Once you have made the decision to work from home, you should spend some time in planning and preparation. Having decided that an internet home business is the right thing for you to take up, the decision needs to be made as to what type of home business would interest you and what type of business would be practical for you in your particular circumstances. I chose a Plug-in Profit Site (if you are not familiar with these, you can see all the details at http://www.huntingvenus.com/pips.html

If you missed part one of this article, you will find it in my Home Business Workshop at http://www.huntingvenus.com/echbart1.htm

Once you have made the decision to work from home, you should spend some time in planning and preparation. Having decided that an internet home business is the right thing for you to take up, the decision needs to be made as to what type of home business would interest you and what type of business would be practical for you in your particular circumstances. I chose a Plug-in Profit SiteÔ (if you are not familiar with these, you can see all the details at my website) because it was ideal for someone like me who had no previous internet experience or technical knowledge, but also offered a great deal of flexibility.

Making a few basic preparations at the start will give you a firm foundation on which to build your home based business.

I assume that anybody who is seriously considering a career working on the internet will already have in place a firewall and good anti-virus software such as Panda, but I would suggest adding anti spyware and anti adware protection such as Spyware Blaster and No Adware plus Spybot Search and Destroy. These can be downloaded free. You are asked to make a donation to the site but it is not compulsory; you can go back later and donate if you are happy with the software. There is plenty of free software of this sort so, if you do not already know what you want, you can find plenty with a Google search.

Next download Roboform. Whatever business you work at, you will be bound to have to fill in various forms online. Once you have typed your name, address, email, birth date etc into Roboform it will complete application forms with one mouse click. You can set up more than one identity within Roboform so, for instance, you can have one identity which uses your main email address and a separate one for advertising with a secondary email address. Roboform will also store all your log in IDs and passwords for every login page you use. It really is a brilliant device and can be downloaded absolutely free.

Now that you have Roboform’s help it is time to get a new email account which should be kept entirely separate from your personal email account. You might need more than one additional email address depending upon what sort of business you are in. My first website was a Plug-in Profit Site (if you don’t know what that is you can see the details here: http://www.huntingvenus.com/pips.html) and one of the things I did when I started that, was to subscribe to several ezines. If you are going to join lots of mailing groups or subscribe to ezines, you will receive a great deal of email just from these sources; each one will send you at least one confirmatory email when you first sign up and these should be kept for reference. You can get free email accounts from Yahoo, Excite and numerous other places. AOL is to be avoided because of the way its email filters work (you might find that important mail is filtered out without you getting the chance to accept it).

Next, sign up for free accounts with Pay Pal, Storm Pay and Int Gold as most online companies will pay you (or require you to pay them) through one of these. It is worth getting accounts with all of them before you start signing up for programmes: it is very annoying to be halfway through signing up and finding that payments will only be made through an account you do not have. If you are undertaking several ventures, you might want more than one account with each of the companies. The reasons for this are to keep the money separate and also that some companies want you to sign up under the same email address as your Pay Pal account (not many but it happens). You are permitted numerous free accounts but I would suggest one account should be opened with each company to start with unless you know you will definitely need another account. It is important to strike a balance between keeping things separate and having so many different accounts, you end up confused. These things are supposed to help you, not become a task in themselves.

All this will not have taken you long to do and you now have the basis of an organised system to which you can add things as you go along.

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I can recall watching the Zoo Keeper when he was sweeping out the big monkey enclosure. He was industriously sweeping up dead leaves and twigs and the rest of the litter the monkeys had made and he was taking no notice at all of the antics of the noisy crew of monkeys. I guess he was used to their racket. Suddenly one of the monkeys swung down from a branch and snatched the Zoo Keeper’s cap right off his head. The Zoo Keeper hardly had time to react to what had happened before that monkey was out of reach in the higher branches of the tree.

The Zoo Keeper looked up, the monkey bared its teeth in that special grin monkeys have and chattered quietly. The Zoo Keeper pantomimed a shrug for his audience: no point in him even thinking of climbing the tree after that monkey. The Zoo Keeper carried on with his cleaning up and ignored the chattering monkey.

