From May 2020 I had to make radical changes to my business. For many years I have been teaching local people in their own homes, as you can see from the early posts on this site right back to 2013.
Over the years though, I had many more requests to teach Affiliate Marketing and Online Business.
So My-Computer-Tuition is now only available Online and the main subject is now starting an online business
Towards the end of 2020, it became obvious to me that thousands of people are going to be affected by Covid, losing jobs and managing on much less income
Free Course
Late last year, having launched a series of articles on the site to help visitors get started. I put the articles in a Free Course for readers to follow, which was to be available by email.
Version ONE was so successful that I put many of the key parts from the course, into articles on the site and I am now preparing VERSION TWO!
The emphasis will be on using the few Free tools available to anyone on the internet. So many courses use premium tools, which have a monthly subscription and this is a potential drain for those on low incomes. I don’t want there to be any barrier to entry.
I will be continuing to work online only. If I can help you with anything you find in “my-computer-tuition.co.uk” please feel free to contact me using the contact form and email. All my regular clients can follow along and of course, my coaching clients can still contact me by phone.
Coaching and Upgraded Course 2021
Towards the end of 2021, I will be preparing to take on new coaching clients and there will be a Paid version of the Starting-an -Online-Business-course available on this site.
If you’ve tried and failed, or set up a website with some success, I’m ready to take you to the next level. There are many ways to earn money online, affiliate marketing has always been my favourite method, always happy to help you make your website take off, with Affiliate Marketing.
To apply, simply email me ( or use the online contact form ) with your progress so far – your website and where you would like to be in 12 months time. If I can help you, we can set up a phone call to discuss.
Sounds ambitious? Many people now work from home, making a great living by selling whatever is in great demand, to a worldwide audience.
Hi, I’m Andrew, I’ve done it and you can too!
Not only selling goods but information too. In the good old days, you had to take a big risk, buying a shop, filling it with goods, advertising and hoping customers would come and buy.
I’ve done that too, sunk all my savings into a store, it did ok, but my online sites earn way more than any brick and mortar store ever could.
The Covid pandemic was a terrible thing, but in closing so many High Street stores, it tips the balance in favor of the online stores, currently enjoying a bonanza of sales.
Now you can open an online shop for virtually nothing, selling ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING. If it doesn’t work, just start again, overnight.
There has never been such a huge opportunity, to make a good business, with so little risk.
Not only that but as your ‘store’ is online, it is location independent. You can live in Malaysia, Australia, Texas ….. anywhere. Work from home can even include moving around in a campervan ( RV ), visiting places on holiday, which I’ve done in the past.
Used correctly social media sites like Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest etc can help you spread the word. Advertising can be targeted precisely at ONLY your most likely prospects.
Ever wondered why Ads seem to pop up and follow you around the net? You’re browsing the internet and suddenly an Ad for something you Googled this morning pops up. Why?
Advertisers know so much about us from our Social Media profiles together with ‘Cookies’ we consent to. From these advertisers are able to ‘retarget’ us knowing it may be something we are interested in.
Learn all these techniques and make your own very profitable Ad campaigns.
Best of all, you can totally automate a lot of the processes that used to take people to operate. Credit card payments are universal, software is cheaply available that displays your products best features. There is no need to stock actual products when you can drop-ship them. You can create a YouTube channel to demonstrate things better than you can in person, as you can compress time, for instance ” and here’s how strong the glue bonds after an hour, I can hang this 100 pound weight from it…. “
In 2020…
Nearly half the world’s population has access to the internet via their smartphone!
That is 4 Billion potential customers !
I had my first success after seeing a Kitchen product on a shopping channel, I built a website promoting these and selling through Amazon as an affiliate. After just 3 months, it was earning £500 ( nearly $700 ) a month in my bank account. That’s with NO experience and following a YouTube video on how to build a website.
I have since built many websites and earned a full-time living for over a decade with them. Follow the articles here on my site to learn how to set up your own site and earn a living online, join the work from home entrepreneurs.
Redundant? Use your time to gain financial freedom
What I can show you is how to market the skills that you have, or services you can provide, online, to target and reach a HUGE audience and create a successful new business. All done online in the comfort of your own home with little or no startup cash!
Building a good website is the key, but a website that cannot be found is no use at all. I show all that is needed to get your website found by the biggest search engine Google to show your potential customers your services.
this is one of my early successes, back when I traveled to my clients houses to give tuition
I don’t have any Skills or Knowledge
Ok no problem, most people have an interest, hobby or knowledge from a previous job – just something you know a little about, or can research into – for example
Fitness and bodybuilding
Car bodywork repairs
Engine repairs
Hairdressing
Basket Weaving
Canoeing
There are Billions of potential customers out there…
harness and build that knowledge and market your way to a full-time income.
When is the best time to start a new business?
Right now….
