Mike Filsaime CANNOT Make You Money!

First off, let me just say that it was a rather slow week as far as learning and development goes. My full time job has taken over my life, and I am looking forward to August, when I will finally be done with it! The whole experience has revealed to me how badly I need to achieve my $200 a day goal before graduation. I *hate* being in the same place for seven hours at a time, working for somebody else.

With that said, I did have an interesting conversation with my friend's father today. We got to talking about what we plan to do if/when the economy collapses. I personally will be planning on my websites to keep me afloat. Since the web is international and I already have a few customers from Australia (their economy is supposed to be entering a boom right about now), I should be good. Granted, I only have one money maker so far and it's only an average of $15 a day, but I have plans... :-)
His plan was to head off to Alaska and live off the land for a while, until things get better.

We started wondering about how our fellow Americans would fare. Our guess? Not too well. See, one of the scariest developments I've seen in the last decade or so is the growth and entrenchment of the "social security mindset." This is like the bastard child of the "job mindset" and the "lottery mindset." It denies individual responsibility and places the expectation for one's income on the shoulders of someone else.

The social security mindset sounds a bit like this:
"I have an inalienable right to all the resources I need to live comfortably. Therefore if the economy goes bad, it is the government's duty to ensure that I get some sort of paycheck."

This thinking is deadly to success. Yet I think it's this very mindset, or at least a similar one, that drives some people to purchase e-book after e-book in hopes of finding "the golden ticket." How many advertisements have you seen so far claiming that so-and-so will do all the work for you, and that all you have to do is sit back and reap the rewards?

There is one person responsible for your success or failure: you. I don't care where you are or what you've been through. Whether you succeed or fail is wholly contingent on your own actions.

Do you want to know the secret to success?

Make a goal.
Plan a way to achieve that goal.
Remove every obstacle between you and your goal, one at a time, until you have reached the goal.

Mike Filsaime cannot make you rich. Reed Floren cannot make you rich. Jonathan Budd, Eben Pagan, Yanik Silver... none of these people can make you rich. Only YOU can make you rich.

My friend, this is one reason why so many fail. If you sit around waiting for a boat to take you away to Never Never Land, you'll be waiting forever! You have to swim yourself.

When I began trying to make money online, I did not know PHP. I did not know SQL. I did know HTML. I also knew that some of these MySpace adding 'sites were making money hand over fist. I knew that if I wanted to make one, I needed to learn PHP and SQL. I bought "PHP and MySQL for Dummies" and I read (most of) it. I bought some web space and a domain. I made the website, FriendBlastr. I promoted it hardcore, and after not having much success I figured out that my obstacle at that point was inefficiency. So I started promoting my website to people who had influence over more people than I did. That's when I finally began making money. I saw where I wanted to go. I put my head down and did what I knew it took to get there.

I did NOT buy ebooks on the subject.
I did NOT get knocked off course when people started telling me I'd never make any money because the market was already too flooded. (I knew I could provide quality my competitors couldn't.)
I did NOT get distracted by the first "Get rich online" scheme to come my way.

I removed obstacles, one at a time, and I reached my goal.

My obstacle right now?

Not enough sources of income, not enough time to maintain more.

Solution?

Begin more and outsource the marketing so I can afford to keep up on the maintenance. First with my experimental layouts 'site (it'll bring more traffic than cold cash, but traffic is GREAT currency on the web... just ask MySpace and Facebook), then my topsites, then... my other ideas. :-)

This is my method. This is what works for me.
I hope it works for you too.

Good luck with your ventures.