The monkey tried the cap on for size, on his head, then on one foot, then he sniffed hard at it. The crowd laughed but the Zoo Keeper didn’t bother to look up. The monkey dropped from the tree just a few feet behind the Zoo Keeper, screeched in that way monkeys have and flourished the cap when the Zoo Keeper looked round startled. That sure got his attention!

The Zoo Keeper stood, hands on hips. The monkey did the same, putting its head a little on one side as if he was waiting for an answer. The Zoo Keeper took a slow step towards the monkey and the monkey just stood there holding the Zoo Keeper’s cap. The Zoo Keeper took another cautious step towards the monkey and this time the monkey took a step back. The Zoo Keeper tried another step, the monkey stepped back, turned, let out a screech and leaped into the lower branches of his favourite tree. The Zoo Keeper grabbed at his cap but he was no match for the monkey’s swiftness.

By now a crowd of children had gathered and they giggled as the Zoo Keeper looked up at the monkey who had again perched out of reach chattering loudly and waving the cap in the air. What the Zoo Keeper didn’t know (but the children did) was that another monkey had removed a small shovel from the Zoo Keeper’s unattended cart and was marching about waving the shovel in the air as if he was conducting some invisible monkey orchestra.

When monkey number two started beating the shovel against the bars of the enclosure, the Zoo Keeper did notice and his attention was completely diverted from the first monkey. While the Zoo Keeper crept up behind the monkey with the shovel, monkey number one dropped out of the tree and upset the Keeper’s cart, scattering all the rubbish he had swept up.

At that moment, the gate into the enclosure opened and a Feeding Attendant brought in the monkeys’ lunch. Monkey number one saw the attendant and lost all interest in the cap, which he dropped on the ground. The second monkey threw the shovel over his shoulder as he loped in the direction of the food.

The Keeper made the most of this opportunity. He rescued his cap, picked up his shovel and walked back towards the strewn litter. Unfortunately, on his way to gather up the litter, he trod in a pile of monkey pooh and had to stop to scrape his shoe clean..

What does chasing after monkeys have to do with your Internet business?

When I am working at my home based business on the Internet, I often feel as if I am trying to work in a cage full of monkeys. There are so many distractions, so many people trying to get your attention and lure you to their websites. If you do not remain focused on the job in hand, working on the internet can turn out very much like chasing monkeys. If you lose your focus, you will find yourself being led in every direction apart from the one you intended to take. You will spend your morning chasing about and achieving nothing. Suddenly you will realise it’s lunchtime and you have still not managed to complete the morning’s tasks. If you let this situation carry on, you are likely to find yourself in the sort of mess that’s best tackled with a shovel.

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When you begin writing for your home based business, never lose sight of the following facts:

1. People notice things (sometimes even the most minute detail)

2. People remember things (sometimes even the most minute detail)

3. People love to point out mistakes (sometimes even the most minute detail)

4. People will magnify even minute details.

Some people enjoy finding errors and pointing them out, even to the extent of writing books on the subject. Other people (and I admit to being one) can’t help noticing errors and find them so horrific that they (inadvertently and quite without malice) magnify them out of all proportion.

When you write for the public, you are poking your head above the edge of the literary trench and inviting them to pierce your brain with critical bullets. It is only sensible to take proper precautions. The tin helmet is not a great fashion accessory but, in these circumstances, much preferable to a baseball cap.

I used to work for a lawyer who had a selection of favourite words and phrases which he would drop into correspondence or conversation in order to impress people. These beauties included the phrase “most busiest“ (makes me grind my teeth), “at the end of the day“ (yawn), “in essence“ (used relentlessly to introduce any minor point) and “very unique“ (why does a unique word have to be devalued in that way?).

The day arrived when he discovered “vociferously“ and latched onto it as his new favourite word. After several trial outings, he obviously became comfortable with the “vociferously“ and introduced “vociferous”. Eventually he was managing to use one of them in every letter and conversation. He wrote to other lawyers informing them that he wanted to work vociferously to an early conclusion of the matter in hand. He told insurance companies that his clients’ losses would have been smaller if those companies had worked vociferously. He wrote to clients assuring them of his most vociferous attention at all times.

