Fighting Inflation with an Online Business

Fighting Inflation with an Online Business

In a desperate panic, many senior citizens who were close to or already retired, are having to change plans and consider returning to or staying on at their job much longer than anticipated. People over 50 who would love to slow down and enjoy life a little more can’t afford to do this. The concept of fighting inflation with an online business makes more sense today than ever before.

When I came online at the age of 50, part of my strategy was to create passive income to better prepare me financially for the future.

Due to inflation and the rising cost of living, people over 50 simply can’t afford not to work. Their retirement savings will not be substantial enough to fight the cost of gas, food, electricity, and even interest rates that will affect their mortgages or rent.

For many mature people, the thought of having to work well into their 70s or even older in many cases is a depressing thought. You should be able to relax and enjoy your retirement that you have earned at this stage of your life.

If you want to earn more, but you don’t want to go out and find a job, just know that there are alternate career paths that many older people are enjoying online. With these options, you aren’t working for a company who simply pays you to work from home.

Instead, you are a true entrepreneur who builds a business easily using a virtual workspace and free or low cost methods that help you find a following and cater to their needs. Fighting inflation with an online business will change your life, as it continues to do for me.

Below, you are going to see what’s involved in pursuing a career as an online entrepreneur and discover the opportunities that can not only help you make ends meet, but live the kind of lifestyle you deserve by fighting inflation with an online business.

Understand Your Needs and Goals for Earning Money Online

For every senior citizen who is considering re-entering the workforce, the reasons why they are making this decision can vary. For some, it’s a matter of not having enough income to survive.

Even if you were diligent in saving up money for your retirement, it may not be enough to combat the inflation that you are dealing with for everyday expenses, not to mention trying to retire in a way that allows you to enjoy life and travel.

For many seniors, you may have run into additional expenses that you didn’t previously have period for example, many seniors find themselves faced with expensive medicines or health issues that deplete their savings quickly.

In today’s world, grown children are also boomeranging back to their parents homes, unable to afford life on their own, which can add an additional financial stress to many seniors.

Whatever the reason is for you needing or wanting to earn more money and pursue a career, you need to crunch some numbers and find out where you stand and what you need to earn in order to take the financial pressure off and enjoy life to the fullest.

Tally up your current bills and the cost of anything that you wish to do, but have been unable to afford in recent years. Then, compare that to your monthly income that you have allotted to spend and see where the deficiency is so you know what needs to be made-up with an online career.

There are also other reasons, besides money, that senior citizens want to start working from home for themselves. For many, it’s a matter of staying busy and having a purpose in life.

No one wants to wake up every day and have nothing to do. Or, maybe you missed the socialization that an office job provided for you, and you want to interact with customers around the world and find some sort of camaraderie with colleagues who are also in the industry.

The Pros and Cons of Working at Home for Yourself

Regardless of what the exact reason is, you have to look at the pros and cons of working for yourself from home. You have to be honest with yourself and see if this is the right path for you.

First, let’s look at the drawbacks. Unlike an office job, you will no longer have a boss or coworkers to tell you exactly what to do or even motivate and support you to do it. This is a career where you have to adopt a mentality of self motivation, and be comfortable learning how to do something, even if it means enduring a few setbacks so that you can get the hang of it.

Another drawback is that there is no guaranteed paycheck. Many people turn to the offline world because, even though they stand to earn much less than an online entrepreneur, they can count on a paycheck coming in to support them as long as they show up.

Another potential drawback for some, depending on your living arrangements, is that you may encounter distractions while you are trying to work if you work from home. These can be caused by pets, or by family members who don’t really respect that you are in work mode and need to concentrate and keep noise levels down.

The good news is, there’s not a lot of costs associated with working for yourself online. As long as you have some way to access the Internet, you’ll be able to achieve this goal the same day you make the decision to do it.

When it comes to the drawback of not having colleagues in an office setting, it’s only a negative if you’re the type of person who needs that type of direction. Many seniors appreciate the fact that they are now able to make all of the decisions for their career without having to consult or cave into others’ demands.

If you are willing to give up the security of a steady paycheck for the potential of unlimited earnings and a diversified income, then you won’t mind that you’re not guaranteed to get paid unless you succeed.

And if you are upfront and honest with your loved ones, you can always share the importance with them of having sometime that is distraction free for you to work on your business.

