How the Socrates Theme Makes Retirement Affordable

Like so many Baby Boomers, retirement age snuck up on me. Having spent a good decade as a stay at home Mom, then some years working only part-time, the input into my Social Security account didn't really begin until my late thirties. But no worries - I had all the time in the world, right? Wrong. Next came divorce, financial depletion, followed by serious illness. Fortunately I recovered my health, but it took awhile and the retirement fund wasn't able to grow as anticipated. From reading the news and magazines, I know that many of us are in serious financial shortfall as we enter our sixties and even if we worked hard, Social Security is not going to be enough to live on.

Not wanting to become a burden to my children, I looked around to see what new skill I might learn to supplement my current income and hopefully provide an income stream even after I reach full retirement age to supplement Social Security. One criteria for me was also that it should be something that could continue to produce income even if I became too ill to do the job myself. I had to find something that I could build that could be outsourced to others should I become unable to function in some capacity. (Having been a caregiver for Alzheimer's patients for a number of years, I know firsthand what can happen to even very bright people.)

I narrowed it down to Internet Marketing. My family cringed. Their perception of internet marketing is "get rich quick" schemes that take your money and leave you high and dry. My investigations revealed that there are, indeed, a lot of those, so you have to do a lot of homework, waste some money on things sometimes, and know what you can do and what you absolutely cannot do.

The what I cannot do list was very long for me. Although I'm comfortable with using computers and learning new things on them, the technical aspects of Internet Marketing were so far beyond my comprehension I thought, at first, that maybe I couldn't do it. A few of the training packages I purchased gave me some of the information, but certainly not enough. And most started by saying, "You really need to learn html and how to use Dreamweaver to be successful." Hm. To make my own website I have to learn html. Have you ever looked at a page of html? Hopeless. But a few of the 'IM Gurus' did use WordPress so I began learning how to set up sites using those templates. Then I learned that many templates have coding problems and the Search Engines can't crawl them easily, which, I learned the hard way, means no traffic, no sales, no money.

But I finally found a coaching program that offered down to earth, step by step instructions on every aspect of how to be successful online. They taught me about affiliate marketing and also how to set up an actual e-commerce store. They taught me the secret behind every successful IM'er: long, tedious, hard work building what is called backlinks. That is the nitty gritty of success and what was left OUT of most of the other programs, so of course they didn't work.

But I still had one shortfall: working fulltime and wanting to get sites built quickly, and still not knowing html. WordPress is fabulous, and I found out that I can build my own website with it, but there are so many things to configure, plugins to install, and details you must get right to have a site "rank" in Google (end up on page one in the Search). It would take me 2 hours to build one site and I was getting a little frustrated as it cut down on the time I needed for the most important part: backlinking.

Then my prayers were answered: the Socrates Theme came out and the sales page listed every frustration I was having: building headers, finding backgrounds, making sure the template was coded properly, finding the plugins that allowed me to put in the advertising units. The video showed how to build a site in under ten minutes! Headers: click. Backgrounds: click. Ad units: click, click, click. I bought it. I tried it. It took me 30 minutes, not ten. But that's a lot less than 2 hours!

My retirement years are looking promising now. The code in the Socrates Theme seems very Search Engine friendly as I now have, in one month, 6 new sites on page one of Google! I've made a few sales, am getting AdSense clicks and now that they've upgraded the Socrates Theme to include a sign up form will learn how to build lists and do e-mail marketing!

If you are, like me, a wee bit nervous about your financial future in the silver haired years, consider Internet Marketing now that the Socrates Theme makes it easy to build your own website. Find the right coaching program and jump in! There are plenty of us Boomers on the forums helping each other out.

The author is plugging away evenings and weekends building her Retirement Fund (aka Internet Marketing Business) and is already seeing some success. Because the breakthrough came for her with the offering of the Socrates Theme, she wants everyone to know about it. Socrates Theme has all the wonderful details.