I didn’t understand why he thought it was a good idea for everybody to be shouting. When the awful truth dawned on me, I cringed: I realised that he didn‘t actually know the meaning of the word. I never did find out exactly what he thought it meant. I could hardly ask him. That would have led to a conversation I did not want to join in. How much good do you think it would do your career to impart to your boss the information that he appeared not know the meaning of a word he used on a daily basis? Trust me on this: promotion would not come into it.

You may call me old fashioned but I believe that professional people ought to have a reasonable level of education. At the very least they should know how to look words up in the dictionary before trotting them out for the delight of the general public.

Something, perhaps a combination of ignorance and arrogance, prevented this allegedly educated man from bothering to check on the meaning of this new word. It was, therefore, paraded about for all to admire. The use of the new favourite word escalated until no document was considered complete without it.

I was horrified and embarrassed. I squirmed, anticipating the day when another (better educated) lawyer or client would broach the subject of this inappropriate word. Fortunately, I moved on before the day arrived and hope that my association with this word abuser has been forgotten.

A very public example of this kind of thing occurred to Georgie Fame who was a song writer and singer (and still is) in the 1960’s. Georgie Fame and his band, The Blue Flames, were very popular and, when they released a record, it was played all the time everywhere. This song was about the bank-robbing duo, Bonnie and Clyde, and included a verse about them stuffing their loot into a canvas bag. Unfortunately, when Georgie Fame wrote the words to the song, he got a word wrong. Instead of referring to a “burlap“ bag, he used the word “dewlap”. (In case you don’t know, dewlap is the loose hanging bit of skin under the throat of oxen, dogs, turkeys, etc - you know the bit I mean.) I couldn’t listen to that song without picturing the villains stuffing bank notes into a cow’s mouth and that definitely ruined the dramatic impact for me.

This error did not go unnoticed by the rest of the world. Georgie Fame admitted in an interview that somebody had told him, before the song was recorded, that “dewlap“ was not the right word but he brushed them off and didn’t bother to check. Once the song had been recorded and released, it was too late to do anything about it. This failure to check (even after a warning) became about as public as a mistake can be. If nothing else, it proved that people do notice these things.

I don’t know exactly why dictionaries went out of fashion but I’d bet money that it was due to pressure by the “don’t be shackled by correctness, creativity is all that counts“ brigade. I never understood why you can’t be correct and creative at the same time but I’ll stay at the bottom of the trench until that argument is over. My suggestion is that you become a closet dictionary user. It’s still legal and completely harmless. If you fear discovery, you can cover your dictionary in brown paper or pretend you just keep it to prop the door open, or say it was a present from Granny. Whatever you do, use the dictionary if in doubt. If the idea of owning an actual paper dictionary makes you too nervous, you can find one online at http://www.thefreedictionary.com/. Never take a chance and assume you know the meaning of a word just from the context in which you hear it used.

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I found myself suddenly and unexpectedly unemployed after more than twenty-five years in the same job. Prior to this I had no ambition to own my own business. I had previously had vague thoughts that it would be very nice to be able to work from home, but I never had any idea of what I could actually work at. I have a computer, I am literate and can type at a pretty fast rate. Apart from these, I have no skills which I can see as the basis for a home based business. I like reading and I grow all manner of plants from beans to cacti, but I couldn’t see anybody paying me to stay home and do any of these things.

If you had told me then where I would be today, and what I would be doing, I would have thought you were crazy. I would not have believed that I would own some websites (my own domain actually), be working from home and have published articles which I had written myself.

I searched for work, both on and off the internet and the more I searched, the more downhearted I became. Sure, there were jobs about but they all required things I lacked: some wanted experience, some wanted much younger people, the worst ones wanted people who were prepared to work long hours for peanuts.