It’s wonderful getting to be your own boss, and determine what hours you work, and where you work from. Whether you are a night owl or an early riser, or something in between, you can always work anytime you feel like it, and as much or as little as you want to each day.

Your schedule can be set for a few days a week, every day of the week, 30 minutes a day, or a full 8 hours. If you want to wake up and turn your laptop on while sitting in bed having your coffee, you can get your work done then.

Or, maybe you want to take your laptop to a coffee shop and get your work done with the ambient noises in the background that allow you to focus on the task at hand. You can even take a trip with loved ones to another country, and as long as you have access to the internet, you can work while traveling.

Having this type of flexibility and opportunity to set your business up in a way that gives you the most comfort and personal satisfaction is important to succeeding. You don’t want to dread your career, but embrace it instead.

Uncover the Possibilities of Niches and Business Models You’ll Enjoy

There are two major decisions you’ll need to make if you embark on this kind of career. The first is what niche you’ll be in and the second is which business model you’ll pursue. Fighting inflation with an online business can truly be life changing!

The niche is the topic you choose to be a leader in. In some instances, this won’t necessarily be a factor. But with most business models, you’ll want to pinpoint a niche that makes you happy.

Personal satisfaction is key to success, so don’t choose a boring niche or something you know nothing about just because you hear someone else is making money in it. Choose a niche that you know and love, because your genuine enthusiasm will shine through for your online audience.

The good news is, you can turn almost anything that you enjoy doing into an online career. Whether it’s a hobby, or something you’re just very good at and don’t mind doing, think about how you can monetize it online.

Let’s take the example of the cooking niche, which is one of the most popular niches in this industry. There are many seniors who are making bank simply sharing what they know about cooking and baking.

Not only can you write your own recipe books and publish them for sale online, but you can also earn money by becoming an affiliate marketer who makes recommendations about what items to buy.

If you were in the cooking niche, you might recommend things like a stand mixer, bakeware, or even bigger items like an outdoor grill. Everything that you use, from the spices you put on the meat that you are cooking for dinner to the beautiful plating that you will use to serve it to guests, is something that you can earn money with.

In addition to creating your own books and making recommendations, you can also choose a business model where you earn money as a content creator in your niche. There are many senior citizens who have accounts on YouTube and TikTok, where they upload short videos of them preparing a dish and earn money from the platform and from followers who appreciate the content they are providing.

You can choose a niche and drill down so that you have something a little more specific, too. For example, instead of just cooking, you could choose the niche of healthy cooking or cooking for a specific type of disease like diabetes or personal preference, like vegetarian.

If you are going into a business model like the sale of private label rights, which is basically ghostwritten articles and reports that you sell to multiple buyers instead of one, then you won’t have to select a specific niche to be involved in – because you can write about anything that your customers need.

The same holds true for other business models such as printable sales. If you are designing downloadable and printable planners, you don’t necessarily need to select a niche.

Instead, you can have a template for your planner and just redesign it for various niches such as sports moms, busy professionals, or themes such as a certain animal or a celestial pattern.

If you are going to be working for clients as a freelance service provider, rather than a PLR content creator, then you can decide whether you want to offer a wide variety of expertise, or you want to specialize in one thing, such as marketing or health.

When you are brainstorming a niche, think about something that you deal with on a regular basis, whether it’s a health issue that you are happy to be managing well or an activity that you enjoy doing, such as some sort of arts and crafts.

You can also slant your niche to a demographic that you are very familiar with, like seniors, men or women. There are many people who are looking for specific advice, such as weight loss for women over 50.

Another thing you might have fun with, if you want to spend your golden years traveling, is immersing yourself in the travel and leisure industry. That way, you could blog your adventures and earn money from it in the process.

Decide How Much Time and Effort You Want to Put Into an Online Business

The fact is, you are in your golden years where you should be able to retire and relax whenever you feel like it. So many of you reading this will not want to go back to a full time schedule. Fighting inflation with an online business could be the answer you are dreaming of in your life.

You’re going to have the ability to build a business working as much or as little as you want to. Some of the business models that you will be considering will have some sort of time factor involved.

For example, if you decide to pursue freelance service providing, where you are working as a virtual assistant, ghostwriter, or graphic designer for another marketer who needs help, they will usually have a deadline of when they need the materials or projects completed.

