I've always been dreaming about earning more money. Not by getting promotions and pay-rises, but by doing my own thing. When I was in school, I'd spend my lunch money on candy before school, then sell it from my locker at breaktime for a profit (which worked great until someone broke into it and stole everything!). I've tutored students face-to-face and over the net, I've sold advertising on websites and earned a bit selling my own t-shirt designs on Cafepress. I've tried making my own 'How-to...' audio CDs and selling them on auction sites, I did mlm/network marketing for a while too, which is best forgotten..... Once I earned a $100 by clapping my hands for a 60-second musical experiment, and I earned $800 dollars once by taking part in a medical experiment - I still have the scar to prove it! However it's only been the last few months that I've managed to earn a significant, and continuous stream of income from my ventures. Like a lot of people here, I'm doing it with Adsense. I guess the reason for this post is that I don't know anyone else (outside forums such as DP) that thinks like I do. They are all either happy in their day jobs, or moan about them and look for a better job. Even my recent success with Adsense (successful by my standards at least) falls on deaf ears as they really don't understand how, or believe, I'm earning money in my sleep! That's why it's so great to be part of a community here at DP of like-minded people. I guess we are the special ones! Yeah! Here's to us special people! However, even among us here at DP, I still feel that a lot of people don't 'get it'. All I read about on the Adsense forums are content-this, content-that, content, content, content, and they go on and on about writing articles to keep visitors coming back to their sites and the googlebot happy. This all sounds like hard work to me, when surely the dream is to have endless freetime as well as money. Writing content everyday that generates income seems to be heading towards being self-employed which is all very well, but you are limited by your own time. What we should really be doing, as author of "Rich Dad, Poor Dad", Robert Kiyosaki says, is earning an income from other people's time. Blah, blah, blah... Anyway, I'm just hoping I might trigger some discussion on the least time-consuming ways to earn an income, oh and to hear your thoughts on why our off-line friends are so wrapped up working for someone else! My contribution is "online tools" - they sit there on the net, while people come back time and time again to use them - no content writing required!
Hi! I'm so with you man! I'm about to turn 16, so I've been giving my future career and lifestyle a lot of thought. I can't ever imagine working for someone like most people. It's entrepreneurship for me, or living on the street. I'm lucky enough to go to a really good, private school here in South Africa, so if I had to get a job I could get a really good one. But it's a thought that scares me so much that I force myself to read the books like the one you mentioned. The problem is I seem to be very caught up lately in making a "path" for myself in the future, so much that it dominates my life a bit. Is fame something which also drives us (us who are learning and succeeding the ways of ecommerce)? I was thinking about the founders of Digg.com, Last.fm, Google etc and how much I'd love the life they're leading, that sense of great accomplishment, building online communities etc. The weird part of it, as you said, is that other people don't seem to be that worried about it at all, just perfectly happy to go by with their life, working hard to get by, and to die in peace without ever doing anything extraordinary. It drives me crazy, and I'm constantly feeling like I'm wasting my time if I'm not doing something which is beneficial to my future. It's awful and beautiful at the same time. Wow, do our posts look like blog entries or what? Thanks for the post nickr (and well done for your adsense achievements!) ~ kiddo
People like security. Who's goign to start their own business without any guarantee when they KNOW they can make $18 /hr working for someone else? They know the money's going to come at the end of the month. Some people never learn to risk. I've tried getting my mom into this but...she'd never...it's just too risky for her. Which I guess makes sense..to each their own but...you've got to take some risks to succeed.