I am sure that whole books have been written, web sites created about how the internet has revolutionised the business world. For me personally, the attraction is simply the one that has now virtually become a cliche – take your laptop with you to anywhere in the world, plug it in to the internet and, hopefully, earn money. The business owner is immediately connected to a worldwide market. Contrast this with a traditional type business where the entrepreneur must be located close to his potential market.
I love travelling; even as a small child growing up in the 1970’s I could spend hours just looking at maps from around the world, visualising what those places might look like, what sort of people lived there, how they might live and so on. Most of my free time in the 1980’s was spent travelling, first of all by rail around Europe, and then further afield to the Far East, Africa and South America. I actually met my future wife on a train in Turkey whilst backpacking around that country, but that’s a story for another day.
Many times I had the thought “what if I could travel and earn money at the same time”, not so much with the idea of making my fortune, but to travel for a few weeks until the money ran out, then find a job to finance another few weeks of travelling and so on. I met many people who did this kind of thing; working in bars, teaching English, picking fruit etc. Because I had my own full time business to run back home I could never afford to go travelling for more than 3-4 weeks at a time, otherwise I would have come back to a business with no customers. I physically had to be in a certain location at a certain time to see my customers in order to earn a living.
All that has changed with the internet. We can order probably just about any “physical” item we need 24 hours a day. Many products which used to be sold in a physical format and therefore we either had to go to a store to buy them, or have them shipped to us are now instantly downloadable straight to our computers at any time of the day or night. I’m thinking of ebooks, computer software, plane tickets amongst many others. Fifteen years ago buying a plane ticket involved a lot of time and quite often frustration. Today I can sit at my laptop in the middle of the night, compare prices between different airlines, get out my credit card and pay. I don’t even have to wait for a physical ticket these days, now I get an eTicket. Fantastic – one less thing to forget when setting off for the airport!
So, there is no doubt the opportunities are there – the question is what can you or I do to get our share of this lifestyle? Well why not come back here tomorrow and we’ll have a look at this in more detail.