Likewise, if you decide to become an info product creator where you are writing digital eBooks or private label rights and launching them and do you want affiliate marketers to get on board and promote your launch for you in exchange for commissions, you will need to schedule a date that the launch will take place so that everyone can get prepared.

But with many of your business models, such as affiliate marketing, getting involved in printables, becoming a dropshipper, where you act as a third party between the customer and the seller, etc., you will be fully in control of your schedule and how much or how little you work.

This is perfect for senior citizens who are in need of full control over the time and effort that they put into their business. You may have one week where your grandchildren have a play at school and you want to take off of work to attend it in person.

Or, you might have surgery or be feeling under the weather and can take off for the week while you recover without having to worry about approaching your boss at a workplace and having to deal with their reluctant attitude in allowing you to heal properly.

Keep in mind that the more you work, the more you will earn and the faster you will earn it. If you open a store on Etsy, and in one month, you only create a single downloadable math sheet to sell to homeschool parents, chances are you’re not going to be able to supplement your income very well.

But if you are capable of creating lots of printables from a template and setting up a store that has a lot of items to choose from, your income will begin snowballing faster because you put more effort into it.

This is the same with private label rights content and even when growing your own info product empire. But with some business models, such as freelance service providers, you will hit a ceiling where you only have so many hours in the day to earn money, and then you are maxed out.

So keep this in mind whenever you are evaluating which business model you want to pursue. Even the niche you get into maybe a fast changing niche or one that is evergreen.

A rapidly changing niche might be something like a health topic, where research is constantly coming out about new changes and guidelines. And evergreen niche might be something like painting, where the techniques and products typically stay the same.

If you are up for the challenge and enjoy the learning process, then you may want to get involved in a niche that is constantly evolving into something better for your target audience.

But if you prefer a slow pace, where your audience is not relying on you to have an ear to the ground and stay aware of everything on a real time basis, then you can choose a niche that isn’t poised to change regularly.

Rev Up Your Earnings and Keep Costs Low as a Senior Marketer

One thing many senior marketers worry about is how much it will cost them to start a business online. Luckily, you can start a business at no cost to you, if that’s the direction you need to go in this moment. Fighting inflation with an online business is worth investigating.

At a later date, you can always take a little bit of your earnings and reinvest it in your business so that you can pursue a different business model that does require a minimal amount of investment.

But this is not a situation, like an offline business, where you have to be able to afford rent, insurance, employee wages, and advertising. Instead, your workspace is the virtual world, and that can include everything from a cheap domain that you have a blog on to a zero cost social media profile where you promote your business from.

When it comes to costs, a domain is only going to cost you no more than $12 a year – and if you search for a GoDaddy coupon code, you can even get your first one for just $0.99.

Hosting, which is what you need to connect your domain URL to so it can house your files, can be found for just $2-4 a month. I use and recommend A2 for your hosting provider. WordPress (which is the blog tool) is free! So this is very affordable for seniors on any budget.

There are some things you may need in your fledgling online business, but you can avoid paying for these at all, or at least not pay a lot for them. A good email autoresponder tool that lets you build a list of subscribers will usually give you a trial basis for a timed amount or up to a certain number of subscribers.

Graphics design tools like Canva have both free and paid versions. So you can just use the free level when starting out. Plus, there are free stock photo sites where you can get images instead of paying for them.

Video editing software like Camtasia can break your budget as a senior, but there’s a freeware option called CamStudio that’s just as good and won’t cost you a penny! You can also find free options for keyword tools, too.

If you need content for your blog, emails and to sell as products, don’t hire a ghostwriter if you don’t have the talent to do it yourself. Simply purchase inexpensive private label rights content for $1 or less per page.

Or, see if artificial intelligence (AI) tools can help you come up with ideas and content that can help you until the money starts coming in. But don’t rely on them fully because you want your personal and authentic voice to shine through.

One area where many senior newbie marketers get taken advantage of is in thinking they have to buy any and all courses that will teach them the ropes. Before you invest in these, you need to be absorbing as much free information on blogs, as an email subscriber, and in videos.

Then, take time to find out who would be the best person to learn certain marketing methods from, and see how they operate ethically. Pay attention to product launches where you can get courses at a significant discount, too.

Some will tell you that you need to pay for high-ticket coaching where you get advice from them in a one-on-one setting. Don’t take out a second mortgage or spend all of your money on coaching when it’s not a necessity – do it later once you are ready to level up and can afford to reinvest your earnings.