I was regularly searching on the Internet for opportunities for home work. I joined forums and read posts from women who were desperate to work from home, most of them had children and were unable to find suitable jobs to fit in with their schedules. It began to seem as if there is a great army of people all wanting to work but unable to find the right opportunity to suit them.

I signed up with a couple of companies to get paid for reading emails, but reading a couple of emails each day is not the way to make a fortune. I still read emails for these companies, but only out of sentiment (you will understand what I mean by this when you get to the end of this story).

I picked up a couple of ideas which seemed promising and I tried them out. The first thing was mystery shopping, which sounded simple enough, and potentially enjoyable - well, getting paid to go shopping sounds good to me. I found many companies through searching the internet and I applied to dozens of them; I wanted a full time job, not just the odd shopping trip. Months went by and I heard nothing from any of these companies.

Fortunately, I had not been just sitting back and waiting for the mystery shopping jobs to come pouring in. I saw advertisements for paid surveys, and it seemed that you could make a full-time income filling in surveys on line. There were many websites which advised that you should never pay a fee to join a survey company, and these sites displayed the web addresses of various survey companies. At the same time, I saw a lot of advertising by a company which promised access to an enormous database of the best paying survey companies for a fee of only $35, which you would be bound to recover within a few days. Against my better judgement, I paid over the $35 and was disappointed to find that many of the companies in this database would accept US and Canada residents only. Nothing wrong with that, apart from the fact that I live in the UK. Of the companies which would accept international residents, I had already signed up to most of them. I got precisely nothing back for my $35. The only money I earned came from two paid survey companies which I did not join through that database. To date I have received a total payment of £12. I have earned another £21 which is in an account which would only pay out if my total reached £50.

My work search turned into a research project. I started looking at home based businesses rather than jobs. No shortage of possibilities here, but how to choose? I saw some attractive websites aimed at selling all kinds of goods but I had no idea where I would obtain stock, or even what I should try to sell, let alone how to set up a website, and my budget was limited. I tried searching for turnkey businesses. I looked at affiliate programme opportunities, and they seemed a good idea, no stock to buy or handle, but what should I sell? There were also different grades of memberships. I hardly knew what most of it meant to start with, but I was learning, and I was getting a pretty good feel for what I didn’t want.

I would like to say that I found my niche as a result of my own genius, hard work and perseverance. Actually, it was an accident. I opened one of my paid to read emails, clicked on the link and had my first view of a Plug-in Profit SiteÔ. I try to avoid clichés but this truly was a sight for sore eyes, eyes which felt as if they were ready to bulge out of my head after hours of staring at a computer screen. If it is possible to fall in love with a website, I did just that; I knew absolutely without a doubt that I wanted a Plug-in Profit Site of my own, it was everything I needed and more besides.

An attractive young man (young enough to be my son, I am afraid) was offering to build for me free of charge a website, complete with five free to join affiliate programmes selling a wide range of items, to provide multiple ways of earning money. He was also offering me, free of charge, my own pre-written newsletter, his own guide to setting up and running my business and many other free things which I came to appreciate even though I didn’t know what they were at the time (remember, I did not know a mailing list from a grocery list at this time, and I thought a lead was just something you needed to walk your dog). I could take delivery of all this within 24 hours, thank goodness; I don’t think I could have waited a minute longer. I did not resist this temptation for even a second and within 24 hours, I was a website owner all ready to trade.

The learning curve started here but I’ll save that for another story. I’ll just tell you one thing that I learned: I found out that I had, once again, been extremely lucky. I joined a couple of forums and read many posts from people who had struggled for years to find a decent home based internet business. These people told harrowing tales of failure, money lost, mounting debts, years of hard work and worry. In a strange way, I feel almost guilty that I found my niche by accident.

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We are not even dealing with the kind of punishment you might get at school or a correctional institution. We are talking about the toughest kind of discipline: regular, old-fashioned, grit-your-teeth self-discipline. I can hear the groans but I don’t know why Discipline has become so unpopular. You should treat it as a good friend, shake hands with Discipline and give him a clap on the back - invite him in to look around your home office and get his opinion of your plans.