Things are changing. Commerce for most people, buying and selling used to be a trip to town, shopping. Big companies had huge numbers of representatives, on the road, visiting clients every day, to show their latest products.
The rise of the Internet was inevitable. Even folks with no means of traveling can buy goods online. They can buy from stores physically hundreds of miles away, even in another country.
I ran a TV-based business for many years and rarely went further than the town centre two miles away, a few years later I was ordering French, Spanish, and Italian satellite receivers online and installing them all over the UK.
It has become relatively easy to start a unique business up, there are opportunities everywhere.
Big changes are happening all over the world
Massive corporations like Google, Facebook, Apple hold the real power – DATA.
Manufacturers move their plants to where the labour is cheap. So the traditional JOB is never safe, it could go tomorrow!
Global warming and efforts to stop it are going to change everyday life massively. Electricity generation used to be Coal dominated. Now wind and solar have a part to play.
Technology makes changes more and more rapidly. Businesses need to change quickly, to maintain a competitive advantage. However the bigger the business, the slower they are to change. Small businesses, that see opportunity and act on it, can have a huge advantage.
Online shopping really took off in the years up to 2020.
No one saw Covid coming…
In these uncertain times, even huge, well-established High Street chains and department stores are going under, when no job is safe, the cost of living is rising and the government is imposing Welfare Cuts and public service cuts. It makes sense to think of a plan B
I now make a full-time living working from home. My websites generate enough business to keep me fully occupied. A few years ago, I ran a shop, in a local town. Now I have a lot fewer worries. Imagine you had a new business where…
There is no stock required
You don’t need to turn up 9 to 5 every day
No staff wages
No worries about goods being stolen
No customers complaints to deal with
No shop premises to keep up, insure, light, heat, and protect
the bookkeeping is simple and mainly automatic
I can run my business from ANYWHERE, even when on holiday
I earn money 24 / 7, 52 weeks a year. Even when I’m asleep!
Choose Your Method
Internet Marketing is HUGE, people make a living in so many different ways, here is a list of just a few of the most popular ones.
Online Store
Affiliate Sales
Helping Local Businesses
Blogging
Some are easier than others, all of them require WORK , there is no magic button or magic software that automates everything. Whatever method suits you, you will always be better off long-term than someone with a JOB, who is basically trading time for money.
The Internet is still growing very rapidly buyers are changing from town centre shopping to Online shopping. The trend is set to continue for the foreseeable future, so how can you make money with IM today?
With IM, you do a whole lot of work to get it going but then it will pay you back over weeks, months or even for years, with just a few updates, new products or special offers, which might only take a few hours a month. Imagine , when you reach the point where you have over 1000 visitors a day on your site, a percentage will convert into sales and as the process is totally automatic, you may be on holiday or traveling the world, whilst enjoying a stable and constant income.
How do you learn how to do that?
Sales Models and Platforms
First Pick a Niche and a Suitable Platform to work from
Find something in demand, it could be a product or a service
Discover where that product or service is available online
The following are just a few examples, most of these niche ideas and platforms are explored in more detail in my articles on this blog – see the sitemap in the footer for more details
Amazon FBA (fulfilled by Amazon)
Everyone knows Amazon, heck most of us have credit card details stored there to make it easy to purchase. So a great number of potential customers looking at your Amazon store. But it needs a LOT of upfront cash to buy products and the learning curve is very steep.
Shopify Online Shop
Great shop model, everything is included in your monthly subscription, but all the downside of the traditional brick and mortar business with your products. Lots of cash upfront. Easy to make mistakes with product choice. All the customer service is your work.
Etsy Ecom
Again all the customer service is down to YOU. As is shipping and copyright/trademark products can be an issue. Worse – Etsy is NOT YOUR PROPERTY – you can be kicked off Etsy and lose your entire business for any infringement. Otherwise Etsy can be very profitable.
Products/Print on Demand (POD)
Teespring and Redbubble are great places to start if you have no upfront resources. Just design it – it gets manufactured ONLY when you have an order. Good for arty – designers
Drop Shipping
A model which avoids upfront product purchase costs, but as the majority of goods are made in China, delivery times are a big problem
Copywriting and Content Writing
These services are always in demand, from bloggers and Ad based businesses
Freelance Services
There are many services including Copywriting and Content writing available through freelance sites like Fiverr.
Promotion Platforms
YouTube
A YT channel can be very lucrative in so many markets and it is NOT necessary to show your face when you make a video, many just narrate their videos or even outsource a voice over.
TikTok
This recent phenomenon makes it fairly easy to get a host of followers quickly.
Blogging
More of a traditional approach , build a website with a blog – Get rich Slowly! But, eventually, when you have built a sizeable Blog, it can be very automated, and reliable hands-off income source.
Email Marketing
In some markets, this is by far the best way to go. Build a list and you have virtual income-on-demand !
