How to Make Money On The Internet Without Being a Couch Potato

Okay, so you're figured out this making money on the Internet thing and the cheques are coming in nicely, and you're probably boasting to your friends about how you don't have to be a wage slave or go into the office any more, and about how you can make some cash sat in your shorts. Well, that's great for a while, but if you don't want to be a recluse and hibernate at home forever, how about taking your online business mobile, do some travelling, see some new places and still never miss a business call or be disconnected from your online activities?

It makes absolutely no sense to make the money and not live the dream, so if you want to free yourself from your home office, then read on.

In this article I tell you how I did it, how I made the move from being an Internet money maker, whose horizons

were getting narrower to an Internet money maker for whom the sky is the limit, and how I can run my business and

online interests from Paris or Beijing. Or, I can be sat in a restuarant in the afternoon, enjoying wine, food and conversation with friends, and never miss a beat of what is going on with the business. I can take sales and make money, but feel free and practically semi-retired at the same time. This is how I made myself totally mobile, and still kept up with growing my online footprint and online revenue streams. Best of all, its really not expensive.

Here are the seven peices of equipment you need in order to take your business totally mobile.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A netbook
• a 3g card or dongle
• call forwarding to mobile
• a portable hard drive/ backup
• a power source
• international plug adaptors
• spares

1. Netbook - If you want to be able to travel, and take the business with you then you really need a netbook. Laptops are just too bulky. My netbook weighs just 1.5 kg, whereas most of my laptops weigh between 3.5 to 5 kg, which is just too much to lug around. You can get a netbook with integrated wireless card, a gig of ram and a good
   80 to 160 gb of harddisk space for between £250.00 and £275.00 these days. This is plenty to take your business totally mobile. Remember that if you have sensitive information you need to put on there then you will need to pay out for a license for some operating system encryption software such as Pointsec, so that you are protected if your netbook goes missing.
   
   Many netbooks even come with a webcam built in, just in case your customers want an online meeting.

2. Call routing to your mobile. This can be expensive if you do it directly through your tier 1 carrier, but for shorter trips this is fine usually. I use Virgin Media and have a simple keycode to type into my phone every time I want to route business calls to my mobile phone. The cost is £1.75 per month for the service, a 7 pence connection fee and the cost of the call from the landline to the mobile. To keep it cheaper, I try to only use this service when I am travelling to countries covered by vodafone passport, since if I need to make outbound calls, countries not covered can be pricey. For a cheaper alternative for overseas calls try Three.
   
   For longer, planned trips then you could try going with a company that specialises in call routing to mobile that will give you a better deal than a tier 1 carrier such as 08UK - http://www.08numbers.net/ You should estimate that you need four weeks to get this service up and running so its only really useful for planned trips.

3. Mobile broadband. The best deal I have found is with Three. A tarrif of as little as £10 to £15 per month might be all you need to run your business on the go. Best of all you get a simple usb dongle, so it will work with any netbook or laptop and you don't need to worry about having a 3G slot in your computer in order for it to be compatible (http://www.three.co.uk/personal/products_services_/mobile_broadband_/index.omp). Three have sister networks in just about every country imaginable, so you need never get caught out without an internet connection.
   
   If you are staying in hotels that give you an Internet connection in your room, then this often isn't an issue, but if you want to stay in a country for an extended period of time (I try for three months stays in cities I really like), then you will probably have to take short terms lets on apartments so mobile broadband is a godsend.
   
   There is no guarantee that your apartment will come with broadband already inplace and setting up an Internet connection in some countries can really take some time that you can't afford.

4. Backup. There are free online backup services which you can look into, although remember that you might use up a lot of your 3g allowance if you use one of these. Better to buy a portable external hard drive and backup to there. They are inexpensive, and you can get a drive with more than enough capacity shopping online for around £50.00 or less.

5. Solar charger. I always take a universal solar charger with me where ever I am going so that I don't get caught out without power. The one I have was a free sample from my friends at Gigabiz, and will charge my phone, my netbook and my iPod. That extra bit of extra battery life on your laptop can mean the difference between being connected and losing money so don't get caught out. You can also opt to keep a spare fully-charged netbook battery with you.

6. Universal plug adapters. These are essential, so buy them in advance and have spares. Keep them in your netbook case so that you never get caught out.

7. Keep spares. have a spare hard drive on hand, spare ethernet cable and make sure you have all your software and operating system installation files kept on your portable hard drive, you that you can re-install what you need if something goes wrong.

Tips & Warnings

• There are also a few administrative considerations to consider if you want to free yourself from the locational constraints of running a business. You will need to cut your business post down to a minimum. Encourage your customers to pay you by Paypal or BACs, or even start taking credit card payments over the phone or online, so you don't have too many cheques dropping on your doorstep which you can't bank. Alternatively, get a friend to bank them for you, and give you the details so that you can update your accounts. You can also get yourself an online fax service, such as eFax, so you don't need to worry about missing faxes. You can even get yourself a Skype address to save on your outbound calls with any customers who also use Skype. If you want to leave your business data back home, you can even get a VPN (virtual private network) setup so that you can login to your computer or server back home and that way you don't need to carry large quantities of information or sensitive information with you. of course this means leaving your home network live while you are away, and you would need to have someone there to look after it should anything go wrong. Get as much of your business data and information as possible stored electroncially. Send forms by email to collect testimonials, send invoices, reciepts and remittances by email and encourage your customers to do the same. Even consider giving discounts to customers who book or purchase online, and who make things easy for you by doing business electronically. Call it an environmental initiative if you want to impress them. With this beautiful mobile business system in place, I've been able to take lucrative orders while sat eating steak with friends in Manchester, sat outside cafes in Paris, restuarants in Beijing, as well as numerous other exotic and enjoyable places, and my entire business empire weighs in the region of 2 kilograms ande is totally portable, and less than 50 percent of my hand luggage allowance. So with all this information about running your business from anywhere in the world, all you need to do is to choose a destination and book yourself a flight. Good luck and bon voyage.

Resources

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