There are some things you have to make sure you’re not splurging on unless you do have the budget to invest in it. Paid advertisements are one. While it’s nice to send a flood of targeted traffic to your site, it’s not necessary if you learn how to optimize your content and get organic visitors.

SEO (search engine optimization) isn’t something you should have to pay for, either. While many buy tools and hire agencies to do this for them, this is something that, if you’re on a budget, you can learn and implement on your own.

In fact, any plugins and themes that are recommended to you are optional, not mandatory for your online success. Consider these luxury items you want to revisit at a later date, not something critical to your ability to earn money online.

Analytics tools that you’ll see being touted as a way to gather data about your niche and demographics are another area where you have free options, like Google’s complimentary analytics data that you can use on your site.

It’s sad to say, but there are many unethical marketers who will prey on senior citizens and their desperation to earn a living online. Because of this, you have to be very protective over yourself and how do you spend your money.

Don’t expect to have everything mapped out on day one, or even the first week. It takes a little bit of time to learn everything you need to know as a solo entrepreneur, and more time to implement it.

Take things slow and make a task list of everything you need to achieve, marking them off one by one until you complete a project. If you are under an immense amount of financial pressure, you can turn to freelance work, or get a job offline in the interim as you learn how to grow an online business. Keep the bigger picture of fighting inflation with an online business top of mind at all times.

There are so many opportunities for seniors these days in the Internet sphere. No longer are you forced to seek a job outside of your home. You can retire in style and still set up a business where you are earning passive income on a steady basis that will supplement your retirement earnings and allow you to live the kind of life that you deserve and want.

If the state of the economy and the future of your personal finances causes you to feel uneasy, it’s better to get a jump start on this career option rather than wait until the inevitable happens and you are forced to deal with the situation in a desperate manner.

Examples of People Who Are Actively Fighting Inflation With an Online Business

This is an excerpt from an article that recently appeared in Time magazine…

At first, getting laid off from her job at a marketing tech firm in June of 2022 was shocking and depressing for Sam Popp, 33, who had also been furloughed from a different company briefly in 2020.

But then she looked around and realized she was in okay shape. She’d saved money during the pandemic. She’d been running a side photography business on weekends that she wanted to spend more time on. And best of all, if she worked for herself, she wouldn’t have to worry about being laid off again.

“What gives me comfort right now is that my well-being doesn’t depend on anyone else but myself,” says Popp, a Manhattan resident who launched a career as a freelance photographer and marketing consultant shortly after getting laid off and says she doesn’t want to go back to the old ways.

Despite the downsides of foregoing a traditional 40-hour-a-week job, more Americans are embracing part-time and freelance work as they emerge from the pandemic era seeking more flexibility in a job market where workers still have the upper hand. The number of people who say they’re working part-time for non-economic reasons—in other words, by choice—reached 21.8 million in May, according to government data released June 2, which is up 5% from a year ago and 15% from a decade ago. The number of people working part-time for economic reasons—3.7 million—has declined over the past year. The ratio of people working part-time voluntarily to those who want more work is nearly six to one, the highest it’s been in two decades, a sign of a strong labor market that is enabling workers to set more flexible hours. U.S. employers added 339,000 jobs to the overall labor market in May, more than analysts had expected.

Some of the rise in part-time workers is driven by Baby Boomers who are still doing some work but are mostly retired. Older workers don’t account for the entirety of the trend, though. “There’s this reevaluation of how people are spending their time,” says Lonnie Golden, an economist at Penn State Abington who studies the part-time workforce. “People are more happy when they choose how to allocate their time, and the things that drive their happiness are recreation and time with friends and family.”

Some weeks, Popp says she works 50 hours and others, she works 20. But it’s the option of setting their own schedules and not working the traditional 9-to-5 job that appeals to Popp, and to so many other people, Golden says. Some workers eschewing traditional jobs because they took on caregiving duties for children or aging parents during the pandemic and don’t want to give up that time, Golden says. In 2021, the amount of time Americans spent caring for household children and adults per day rose 9% and 14%, respectively, from 2019, according to the American Time Use Survey.

The extremely tight labor market has also helped independent workers demand the working conditions and hours they want; there were 10.1 million job openings in April, the Labor Department said on May 31, which means there are nearly two openings for every worker seeking a job.

