THURSDAY, 12 MAY 2016
I just had an insight into my activities in 2006. Perusing the notes of that year it is plain to see, to my great embarrassment, that I wanted to make a quick buck. I obviously fell for the opinion of information vendors that it was easy for anyone to start earning money on the internet without months or years of patience and hard work.
Surely I must have known what the general impression was of get-rich-quick schemes. Why did I fall for it, then? Why – and I have wondered about this a lot over the last ten years – did I not just pick a niche or an interest or a need with a market willing to pay for stuff, and slowly and patiently built up an online asset?
On 27 November 2006 I wrote: “I’ve increasingly come under the impression that I ignore my real strengths because I have until now believed that it will take ‘too long’ to make money from it.” And later a warning: “Beware of going over to the opposite extreme – losing myself for the next few weeks in creative work I would enjoy more, but that won’t necessarily bring in any money.”
Why did I not start building an online business? Why did I not work on a commercial site that could have started generating profit within six months or a year?
The reason, as I’ve discovered, is simple: If I had wanted to work on something for six months or a year before I made any money with it, I would have worked on my own projects. I had temporarily given up on my writing because I thought – or wanted to believe – that I could make money quickly in other ways, to then return to writing, this time with enough money to amongst other things pay someone to proofread my material and perhaps even to cancel some classes and thus own more of my time.
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