It can be really difficult when your family members or friends don’t support your Internet marketing efforts. In fact, it can make you feel very alone and frustrated. This can even cause you to start doubting yourself. So, what should you do when no one supports your IM efforts?

Well, here’s a few tips that have helped me:

1. Support yourself. Always believe in yourself and know that you can make your financial dreams a reality with your IM efforts. You don’t need anyone else to validate you. Although it is nice to have support, you don’t HAVE to have the support of your friends and family members to be successful. You simply have to have the desire, work hard and apply your knowledge. If you do this, you can succeed.

2. Realize that its OK if family and friends don’t offer support. Not everyone is going to support your IM efforts and that is fine. Some people only view the 9 to 5 or working for someone else methodology of earning a living. They just don’t get the bigger picture of IM and may even think that you are wasting your time online. Therefore, it isn’t your job to persuade them and don’t let their negativity affect you one bit. Just keep learning and growing.

3. Stop confiding in nonbelievers. If your friends and family members don’t support your efforts then stop talking about IM altogether. Stop sharing your joys if they’re going to poke fun at you. For instance, when I made my first .16 online with my niche sites, I was so excited and I told everyone. They all laughed at me so I stopped talking about it. Now I make $1000 a month from those same sites and I only divulge my secrets if asked.

4. Surround yourself with supportive people. If you need support, you can find it online. Join a supportive membership site like Internet Marketing Writers or visit a great forum like the Warrior Forum so that you can find the support you need. At these places, you’ll discover support from like minded individuals that are also making their IM dreams a reality.

5. Read motivational stories. Always read motivational stories from other IMers that have been through what you’re going through. You’ll likely find that they weren’t supported by their friends or family members either but they didn’t let it stop them. They believed in themselves and made their dreams a reality.

In conclusion, don’t worry about non supportive people that don’t believe in your efforts. Although you may care about or even love them, you can’t let them crush your dreams. Instead, find support elsewhere and put your energy into growing your business and becoming successful.

Over the weekend, I was chatting with one of my best friends about money. I told her if she really wanted to make money online that she should build a virtual real estate empire like mine.

She chuckled loudly and almost fell off her chair. She said, “Are you still making $0.16 a month for all your hard work and effort?”

I proudly replied, “Actually, my virtual real estate empire or niche websites now bring in a residual income of $1000 a month. Yes, they used to make $0.16 a month but now they make much more. And, I make this money whether I am sitting on the beach or cutting my toenails.”

Well, she immediately stopped laughing and asked me to tell her some more.

Here are the tips that I told her so that could get started making niche sites too.

1. Virtual real estate is not a get-rich quick scheme. It is a slow money making process and takes some time and effort. You not only have build quality sites but you have to promote them too. You can’t just throw up a crappy site, slap some Adsense on it and hope to become an overnight millionaire. It just isn’t going to happen. Instead, you have to work at it, every day before you see the benefits of your hard work and effort.

2. Own virtual real estate in higher paying niches. You can’t just build sites on low paying subjects, even if you love them. Although you can have some lower paying niche sites based on your interests, you must also go after the higher paying niches too. After all, it is a lot easier to get 20 people to click on your ads that make 20.00 ($1.00 a click) than it is to get 200 people to click on your ad (.10 per click).

3. Test your market and conduct market research in order to find the higher niches. You should spend about 40% of your time conducting and testing your market before you create your sites. This way, you’ll save yourself a lot of time and energy by knowing if your site will be profitable before you build it.

4. Provide your readers with solid and quality information so that they keep coming back for more. Build content that will motivate and excite. Create sites with “staying power” so that you can get repeat clients and referrals from others.

5. Don’t ignore the rules. Always read and understand your advertisement partner’s Terms and Conditions. For instance, Google prohibits you from clicking on your own ads so don’t do it. If you don’t, your account might get banned.

6. Use different monetization methods when building your sites. For instance, you can use Adsense, Bidvertiser, Kontera, eBay auctions, affiliate products, etc. The more monetization methods you have, the better. This way if one method dries up, you have many others!

7. Always improve. Never stop making improvements to your site. Play around with your ad formatting, try different affiliate products, utilize traffic building techniques, etc. Never stop learning and growing.

8. Don’t lose faith. Virtual real estate is a great way to establish a steady and long term business. However, it won’t happen quickly. Although your sites could make a whopping $ 0.16 the first month, they could very well make $1000 or more a few months (or even a year later). You just have to keep working the process and don’t lose faith.

So, do what I told my friend, go out there and create some niche sites.Once you take action, you won’t be the joke any longer; instead you’ll be an inspiration as you chuckle all the way to the bank!

One of my biggest challenges with freelancing has always been finding enough time in the day to get everything done.

What I’ve learned is that the only way I can make this work for me is to not take on too much work and work smarter not harder.I typically work 6-8 hours on my business. These hours are not the typical 9 to 5 hours. Instead I am a shift worker.

