Doubling Retirement Income---Simple Steps to Success

We recently visited our oldest son Jason, his wife Melanie and one of our beautiful grandchildren named Calliope or CeCe for short.  It was especially fun since CeCe started walking while we were there.  

About two months ago they moved into a very nice three level condominium in Portland Oregon.  It provides nicely for all the room they need with modern amenities, not common in Portland, plus a huge office so Jason can set up his at-home online business and a video studio.

Jason has worked from home and owned an internet business for seven years.  He has become a celebrity on the online business media lecture-tour teaching people how to use internet resources to generate income.  In addition to his online money, he earns thousands of dollars from consultation fees helping people learn how to maximize their online entrepreneurial success.  Thus I relish every opportunity to pick his brain about online commerce. 

Here is the bottom line:  Jason suggests the time has come for me to be more open about the process by which I earn money on the internet, so here’s goes. 

Several years ago I started to dabble in the use of online media to communicate.  My group of friends on Facebook grew to over 2800 before I realized it was becoming unmanageable.  My private email group grew to over 100. 

Last August I retired from my career of 34 years as an educator and moved out of Alaska to be closer to our children and grand-children.  My business motivation suffered because of the enormous change in our lives.  I wasn’t writing or researching as much.  But my internet media presence had taken on a life of its own.  After not even posting updates for months, I checked my blog to discover it was being accessed by about a 100 people every week.  I was shocked but pleased, and felt an responsibility to provide new content. 

So here is some detail on what I have learned and earned from internet business over the past two years.  My earnings come from multiple sources: advertizing, direct distribution of my own copyrighted material, payments from affiliates, and investments growth.  During my first year of online business I took in just over $700.  In the last 8 months since I retired and have a bit more time to dabble online, I have computer based supplemental earnings over $30,000. 

My goal has been to double my peak retirement income which will come from a pension, an annuity, transition pay which kicked in since I retired before I was 65, investment income from our savings during employment, and eventually Social Security.  I am trying to be a bit coy here since I don’t want to share exactly what money I have for retirement, but needless to say, I will need to double my online income from my last eight months.

The first steps to becoming and online entrepreneur are:  1) learn how to blog, podcast and/or video cast online, 2) start a blog and post your own content 2-3 times a week, 3) start using a simple financial tracking program to monitor your progress, I use Mint.com.  My next several posts will give a step by step overview of how I became an internet entrepreneur earning a supplemental retirement income by following these steps.