Exactly and it wern't easy either. There were times when I thought "you know what, f**k it". But what motivated me more was the fact that I was actually seeing results in earnings and rankings. There is a phase when you are first new and everything takes time, indexing, SERPs, PR etc. During the waiting game in SEO, I usually build backlinks everyday gradually, so when your site has ranked on first page Google, it's get's higher and higher till you hit number1. Sunny
Moral of the story - don't just work hard - work smart. Didn't hurt to understand where the market is. Job vacancies in a down economy was bound to get some traction.