I work throughout the day long. I take frequent breaks because I have to in order to take care of my family’s needs.To me, they are my first priority so I work my IM business around their needs.

Here is my family-friendly work schedule:

Work 2 hours before the kids wake up. During this time, I check emails, prospect for clients, surf the ‘net and write 1-2 articles that I submit to Associated Content.

Take the kids to school, run household errands with the baby, complete housework, etc.

Work 1-2 hours when my toddler takes a nap. During this time, I complete my clients’ work consisting of web content, articles, press releases, whatever.

Pick kids up from school.

Work 1 more hour while kids play and complete homework. Here, I work on some more client projects.

Make dinner. Spend time with my family and get kids ready for bed.

Work 1-2 more hours once kids are in bed. Finish clients’ work and work on some more IM projects for myself. During this time, I review online forums, write my IM writer blog entry, and complete 1-2 more articles.

Weekends

On the weekends, I limit my work time to 3 hours max (if I work at all). During this time, I concentrate on my IM projects and don’t ghostwrite for clients.  On weekends, I typically write eBooks, articles and press releases, build new websites, market existing ones and read IM course material. Once I’m done with my assigned projects, I do fun stuff with my family.

As you can see, I work 6-8 hours Monday – Friday  and 3 on Saturday and Sunday. The rest of the time, I spend time with my family and enjoy my life.

This schedule forces me to work quickly and to get as much done as I possibly can. For instance, I speed write and typically write 2 high quality articles in about an hour. If it is PLR articles, I can usually get three done within one hour.

I work quickly and efficiently because I don’t have time to play around and this schedule works for me and my family.

Well, I hope this gives you a glimpse into the life of a IM Writer. Now, I’ve gotta finish up an article before the kids wake up.

When I first started building my virtual real estate empire (VRE) over a year ago, I mistakenly believed that the more sites I could build the more money I would make. I fantasized about owning thousands of sites and imagined receiving huge advertisement and commission checks every single month. What I didn’t realize was that it is extremely difficult to manage a ton of websites.Not only do you have to build them (or have them built if you don’t know a thing about HTML and have no desire to learn), but you also have to maintain all those sites and you have to drive traffic to them as well. And that is a lot of work.Without traffic you make nada folks. Plus, if you are constantly building new sites, you’ll have no time to maintain or build up your old ones. So, your VRE never reaches its full potential and you’ll be batty trying to manage it all.

Therefore, I am going to change my focus.

Right now, I have 30 websites, 7 product blogs, and 7 informational blogs. Previously I was just building site after site, marketing a bit and then moving on to the next one. Some of my existing sites haven’t been updated or marketed in a long time.

So, in May, I plan on heavily marketing my existing sites. I need my lower performers to make me at least $5.00 a month each (they need to at least pay their domain and hosting costs). Yes, some don’t even do that (poor things). For the rest, I plan on doubling their income by implementing the same plan.

This new plan is going to work wonders for me. It is going to force me to improve my sites and will help improve my bottom line profits.

So for me, quality of my VRE empire is what counts the most, not the quantity.

When I first started freelance writing, it used to take me one hour to write a 500 word article. Now, I realize that this is way too slow. If I really want to maximize my freelance profits then I had to become a better paid high producer. With this in mind, I immediately raised my rates and also started churning out my quality articles quicker (without losing quality of course).The thing that inspired me was that I wanted to make $40 per hour from my ghostwriting projects. So, I raised my rates to $20.00 for a 400 word article and committed myself to writing two per hour.Sound difficult? It really isn’t.I personally know some writers that can write 3 or 4 articles an hour and these are not crappy articles. They are darn good articles that read well and exceed client expectations. My point is, fast writing be quite lucrative if you know the secrets.

Here are some tips that you can use to write quicker too:

1. Conduct your initial research. Don’t spend hours conducting research. Instead you must research quickly and effectively. Limit your research to 5 minutes for a 500 word article. To do so, use sources like Ezine Articles, Associated Content, Wikipedia and Google. Read through the top 4 articles on your subject matter quickly and make a mental note of their most pertinent parts. (5 minutes max.)

2. Immediately flesh out an outline of the 3 main points of your article. Your outline should have a beginning, middle and end. Don’t worry about perfection at this point. Just get that outline out. (3 minutes max)

3. Start writing your article. When crafting your article make sure you have an introduction, body and conclusion. Your goal should be to ask the reader a pertinent question, then answer the question with relevant information in your article and then provide your reader with a brief recap. (10 minutes max)

4. Proofread your work. Last but more importantly, you’ll need to proofread your articles and make sure it doesn’t contain any spelling or grammatical errors. If it does, change them immediately. (2 minute max)

That is. As you can see, you can craft a really great article within 20 minutes or less. (I wrote this one in ten) If you do this, you can significantly improve your freelance writing income. In fact, if you implement the above four tips, you should see a 20% or more increase in your productivity which will equal some serious cash for you!