I hope that has given you a few ideas.
when you’re ready, read the Building a Website group of posts starting with Selecting a Niche
Internet browsing is great fun. It can be educational. But there are many out there whose intentions are less than honest. To protect yourself and your computer from bogus offers, scam emails, viruses, ‘computer worms’ and similar , I can show you the basics and examples of typical scams to stay away from.
Also, who are you dealing with when you find an interesting article or offer? There are tell tale signs if all is not as it should be, find out and beware. At the very least I would suggest you email the website with the tempting offer and check that you get a reply. These days thieves don’t need to break in to steal your cash!
Example email scam email received August 2020
so… what are the tell tale signs that this is a scam. I’m sure you will all have received that tempting offer by some Nigerian government official needing your bank details, it’s a pretty obvious scam and by now you would think it no longer works…. it does, everyday !
I will go through all the points that I see on the email and its source website below, you would of course just delete the email if you suspected it as a scam, having found any one of these tell tale signs
Example 1. Email purporting to be from a trusted source
The Email Address:
First, is the email consistent with what you would expect ? For example one very common scam – this example is from today 27th August – ” We have placed a hold on your Amazon account and all pending orders” where the details in the email point to Amazon.com ( this is very very common since nearly everyone has an Amazon account ) but if you look at the email header it will either be from Amzon.co.uk or similar misspelled name , or like in this case, they actually have not even bothered to hide themselves and written from the following email account
amazon-mataneajg52344@afadnkmyf.online. ( OBVIOUSLY this is not the Amazon official email)
Any professional organisation will have their own domain name in the email address. Eg : info@my-computer-tuition.co.uk or accounts@Amazon.com . What a scammer often does is make it similar enough, so if you’re not being careful, it will look official , like – barclaysbank@mail.com or even kent-police-gov@gmail.co.uk , so easy to overlook, but mail.com and gmail.co.uk are public free email accounts , anyone can open one in minutes and begin scamming people.
Is it Addressed to you specifically?
Second, It would be rare for the scammers to have your name, so if your name is missing…. suspect it . This is really common and you should
NEVER reply to a suspect email, don’t give them a second chance to contact you.
NEVER open any attachment file These may contain spyware or worse
NEVER log in through their link. If you want to check it – use the link you alway use.
EXAMPLE 2: This Scam Email arrived yesterday and shows the two points above perfectly:
Greetings, ( note there is no name here )
We have been asked by our client to make payment to you on their behalf.
Kindly confirm if the details provided are correct.
Thanks in advance,
Kind regards
Anita Merquel Accountant
The addressgiven is in Saudi Arabia ! (I don’t do business there)
The payment is supposed to be for Aircraft parts ( I have nothing to do with Aircraft ) . The Website is an obvious scam, with bad grammar and spelling mistakes all over and NO detail pages – nothing, no parts for sale, no price list, no Directors list, no departments,
The grammar here is terrible, a ten year old could have written this webpage better, “we want assure” , “when use our services” , “after buy with us”, “we gonna support you”, “we don’t want sell ” I don’t think a professional company’s proof reader would fail to spot any of these… perhaps they are too busy giving ” assistence” to their customers , “thinking about it” too long or busy working with their manifacturers – whatever they are .
If still in doubt – investigate further with Google Maps:
This is Google street view of the Address given on the website: as you can see unit 3 doesn’t even have a name above the door. North Aircraft Parts, just don’t exist ! So Don’t take it as read that just because an email comes from an “official looking website” that it is any sort of proof of validity.
Follow the links to their other pages –
Does it look like an official website of a big organisation? Here is the “About” page, which I would expect to be a comprehensive summary of their company’s structure, Details of CEO and major board members, Key Staff, List of Departments, Addresses of HQ and distributed locations….
But what actually is on the About Page, is vague , has very bad grammar and lots of simple errors
This is yet more rubbish put up by the scammers, perhaps a quick scan of the site might convince us its real, but look a bit deeper – would any decent company make so many mistakes? Even if English is not their first language, you can get a proof reader for five dollars or less on fiverr.com to check it.
What to Do when you suspect a Scam
My advice is to simply delete it.
You could forward it to one of the many organisations that try to stop scammers like the National Cyber Security Centre, a government organisation with powers.
but, I am sure they have their hands full and reporting one more – will it be acted on?
What NOT to do – very important , DO NOT click any link that purports to remove you from their list ! All you will achieve is confirmation that you exist, which will make the more determined of scammers try even harder to win.
Keep in touch and gain confidence. Absolute beginners course . Two hour session on your own computer or on a laptop.
Learn some basics and be able to communicate with friends and family. Use the Internet – It’s a giant library with every subject under the sun!
I will travel to you. I work anywhere in Sheffield, Rotherham, Barnsley or Doncaster. Use your own or my computer. You should have internet connection to make full use of the course. I’m happy for you to ask for anything specific or we can follow a basic computer course covering subjects from those shown below. Work at your own pace.
£20 per hour . Free second hour with your first booking.
