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Basically I have plan right in front of me that could potentially boost me up to $500/day very easily. It's RIGHT THERE. My list of great ideas is huge. I can succeed beyond the income of the average worker, fully realize the "American Dream" in a couple years of high profit, reinvest everything in real estate and other less risky ventures, live off the rent/interest/etc and enjoy life for the rest of it.
But, I'm not motivated. Right now I'm living an easy life, spoiled by my 'early success' and I know I should be doing more. Yes, I should work my ass off right now while the good is still good. Yes later it will be harder. Yes things could tank over just as it did 7 months ago. Yes, yes, yes. I know.
I know I won't get too much sympathy fom my plight, but if you (think you) have the key to your financial independence, and you're not doing what you should to get there, what's the freaking deal with that!?!?...
We have talked before.
"reinvest everything in real estate and other less risky ventures, live off the rent/interest/etc and enjoy life for the rest of it."
Well I am back in Spain for the winter. It takes a few years to do as you want, but stick at it and it is realisable ;)
I have been working 80-100 hour weeks for 10 years, but am keeping myself going because I know that continuing to work will allow me to enjoy a life of leisure very soon. I surround myself with posters of my heros, motivational quotations etc. etc. Find out what motivates you and keep reminding yourself that winners sacrifice short term pleasures for long term success, whereas the average Joe (do you want to be an 'average Joe'?) do not have the tenacity or willpower to sacrifice short-term pleasures for long term happiness. From what you've written, you've done well before, so I'm sure you can motivate yourself to get your new venture going.
Turn up the tedium level a little. Having an interesting life is nice -- for a while -- but in order to accomplish anything worthwhile you need solitude and the willingness to work long and hard. At least for periods.
Get excited about your project. Research it to death and use some motivational tools to get yourself pumped up - Anthony Robbins, Guy Kawasaki, Napoleon Hill, "Challenge" posters... Whatever works for you.
Keep in mind that the whole free traffic/affiliate marketing business model could be dead in five years, and you could be left with negligible revenues and no marketable job skills. This is what really keeps me going. I figure I have to earn enough to retire on before everything evaporates. I'm not going back to Cobol programming, LOL.
P.S. Here's one more great tip to keep you working hard: Get some dependants. I'm earning for four, and failure is not an option.
You should get over it or you'll be lost.
The biggest danger is you already earning quite a lot of money - you think there is no motive to make more.
At this period we all think - "What am I doing?"
"Why am I wasting my life for such crap?" and so on.
Just know - you are not alone.
I dont think cubicle job will help - too late.
You should find REAL motive -
build (buy with mortgage) a BIG house NOW, buy a nice car -
make yourself feel lack of money but being secure meanwile.
Good luck.
As jomaxx mentioned having babies to feed may make the difference. I know that if I had dependants I would be working 18 hours a day 7 days a week for a long time.
Maybe set yourself some barely achievable goals and go for them :)
There's a sense of accomplishment from crossing off things on your todo list, not to mention you know that each item is important rather than just spinning your wheels.
Sean
Maybe you've realised there's more to life than making money.
Very much so true. As far as a job goes, building sites is something I enjoy doing, but I can't say that it's my passion, and being able to work whenever and wherever doesn't give you a sense of structure or stability. It's still a 'job'. Albeit a very nice one, it needs to be done and looked at as such.
The money being taken out of the equation, deep down I'm still struggling to find the one thing to give life purpose. I've looked into becoming, among other things with more human touch, a part time masseuse...go figure. But those questions are probably a bit off topic here at WebmasterWorld... unless that M is for Massage... :)
But luckily the beauty of this business is we dont have to work everyday - many days i just read/surf and not in the mood to even check the stats. But the occasional wave of enthusiasm is what keeps my business going :)
1. I put one of my biggest monthly checks directly into a savings account that I pretend isn't really there unless emergencies happen
2. I got life insurance.
3. I max out a SEP IRA every year (which has a great tax benefit) and I get my brokerage to automatically deduct an estimated amount from my account each month towards this.
4. I get my brokerage also to automatically deduct an amount towards a mutual fund investment.
5. The last few months I have been buying stock each month. This is new for me, so I am stil getting my feet wet and going slow, but it gets some money out of my bank account, and so far, I am doing quite well.
6. I bought a house and I am overpaying my mortgage every month. Even if you aren't ready to "settle down" in this way, you can buy rental properties, pay to have someone else manage them, and generate a modest positive cash flow while building equity too.
It can be tempting to just build up a wad of cash, but for me, seeing that my checking account is getting low makes me feel somewhat more "normal" like my peers and gives me that "working person's" ethic that keeps my motivation high. I have built up a pretty good safety net of money too--it's just spread out and in places where it's hard to see/get.
Good Luck!
