So what is this journey all about?
I am Terry Jenkins, a father of 4 grown-up children, now living with my partner and her teenage son, in the north-east of England.
I am a full-time carer for my partner, Andie, and at the time of starting this journey (September 2020), living off government benefits.
I am on benefits because I have to care for Andie throughout the day, which means I don’t have the time to have a job.
Having previously run a myriad of self-employed ventures and having 25 years of experience in the IT industry (plus I have also lectured in IT for a brief period in the not-so-distant past), being on benefits doesn’t come easy to me.
The Journey Begins
So having cared for Andie for a couple of years now, I feel the time is right for me to venture back into the world of self-employment and see if I can ease the government of the burden of looking after us.
Now, some days, time isn’t always easy to find if Andie is having a rough time of it. Her condition means I get to do most of the stuff around the house, which limits my available time.
Nevertheless, I do have time across the day and find myself on the computer a lot (old habits die hard), especially in the afternoons and evenings.
So I got to thinking that maybe I could start earning some cash, as I do detest being on benefits. I don’t have any problem with people who are on benefits, but I have worked all my life and am not one for just sitting around and relaxing. If you see me on the beach, I’m the one typing on the laptop!
Mapping Out The Journey
So, coming off benefits – how do I do it?
Well, it was obvious that I couldn’t do anything that took me out of the house and the ad hoc nature of my caring duties meant I couldn’t really have clients if I wanted to offer them the service I would expect. So my only option was to build a business making money online.
In some ways this decision was obvious. When I gave up my bricks and mortar business back in 2014 I spent a lot of time doing self-development training and studying internet marketing, affiliate marketing, and even a touch of network marketing.
Even during my first 2 years of caring for Andie, I still watched the odd training course or YouTube video to keep up with the latest trends online.
In those 6 years after giving up my Post Office and shop, I had come a long way in my personal development and I knew a bit about making money online.
The Journey Of A Wise Man?
Now I’m no fool, I know the majority of people do not make a go of making money online. If you don’t believe me, look up the figures. It’s a very small percentage of people who build a good income online.
But my goals aren’t massive. I am not looking to buy an 8-bed mansion and drive a Ferrari. For one thing, it’s not really my style. Nevertheless, I did want to replace the income we are getting on benefits, plus a little more to make life more comfortable (for Andie more than myself).
So I set myself 2 goals. One for 90 days and one for 12 months.
You see, I am 60 in October 2021, so I have roughly 13 months before I start to get the pensions I built up when I was younger.
So my first goal was to ensure the business was self-sufficient by the end of 2020. The second goal was to be earning around £2700 per month (around $3000) by October 2021.
Allowing 1 month (September 2020) to get everything in place to run the business, meant these targets nicely fitted the 90-day and 12-month time slots.
How Much Is A Ticket?
As for the start-up budget, being on benefits for so long doesn’t leave a lot of elbow room, but using other knowledge I had (more on this later), I managed to have a little tax-free start-up money to invest in the business.
This start-up budget would pay for training courses and other packages (hosting, domain names, autoresponders, etc) to ensure I had the knowledge and digital assets I needed to succeed.
So how does this journey touch your life I hear you say? Well, my aim is to journal my journey as I go, sharing my experiences and my financial statements.
I also want to help others who want to tackle the same journey by providing training and information along the way.
I also want to provide honest reviews of training and other products in the Internet Marketing arena. There are a plethora of reviews out there for these products, which get released daily. These reviews all have one thing in mind, to get you to buy using their affiliate link, so they can make money from your purchase.
Now don’t get me wrong, I will be doing affiliate marketing, but I will only recommend products I intend on buying and using myself or products I would purchase if I didn’t already have something to do the job.
I am fully expectant that most of my reviews will say ‘don’t buy’.
Looking In The Rear-View Mirror
I have recently been going through the myriad of training and online tools I purchased since 2014 (Google ‘Shiny Object Syndrome’), mainly because a lot of them were registered against an email I no longer use. The domain is coming up for re-registration and I don’t want to pay for it anymore, so I wanted to change the registered email address.
I was absolutely shocked by how many of these products no longer exist!
Many of the domain names they were registered against are now available to purchase again.
In Internet Marketing, a lifetime account means absolutely nothing. I was appalled by how many of these purchases were a total waste of money and I was thankful I hadn’t built a business reliant on using any of them.
I was also shocked that some ‘Lifetime Membership’ offers I had bought still existed, but they had changed the domain name (from .net to .com in some instances) and if you wanted the latest access you needed to repurchase another lifetime account – go figure.
These weren’t inexpensive purchases either. We are taking multiple hundreds of dollars for the original purchase and a similar figure to purchase another ‘lifetime’ access. This second purchase would give you what you laughingly assumed you had purchased the first time around.
Plus, I was shocked by the ‘Internet Gurus’ who had undertaken this shady practice.
These were people I had previously trusted and looked up to!
Anyway, I am starting to rant now and that is never a good thing (hide the sharp knives).
Fortunately, I did discover a decent amount of good quality tools and training I can use in my new venture. Plus, I have good experience of whom to trust and whom not to trust with my money.
A Journey Alone?
So my question to you is, ‘Do you want to follow in my footsteps?’
You can just follow from afar by dropping in occasionally (although this may make you feel like a peeping tom – joking), or you can sign up to get on my email list and receive updates on my progress.
Or, if you are feeling particularly brave, you can go one step further and join my journey. My intention is to have some pretty affordable membership websites available to teach you the steps I am taking and inform you of the products I am purchasing and how I intend to use them.
I Am Up For It, Are You?
If so, get on the mailing list and I will keep you informed of my journey step by step.
If this is a parting of ways, I thank you for reading this far and I wish you success on your chosen path.
If you are up for a wild journey, then you are more than welcome my friend. I look forward to guiding and teaching you more over the coming months.
To your continued success,
Terry Jenkins