Discipline will strengthen you and make it easier for you to get organised and stay organised; consider taking him in as a business partner. It is Discipline which will help you to keep going in the face of difficulties. It is Discipline which will help you fit in the million and one things which will be clamouring for your attention when you first start out as your own boss.

OK, you are the boss and you can take a day off when you like without asking permission from anybody else. Great! Fantastic! Wonderful! Yes, it is just as you wanted it to be - but who is going to cover for you during your absence? Who is going to sort out your schedule, arrange for your mail to be acknowledged, make sure your diary is up to date? Aha, now you see it. The answer is “you“ because there is nobody else. You, that is, and your good buddy, Discipline, who will steadfastly see you through this potentially difficult situation.

If you have a vacation planned, you will have a date to work to and, even if you are lackadaisical in your running of your business and allow tasks to pile up, you will know how long you have in which to get things sufficiently ship-shape for you to be able to take off without leaving your business in a mess.

What if you decide to take a day off at short notice (like, just when you wake up one morning)? That is one of the great things about being the boss but wouldn’t it be easier if your work was right up to date, everything neat and organised? Wouldn’t you be more relaxed if the machine was running smoothly?

The work will only be up to date if you keep on top of it. Things will only be neat and organised if you make them that way. The machine will only keep running smoothly if you apply oil and spin the cogs regularly. Discipline can be a great help, give him a chance and he will be there helping you with the filing and the oil can; he is your true friend so he won’t mind getting his hands dirty on your behalf.

I wonder if they call it a craze because it only crazy people fall for it. Well, I’m certainly not crazy, on the dull side of sensible I’d say if I was pressed on the subject. I am not given to trusting people and you won’t find me accepting a free lunch.

So why did I get involved? I put it down to an unattractive little green mean streak of greed. Once that little green fellah gave me a nudge, there was no stopping me; I went from weakness to weakness.

I thought that it would be safe to join one of the established programmes, so I joined the Easy Chair Club’s My Magic Doubler. I invested $100. Their server crashed and they closed to new members with bewildering suddenness. I wondered if I was their last ever member to sign up.

My natural mistrust of human beings became even deeper and I resolved not to make a similar mistake in future; I would not be tempted to join another money doubler.

Some days later, I received $120 back from Easy Chair Club. I had not doubled my money, but I was in profit. I began to like the human race a little better and to think maybe money doublers were not such a bad idea.

Double Bot caught my attention. People were getting paid out and, best of all, they had what they called a “spam“ section on their forum where members could discuss money making opportunities (ie other doublers). I invested $50. After my success (I did not see it as a lucky escape) with My Magic Doubler, I was feeling confident.

At this time Matrix Twisted was about to launch. This was my chance to get in at the very start of a doubler and make some big money, so I funded my account with $50. The difference in time zone meant that I would have to buy shares in the middle of the night. Regrettably, I slept through the excitement of the launch. I also missed the trauma of the instant crash and the first howls of “Scam!“ I began to feel less confident and more like a Jinx.

Cycle It Fast had already been re-launched and people were getting their money doubled within hours. Strangely, once I had taken the plunge and invested, things changed and I reckon it would have been better named Cycle It Extremely Slowly. Instead of cycling times being expressed in hours, they rose to days and then weeks. Cycle times are no longer mentioned. I think the wheels fell off the day I joined.

I decided Cycle It Fast would have to be a long term investment. I still had Double Bot for quick profit. I was surprised to note, when I visited the forum, one day that the popular “spam“ section had been removed and posts along the lines of “10 days and I haven’t cycled“ and “Where is my money?“ were appearing. I started to feel a little uneasy. I was disappointed but not surprised when the Bot hit the rocks. How strange, it had been doing so well before I joined. I asked for a refund but I think admin were too busy baling out.

Anxious to recover my losses, I invested $50 with Profit Sharing Hits. Money doubling with advertising hits on top. What could go wrong? I was stunned when the members’ forum disappeared overnight and Admin announced that a re-launch was necessary. I again got that eerie feeling of being the last one in before the doors closed.

