much about how to apply it to what I wanted to do. Fortunately I heard of a class sponsered by the local Chamber of Commerece. It was just what I needed.

The course covered Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. That was all I needed to get started so I enrolled in the class. It was taught by an energetic young man who was really into social media which in turn got me fired up.

At the completion of the class I hired him to help me build a fan page. He developed an avatar to go with my website name and soon I had a fan page up and running. Now all I needed was to move from a blog to a website that I could set up to do affiliate marketing.

The young man that developed my fan page introduced me to another young man who is a successful affiliate marketer. He developed my website at a very reasonable cost and soon it was up and running.

To be honest it has been slow going. A lot of people didn’t follow me from the blog to the website. There is not a lot to report about local fishing on Lake Erie in the winter time. I need to overcome that before next winter. Also I have been on vacation for two months out of the last four and I was not sufficiently prepared to work my site from the road. so that was my bad. However I will persevere. I know it can be done because a lot of other people are doing it.

In my next article I will discuss what I am doing to get back in the game.