Thousands of books and probably millions of articles and advertisements, both in ordinary paper print and on the Internet, extol the benefits and many methods of making money with your computer from a home business. Some of those resources and blandishments describe preferred ways of making great fortunes via your home computer as you sleep through the night. Others, perhaps more realistic in their approaches, paint a picture showing you to be easily supplementing your current income, smiling broadly each time you haul that extra $100 a week off to the bank.

Here, we will deal with neither of those pipe dreams. Bedrock practicality is what this is all about.

Partnering is Vital

O.K. (more on O.K. later…) You have your desktop computer or handy laptop gadget well-oiled and full of good software, some purchased, some downloaded for free from "open source" Web sites, and a not insignificant number of which have been pirated from friends sympathetic to your fiscal circumstances. Your alarm clock is still set on the time you must arise each day to hustle on over to your regular 9 to 5 place of employment, but that situation will be amended satisfactorily once the money comes rolling in through your home computer. As you toil away at your ordinary job, your P.C. will be equally hard at work in its attempts to improve your bottom line, right?

As time moves along, your home business makes beneficial progress. Your "PayPal" account inches upward, not enough to brag about, but at least it is not inching backwards. Impatience can now become a virtue instead of being the handicap it is ordinarily reputed to be. Now is the time for you to decisively put your entire business plan into action, one important detail after another.

You must now get married, settle in with a significant other, make a deal with a girlfriend or boyfriend to move in with you for rent-sharing, or do something of a reasonably similar nature. Your new activity is designed to augment your extra income earning beyond only a potential and into the realm of the practical. There must be two of you plus your computer to accomplish this.

Here’s how that works:

Let’s say that you are short the three bucks you need for enough gasoline to get you to the bank and back again on a joyful deposit run with the $1.80 just now earned from your computer-centered home business. That would be a real problem if it were only you doing the whole deal by yourself. Now, however, you have help handy. Let’s assume that your in-home partner is a guy. Here’s what you would suggest. "Tell you what, buddy, for three bucks I’ll make the bed and wash the dishes, plus worm the cat. O.K.?" Problem solved. Your business charges ahead. Partnering is vital! (…more about that O.K. later)

Selecting a Suitable Product or Product Mix

This is really simple and downright easy to understand, even for those who do not possess much business acumen or formal training in merchandising. If no one wants it, no one can peddle it. If everyone wants it, you may not be able to obtain it. If no one ever heard of it, likely it will be that you never heard of it either. Got the picture?

It would be best to settle on a product or service that you understand. For example, you might have been a Boy Scout who had years of experience helping old ladies get across busy streets (always within properly marked street crossing lanes of course). You would be justified in thinking of that sort of in-depth experience in terms of the products and services it could represent. Can you sell street-crossing services? Probably not. How about street construction products like cement or macadam? Not so much, at least not over the Internet. Street crossing striping paint? Well, that has a bit of a possibility. However, Internet selling caters to individuals, often people very much like you. Probably striping paint would not be enough in demand among the hoi polloi to make it for you. What might be left to consider? How about walking sticks? Now we’re getting somewhere. But you would need to be within a walking stick niche such that your Internet store can stand out over any competitor. Maybe you will have to manufacture walking sticks yourself out in the garage. Walking sticks for old ladies might be painted in soft and pleasing colors, topped with a little compass and a "don’t-drop-it" pink wrist ribbon loop, with a battery-operated claxon horn or a loud bell clamped to the stick close to its top. Aha ! Your extensive Boy Scout experience is finally beginning to pay off.

On the other hand, suppose you had been a serious Girl Scout, with years of experience selling Girl Scout Cookies. Do I have to go into recipes for jalapeno-vanilla-coconut cookies and the like? You get the picture, don’t you? Of course you do. Had I thought otherwise I would have suggested brain surgery or something else.

Professional Assistance

Any wealthy merchant will tell you that their business would never have made it without professional help from certified accountants, sharp attorneys, astute tax experts, and competent clerical and workaday labor. Be assured, you are going to have to avail yourself of that kind of expertise, too, but not right away. Those experts cost real money. What can you do in the meantime as you wait for the big bucks to roll in? As a suggestion – don’t waste your time reading articles like this one. Read some "real stuff" instead. O.K.? (Here comes that "more about O.K. later" stuff…)

From Where Did O.K. Come??

There is a reasonably useful lesson within the answer to that question.

Martin Van Buren was the eighth president of the United States. He was a native of a small village along the Hudson River - Kinderhook, New York. He gained the nickname, "Old Kinderhook" by being both old and a Kinderhook resident. In his 1840’s campaign for the presidency, some of his supporters, the New York Equal Rights Democrats, formed what they named, the "O.K. Democratic Club." The abbreviation, "O.K." (referring to candidate Martin Van Buren) was used on all sorts of political signage, published cartoons, and as shouts of approval for the candidate at political rallies. Earlier than that, there had been a brand of apples grown near to and shipped from Kinderhook, New York. "Old Kinderhook" was shown as the brand name on the apple crates. Often that brand name was shortened to "O.K." such that "O.K. Apples" eventually came to be thought of as "good apples." You have heard the latter expression used approvingly about people, too, "He or she is O.K."

The lesson? Oh, yes! Even though Martin Van Buren never did become a really hot president, and even though Kinderhook, New York, is kind of far from the beaten path, and even though Old Kinderhook Apples are no longer available to those who bake apple pies, and even though none of this "O.K." stuff is not now being peddled on the Internet to anyone’s profit, - O.K. has survived and prospered. That’s an O.K. tale and not a bad lesson.

Now, Where To From Here?

Write lots of articles. Eventually you will become wealthy. In the meantime, you will enjoy yourself and your home business will remain computer-centered and will keep you smiling and happy. Even your partner will smile and be happy, at least as soon as you cease hitting him or her up for gasoline money.

Some More Things, Before I Forget Them

I kind of like that idea of the fancy walking sticks. Implementing that product idea might pose some problems for me. My partner, wife Esther Ann, is completely computer-illiterate. Furthermore, I doubt that she’d spring three bucks for me as gasoline money should I ever get up enough courage to ask for it. Maybe I could bribe her with a fancy walking stick. That idea has some merit, but I will have to think it through. My many bad habits have a way of antagonizing my good buddy, Esther Ann, and I would not want to get whacked on the head with a compass-topped, blazing pink walking stick while working away at improving our thriving home computer business.