Rafael Espinal, the executive director of the Freelancers’ Union, says that many people who were laid off during the pandemic, like Popp, took time to reflect on their careers and decided to explore freelance work. Many have found that they can earn more than they did at their traditional jobs, and women and people of color find that they can make greater wage gains because they aren’t going through a boss or HR department to ask for a raise; they can make more money by finding more clients who are willing to pay.

Eric Dai’re, 49, is one person who has found he will be able to get ahead in his career if he’s not a permanent employee. Dai’re uses Instawork, an app that connects business to hourly workers, to find odd jobs as a line cook, a site captain, and a general laborer. His favorite Instawork jobs are at stadiums; he’s taken a road trip from Texas to work at Dodger Stadium and explore Los Angeles, for example and has had gigs at NRG Stadium, home to the Houston Texans. Dai’re is now an Instawork supervisor, and says that employers sometimes ask him to come on full-time after they see how effective he is while running cleanup or setup for events. He’s thinking about taking one of them up on the offer—but so far, no one can match the $60,000 a year or the independent life he has as an Instaworker.

There were 6.7 million “independent professionals” in the U.S. in 2022, up 2.2% from 2021, according to a report from the Freelancers’ Union and Fiverr, a global marketplace for freelancers, which found that a growing share of women are switching from traditional full-time jobs to independent work. About 73% of these independent workers are “highly satisfied” with their work-life balance, according to a survey of 815 skilled workers conducted for the report.

The growth of the flexible workforce even during a time of high inflation suggests that this could be a long-term, permanent shift, says Golden. Workers can choose between finding a more stable job or staying a part of the flexible workforce and cutting back on some expenses. Right now, he says, they appear to be adjusting to higher prices by giving up on spending more, not by giving up their free time.

Of course, there are some notable downsides to being an independent or part-time worker, especially since health insurance and retirement accounts are commonly tied to employment in the U.S. The idea of fighting inflation with an online business is not always a feasible one. And the quality of part-time jobs can vary tremendously based on a worker’s education level.

Some part-time workers are employed by staffing firms and temp agencies in warehouses, construction, and factories, where they make less than full-time employees, are less likely to receive health insurance, and have little guarantee of stability, according to Sally Dworak-Fisher, senior staff attorney of the National Employment Law Project.

For these workers, who have less education than the professional freelancers, the decline of full-time jobs is a dangerous proposition that has led to instability for some. And that doesn’t even take into account the gig workers who make money through apps such as Uber, DoorDash, and Lyft who have long tried to survive off gig work alone and found it a difficult proposition.

But the era of worker power is helping these workers too; both New Jersey and Illinois passed laws in 2023 that make it easier for temporary workers to get hired permanently and that otherwise allow them to complain about dangerous working conditions, after more than a decade of worker advocacy.

Educated workers looking for part-time and freelance work have also seen a few developments that makes the lifestyle a little easier, says Espinal. The passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 created a marketplace where people could buy health insurance. And the Freelancers’ Union, which grew 300% during the pandemic to 500,000 members, has helped pass laws in New York City, Seattle, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles that allow freelancers to reach out to their municipality if they’re not getting paid for their work in a timely fashion.

Of course, flexible work may become less appealing in an economic downturn, and as workers age and have children, they may not be able to resist the appeal of a full-time job with health benefits and paid time off. But many workers are discovering that the flexible workforce allows them to do jobs that wouldn’t exist otherwise. Marnie Kunz, for example, ran her own fitness business until the pandemic shut it down. She panicked and applied for 200 jobs, and didn’t find anything, so went on Fiverr and other sites to work as a freelance writer, helping sites with search engine optimization (SEO) and blogs.

She says she makes the same amount of money as she did before the pandemic, but has a lot more flexibility in her hours. She’s also launched a fitness blog, and can apply her search engine optimization strategies to promote that blog, where she also earns ad revenue. She knows that the role of fitness blogger and SEO consultant isn’t likely one that existed before she made it up out of necessity. Now, she says, she can’t imagine doing anything else. Fighting inflation with an online business can truly be life changing!

I’m Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author, independent publisher, and serial entrepreneur Connie Ragen Green and would love to connect with you. If you’re new to the world of online entrepreneurship please check out my training on how to sell yourself at Sell Yourself and Your Stuff and learn how to gain an unfair advantage when it comes to building a lucrative online business.