If you’ve been following me at all in the last couple months you’ll know that I have quit my job and created my own SEO writing business.  I basically saw the writing on the wall at my old job coupled with the fact that I couldn’t take any more of the bullshit there.  I had to get off the sinking ship.  As it turns out, I was correct.

My ex-company was in the healthcare field.  The whole business model rested on providing hospitals with an un biased evaluation on patients to get more money for them out of medicare.  To be completely honest I wasn’t even sure how the whole thing worked, but what I can say for sure is that Obamacare seriously put a dent in the company’s business.  For whatever reason that I don’t want to use mental energy to figure out, hospitals stopped caring about getting an outside entity to look at their level of care.  Thus started round after round of layoffs.

I only found out about this because a number of my friends still worked for the company.  A number of these friends were worried about getting laid off.  I thought to myself what would I do if I were them and were suddenly cut from my income without any prior warning or contingency plans.  I immediately thought I’d do what I’m doing now, which is great, but none of them have ever thought to make money online or work for themselves before.

Recently I got news that my one friend who worked at the company got laid off the other week.  What’s interesting to note in his case is a few things.  In the last year he got married, bought a new house, and is now expecting a child.  Inspired by his situation I sat down and thought about the importance of starting an internet business today.  Here’s the top reasons to start an internet business.

1.  Job Security

The fact is that when you are working for a company as a small cog in the machine, you are absolutely expendable.  It’s only a matter of if the company wants to make the effort of training someone new for lower rates, or keep you around.  I should note that my friend that just got laid off was at the company about a year and a half longer than me.  He had seniority!  Yet he still got laid off.

If you are your own boss, the only person you answer to is yourself, what’s more secure than that?  Yes, all the responsibilities of running the business falls on your shoulders as well, but that is a small price to pay for the knowledge that your boss won’t ever call you in randomly to tell you to pack your shit.  Considering businesses on the internet are extremely easy to run, you shouldn’t have any hangups about this anyway.

2.  Automation

Perhaps you are too stressed out by the idea of running everything and making all the decisions for your business.  The beauty of an internet business is that most if not all of it can be outsourced.  Once you put in the initial work, most everything can be set up on autopilot and be out of your hands.

Don’t be fooled by the “passive income” or “4 hour workweek” marketing schemes.  Yes it’s possible to set everything to autopilot, but just be prepared to put in a massive amount of work in on the front end and you’ll be golden.  Automating everything will also put you in the sometimes uncomfortable position of learning to delegate tasks, but once you figure this out, everything becomes easier.

3.  Anyone can do this

A number of people may have been intimidated in the past of the prospect of making money online because of the technical barriers of running a site.  However, in this day and age, all you need to do to have a site is be able to click a few buttons.  Everything about running sites is so easy to do now that even the most ardent of luddites can accomplish it.  Technological know how is no longer be a barrier to entry to get into making money online.

4.  Affordability

Starting an internet business is very inexpensive.  Although I don’t recommend it, you can actually start a business for free!  Personally I would recommend if you are going to make a site, to at least purchase hosting and a professional looking design, but even this would run you about 100-200 dollars for the year!

Compare this with starting a brick and mortar business.  You would have to rent the space, possibly buy a license of some sort, then on top of that purchase all the inventory.  While extremely lucrative, the risk is extremely high if you don’t do your market research before hand.  The risk of starting an internet business is practically nothing, and an internet business can be just as lucrative!

5.  More free time

Once you get your internet business up and running, it doesn’t take that long each week to maintain the business.  Less time to run your business means more time to do stuff during your day that you would have neglected during your 9-5 stint.

In fact, I believe one of the main reasons that normal business hours was set up as 8 hours was that it was productive enough while still giving the illusion of industrial revolution era workers that they had enough free time.  At the time they were trying to max out productivity in the factories and 10-16 hour work days  were the norm.  People started to get pissed and the owners figured out they could increase productivity by lowering the hours to 8.  The workers were thrilled and as a result productivity went up.  8 hours seems like just enough time to max out productivity, while at the same time quelling dissent among workers.  This standard hasn’t changed since!  The workers were given an illusion of freedom with less hours to work.  True freedom lies in becoming the owner.

As the owner of your own company, you can work for however long you want.  You set all the rules in your company.  When you find out that you are being paid more for working less, try not to be too shocked.

6.  Work from anywhere

Another perk of starting an internet business is that as long as you have an internet connection, you can run your business.  This opens up so many possibilities.  Assuming you were commuting to the office every day, with an internet business, you can cut that whole commute out.  This means spending less money on your car and gas, less stress from traffic, and more time spent actually driving.  This was huge for me because I live in Philadelphia and had to commute to Malvern to get to the office.  If you’re not familiar with I-76, it’s one of the worst roads in America.

Another thing to consider when you have the option of working from anywhere is that you could move to another country in which the dollar has more purchasing power.  This is popular in the “location independent” online movement for a reason.  You could live very well in places in Southeast Asia for as little as 1000 dollars a month!  I once looked up how much I paid per month on my Philly apartment and I compared it to Thailand.  I found a palatial beachfront property in Thailand for the same amount.

7.  Set your income.

I see a lot of financial gurus out there promoting ways to save for retirement by putting money away each month.  While saving money is certainly a noble cause, it is geared towards people with a set income.  I have a better alternative for having enough money for retirement-make more money.  With your own internet business, if you aren’t making enough money, you can just work harder and bring in more cash.

This is a beautiful concept because there is no limit to how far you can go.  Suppose you are working hard on a site and it plateaus on a certain level of income.  You could either work harder on that site and make more money, or you could even start another site and bring that one up to a certain income plateau.  Either way you are making more money.

Now imagine the alternative of working a 9-5 gig.  If you want more money you would either have to get a promotion or ask for a raise.  Now getting a promotion in a corporate environment doesn’t always take into account how hard you work, in fact my experience is that it’s the opposite.  Asking for a raise is tough because you are trying to convince your company to give you more money for something you already do.  I’d rather just work harder and start making more money.

Start Today

Some of the businesses you can start on the internet take time to build.  That’s why you should start right away.  If you are planning on starting a blog and making money from it, realize that it could take years before you build up enough traction and an audience to start living off it exclusively.  However, starting a blog isn’t the only way to have an internet business and there are much faster ways of making money online.

Evaluate your level of risk and how hard you are going to work.  Perhaps you have a day job and want to work on this on the side.  Not a problem at all, just make sure to put in a couple hours each night and you’ll be well on your way.  Soon enough you’ll be able to quit your day job and work on your internet business exclusively.

If you want to quit your job right now and start your internet business tomorrow, there are certainly ways you can do that.  I would consider starting some kind of freelance business to pay the bills for a while.  This can be done overnight with SEO writing, local business online marketing, or freelance SEO.  The beauty of this is that these skills will then flow into whatever personal projects you are working on for yourself like a blog, e-commerce store, or niche site.

If you are able to have the discipline to give yourself direction and work on your internet business every day, you’ll be able to look back 6 months from now with a nice business to build your future with.