In our traumatic age we need to think about how to protect ourselves from natural and economic disasters. Either of those situations can eliminate our income at least temporarily. The Japanese auto workers are out for months while they wait for the automobile factories to re rebuild from the ground up. Many people are currently living in shelters across our globe while they wait to find new housing. But there are some few who are able to still work wherever they are as long as they can operate a computer and have Internet access. But they first learned to work from home. Once they had done that, they were able to take their work with them because all they needed was that Internet access.

I believe that part of preparedness is thinking not only of physical protection from a natural disaster. Some few in the areas that have been getting clobbered by tornadoes have thought about protection. One man had completed his home and he had a safe room as protection from a tornado. One family had an old WWII (cold war) shelter where they hid. Such shelters are fairly common in farm country, a storm shelter, but not in the urban areas. The other part is protecting ourselves from a temporary loss of income which can be achieved if we learn how to work from home.

There are a number of ways to provide income to our families by working at home. However, a haphazard approach will not give us success. If you own a storefront business or have worked in such a business, you know something about that business. The same is true if you are in manufacturing or in any other type of business. Many home businesses are based on the Internet. Some have extended the scope of their businesses by moving to the Internet. They provide both services and products and they know how to work from home in many cases. Unfortunately there are many so-called gurus that will tell you that running an Internet business from your home is as easy and ABC and that you can be up in running in a few hours with their help. Let me tell you that these folks are not looking after your interest, they are looking into your pockets to see how much money they can extract. Many have lost thousands of dollars dealing with gurus. Lessons are learned but you will pay dearly for them. Here are some suggestions if you are thinking about starting a home business to supplement your income or to provide emergency income if a disaster happens:

1. Realize that you need to apply logical business practices to any business, online or off-line. Taking a lackluster approach will end in failure.

2. Apply your experience, education, and acquired knowledge to your home business. It will give you an edge. Some people create original products at home suitable to sell on the Internet or locally. Some end up selling other people's products on and off the Internet. But your knowledge will give you an edge in choosing and selling products or services. If you are an accountant, you can work from home. If you have secretarial skills, you can work from your home. Your knowledge is a great asset no mater how limited it may seem to you.

3. Do only those things for which you have a passion, at least at the beginning of your home business. More than one fly fisherman has build a good business making fishing flies or lures in his basement and selling them to others. A good fly can be duplicated in a factory, local or foreign, patented, and sold by the thousands. There are many such examples I could give but you probably got the point.

4. Selling on the Internet requires relevancy. This is what that means. If you have a product or service that you want to sell, then you will all most always be creating a web site. You may be writing article like this one to drive people to your site. You will have to think about your market, the people you want to read your article and visit your website. You must learn the keywords using a keyword tool, like Google's external keyword tool, to see what folks are looking for. Once you put popular keywords in your article and in the great information you are going to give them on our website, you will be able to warm your readers up enough to make a purchase. This is called pre-selling and is a major function of online marketing. If you are selling other people's product as an affiliate, then place your affiliate link on your website but do not try to sell the product there. Hope they will click on the vendor's link.

The last long-winded paragraph was to emphasize relevancy in all that you do. You will have many trials as you learn to work from home but they an be overcome by knowledge and learning. Yes, you need to learn more to succeed if you are going on the Internet. Your customers don't know or trust you until you work with them by providing information to them on your website, in your articles, or by email. Once you know them and they know you, they will be susceptible to your message no matter how you deliver it.

Don't be bashful about your endeavors. Tell others that can help you what you want to achieve. Most people are kind and helpful. And realize that others in your area have successful online businesses. I have neighbor who sells lotions made with her home-grown lavender locally and also sell about one hundred thousands dollars of product each year on the Internet.

If you can find a money-making community such as a forum, you can not only learn your trade but possibly gain customers from this community. I belong to the premier training community and am now in my fourth year there. I wouldn't leave that community because they provide services and training to whenever I need it. So associations are important if you want to learn to work at home.

Fly Old Glory!