Go to your insurance guy, to your dentist, to other businesses around where you live. Propose to them the following: I can bring you leads given my online marketing skills. Propose to make them lenses, properly keyworded and to write and publish articles for them. Or to pay $x per lead that comes from the lenses and articles you write.

Obviously, you'd have to gain their trust. So, if you get decent traffic on your articles and lenses, use that. Also, you'd need to know how much is the life time value of one customer, how much a customer is worth to them.

Dear Dentist: Do you remember how you got me to come to your office and how much you paid for that campaign? And you've made $x. I can get you people like me. I can create a web marketing campaign that will get you tons of leads. Surely $2500 for one hundred leads out of which 1 will convert and stay with you 7 years, coming to your office 2-5 times a year is worth that $2,500 to you. Well, since you've been my dentist for 7 years, I'll give you that for $1750.
Something like that.
You have to do some homework, you have to be gutsy. And you have to work.
You could also create a site that's a directory of local businesses. Then you propose to them that for $50 they can have a 50 word ad on your site for one year.
You'll have a hard time with the first ones and you have to create the site first. And you'll have to convince them that you know how to promote the site.

Thank you for your suggestions. I always appreciate them. I'm with you about the $3k a month taking surveys; I'm actually signed up with several survey companies and I haven't made anything yet because most of the time I don't qualify to take the survey after completing the initial questions and one of the survey companies has never sent me anything. If there is someone legitimately making $3k a month taking surveys I wish they'd let me in on it.

Wouldn't it be great if you could find someone to underwrite you in this venture? Takes time, takes some people more time. Can you get a part time interim job? There are things that people do, like writing articles. If you have technical savvy, you can put up websites. Writing jobs online don't seem to pay very well. If you go out into your community and offer your services, you might do better. You can make a few bucks taking surveys, certainly enough to pay for WA. Some people say they earn $3K a month taking surveys. I don't believe that unless they are chosen for focus groups, but you can make some money.

I dropped back and punted today. Went to the search window and typed in Articles. Sent me to EzineWriter's 3 Article tutorials and I worked through those. Also grabbed a Tutorial for nubies from klrider Nubie Jump Start Platnum and implemented that. We sound like were in the same boat although you may be a bit further down the road than I am. I was surprised how many really nice WealthyAffiliate type URLs are available. Now to drive some traffic.

Thanks for being the first to believe in my idea. Here's some gold for you :-)