The Journal of Julie

  This week our assignments were to find a site builder and a host. As I started my research, I quickly realized that there are many choices out there. I spent an inordinate amount of time looking at site builders and what they offer. I really wanted to get one that specializes in vacation rentals, but they are so expensive. I can’t see myself spending that kind of money right now with our two rentals. Maybe in the future. I looked at Lodgify, My Porter App, and Smartbnb. These all seemed like they could work for us in the future.   My favorite was Guesty, but they want you to have 4 or more rentals. They also wouldn’t say what their price was, you had to get a personalized demonstration over the phone but since we only have 2 rentals, they just emailed me. I’m assuming that means it’s very expensive. We may use them once we have more rentals and are making some profit. We’ll have more cabins in a few years, so right now I decided to just go with the least expensive option. We...

  This week I learned about finding a wholesale distributor for selling items on the web and affiliate marketing vs drop shipping. It seems like ever since I looked up “web-based business” on Google I’ve been advertised to by experts who are trying to get me to start a drop shipping company and claiming that I could make $10,000 a day.   I once watched a webinar of someone who was sharing her secrets to this business, but in order to really get the secrets, I would need to pay her to “coach” me. The cost was just under $1000. I believe that is the way she makes her money, by selling her course, and not actually drop shipping. Anyway, that is one lesson I learned, that drop shipping may be a legitimate business, but I don’t think it’s as easy as these experts claim it to be. From what I read it takes a long time to work up to making a significant amount of money. I would say that if it really is as easy as they say, everyone would be doing it. I learned more about affiliate m...

This week I learned that there are several ways to make money online. The hardest part for me this week was coming up with 20 different business ideas for Project 1. I watched videos and read articles on what is available for online businesses. It's incredible! There is plenty of opportunity for those looking for web-based businesses. Fortunately, I already have a business that David and I are working on and it  worked out that it was my number one recommendation! Yay! Speaking of Project 1, I really enjoyed filling out the excel spreadsheet after thinking of online businesses. It was interesting how each page led to the recommendation at the end. I thought learning how to use the keyword planner was really good too. It was interesting how many keywords are out there for your particular business and that sometimes you have to type in the exact right thing or the results are zero. One thing I learned this week was that even though there were lots of assignments and it seemed ove...