Feelings of avoidance and aversion are sometimes misguided but often profound.
But what comes with that is that you have no direction to move towards to, only what you moved away from. Which means you have about 359 degrees of directions that you can get lost at.
If I set some goal like owning houses so I can move my income away from the fickleness of internet, that would give sense and purpose to work harder. However, back to the original issue, there is more to life than money. Until I find that other goal that perhaps money would help much to acomplish, having money for money's sake beyond what I need to live day to day confortably, is just not enough...
I've ran away from pain, but now I'm at this center point trying to figure out where to run to for pleasure. I guess I wasn't kidding when I said this was the ramblings of a 'lost' AM'er...
1. Soul - final destination abbey or monastery in Tibet. Lot of examples of really motivated and sucessful people got lost in that direction.
2. Love and family - this one I choosed 10 years ago. I have 2 kids and my beautiful wife to support. I have those question you asked yourself several times a day but I could'not allow myself even relax a bit in some night club.
3. Pure money. Selfish work for making bank account bigger. Nothing more exept this. Motivation in making money as a sport. You can arrange nice life around this direction - big plasma TV, huge house somewhere in California ( can I advice to go on Tenereife? ).
Lot of people in western world would choose this direction, i think.
4. Pure pleasure - little bit of alochol, a bit of "whit" or "got hi", changing girlfriend every night. Ohh, how I would wish all of that. :) But we all know where this road ends.
As some chinese said:"In your life you should try everything but keep only the best one"
We have basically no way to escape trying all of that to choose and become what we will become.
I also have major problems with motivation, but as one poster mentioned I just take a couple days off to surf and forget about the webstats. That always helps.
I think it's tough to run a good one man operation without getting burnt out. On the flip side, a helper will never really do the work in the way you need it done. This will just waste money and time, and for me time is much more valuable since I can never get it back!
You might want to consider renting a small office space somewhere so you can get away from home and go to a place to actually WORK! it's a small price to pay for productivity.
Best of luck, and more importantly: ENJOY THE REST OF YOUR TRIP! :)
Pete
If we are gonna really learn to soar, we have to know ourselves before we can know our crafts. I realized that if I was going to take it higher in my own life, I was going to to have spend time not just with what I do, but with who I am. Really, that's a lot harder. Well, at least for me it was trying to discover who I was and being comfortable with it...a lot harder than making money on the Internet. And, yet, I knew that was the move from success to great success. That was the edge I'd have to pass.
That edge in each of our lives...between success and significance. That subtle edge. Between being the best IN the world....and being the best for the world.
Not an easy shift...and every time I'd lose faith that I would never be able to make it, I'd meet someone who has..and they'd serve as a beacon to show me that it was possible.
I think such a person on his way is rfung.
Take the words of Meriwether Lewis, one of the men who discovered the American West under extreme odds. On his thirty-first birthday, Lewis wrote, in a famous passage, "This day I completed my thirty first year...I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little indeed, to further that happiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended. He resolved: "In the future, to live for mankind, as I have heretofore lived for myself."
Sometimes we need to stop and think about what life really is about. Sad to say, I don't know of any successful/rich businessman who lived his life in pure joy. Can you name one? I find it funny how today's celebrities are committing suicide, feeling depressed. What does everyone want in life? They'll say money, but what they really meant was time and purpose.
I was clearly sent to rock.
Don't think that real estate is any less fickle than the internet
True, but if we work hard the next year or two, the time may be right for some buying opportunities:
[money.cnn.com...]
Maybe you don't really believe that extra work will generate that extra money.
I suppose that's always true with any new website you put out, but the above struck a chord. In a way, it does reflect the headline of this thread - afraid of success, or failure...
I'm still trying to get that 100/day...
I closed up and sold everything (after new business venture was destroyed by a wrong choice of partner).
Sat back and thought what do I really want ot do with my life? What do I enjoy doing that pays good monay and is not like work? After considering gigolo and passing on that idea (j/k) I went back to thinking about what I enjoyed and wanted to do when I was 18, fresh out of school and full of enthusiasm.
And so I moved to Thailand and now I have been here 3 months and love it, there are so many more opportunities here for me and life is enjoyable.
Come over and take a look, Asia is so different to what I expected, and for the first time in many years I am happy and content with life.
Dave.
Come over and take a look, Asia is so different to what I expected, and for the first time in many years I am happy and content with life.
Asia is in my books for next year. It's one of my whimsical goals to spend a month in China learning martial arts and Chinese, then spend 2 months losing all the muscle I won laying on a hut by the beach in Thailand(working as well of course) before I head back to US for my brother's graduation party.
I've read in many a book about wealth that if you acquire it without purpose you are just as lost as when you didn't have it!
So very true. It goes back to purpose in life. I'll have to think deep and hard about that.