After several emails from me, a reply arrived from Double Bot. As admin had not got round to refunding my money before they re-launched, they were offering me a choice of paying them a 35% fee to process the refund or reinvesting in the Bot even though doubling had stopped.

That is the absolute end! Pass me that albatross and call me Jonah. It seems that any doubler that takes me on board will immediately sink. I might as well go and throw my money straight into the sea, at least I’ll get some fresh air at the same time. I have learned my lesson. I’ll concentrate on my Plug In Profit Site and will not waste any more time or money on these stupid doublers.

Wait up! I just got mail and there’s a money tripler about to launch. Now that’s different

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My first thought was that a website dedicated to suicide must be macabre. However, a tour of the website revealed that a great deal of loving work had gone into its creation. The site’s purpose is to prevent suicide and raise public awareness of the subject. In America alone over 31,000 lives ended in 2002 as a result of suicide. That is one suicide every sixteen and a half minutes. Trends show the suicide rate to be increasing.

There is a touching remembrance section on the site. The first memorial on the "wall of angels" is to a little girl aged 13 who was driven to suicide by school bullies. I could hardly bear to look at the photographs of the other beautiful, bright children who became "angels" in their teenage years. In the year 2002 in America a total of 4,010 people below the age of 24 committed suicide. That equates to 11 young lives destroyed each day. Suicide is the third leading cause of death in the 15-24 age group.

Suicide is a subject which most of us would wish to avoid. We would rather not think about it, let alone discuss it. We are uncomfortable when dealing with people who have been bereaved through suicide and feel helpless when somebody we know is tormented by suicidal thoughts.

Our reluctance to contemplate the issue of suicide is understandable. It is painful and we don’t want to be reminded of our own mortality, but we would be better equipped to deal with the issue if we were brave enough to face suicide and become familiar with its features. The ability to recognise the enemy would give us a better chance of knowing when help should be sought.

Seeing the photographs of the young suicide victims reminded me of two young women I used to know but had not thought of for some time. I was friends with both these women but they never met each other. Their lives, however, strangely paralleled each other for a while when they reached the age of 25.

My friend Janet had been engaged for two years and was looking forward to a traditional white wedding. The wedding dress and cake had been made and the big day was only two weeks in the future when her fiancé abruptly broke off the engagement. She was quietly devastated. Janet was a warm person with a wonderful sense of humour but she was not a pretty girl - not ugly - just not a head turner and she was rather shy. Being jilted shattered her self-confidence and she suffered through several lonely years before finding another boyfriend. He treated her abysmally but she felt that it was better to put up with his behaviour than to face the loneliness of being single. By then Janet was approaching the dreaded 30th birthday and felt like everybody else in the world was married. I was relieved when she finally found the courage to end that relationship.

My other friend was Cathy. Like Janet, she was jilted only a couple of weeks before her wedding was due to take place; with impeccable timing her fiancé chose to dump her on the very day her wedding dress was delivered. Cathy was a charming, sweet girl but, unlike Janet, she was also extremely pretty and outgoing. Cathy had many friends and, with her good looks and bubbly character, was very attractive to men. She bounced back from the rejection and had a new suitor within a matter of months. I thought her new boyfriend was much nicer in every way than the former fiancé and that the jilting had been a blessing in disguise.

The last time I spoke to Janet she was blissfully happy. She had met and married a lovely man and was living by the coast with him and their two gorgeous children. Cathy never married; she hanged herself at the age of 26. We were all utterly shocked: we had not realised that Cathy was hiding deep depression behind her pretty smile.

Could I or any of Cathy’s friends have saved her if they had known the symptoms of depression? We will never know but 80% of people who seek treatment for depression are treated successfully. Could you help to save a life? Could you comfort someone who has been bereaved through suicide? Advice and details of resources are available free from: http://www.preventsuicidenow.com . If you have a website of your own, please offer a link exchange to this not-for-profit site and help to raise its profile. It will cost you nothing but a little of your time.

This is one of a series of articles