Some people like to tell you that making money from the internet is easy. It’s not. However it’s in their interest to give you a sense of ease because then you are more likely to spend money gaining the knowledge and skills that it takes to make money. It is the whole idea of the magic bullet that drives the “make money online” niche. I don’t believe that the magic bullet exists. Never have. You want to know what I think is the biggest difference between making a fortune online and making nothing? Luck. So much in the world goes on that is totally outside of our control and it these events that can make or break you. Sure you can learn to ride them, but if at the end of the day luck decides to kick you in the knackers then there’s little you can do. With all the wishing, will and skill in the world, we can at the end of the day only piss with the dicks we’ve got.
So I’m not trying to put you on a downer here, I’m just being honest. There are some very talented people online who will never make any real money because no matter what decisions they make luck will swing in the other direction. Hell, in the last few weeks luck has dealt me some wonderful blows.
For a start Microsoft took a decision out of the blue to alter their Hotmail/Windows Live Mail product. That change (totally out of my control) renders my biggest selling software product useless and hits my income to the tune of 25% a month. Overnight. Income source gone. This is fate some might say, but it is luck that it just so happens to occur at a time when marketing budgets (and hence advertising income) is getting hit as well.
Next there is the political situation in Thailand. Again there is nothing I can do to have influence over this. I can optimise my sites and hold number 1 positions for various keywords BUT if Thailand becomes a leper country then there is nothing I do can make people interested in Thai property. Wham, another income stream gone!
These sorts of fluctuations go on all the time and it is why I diversified my income so much over the last 3 years. As one goes I pick up somewhere else but a bit like the Titanic, when so many water tight compartments get hit at once there is a serious chance of sinking. And this is exactly what I face at the moment. After several years of gut busting, traffic boosting (my traffic is ever on the up and up) work I find myself in a position when I’m becoming ever more reliant on Adsense again. Earning thousands of dollars a month with Adsense is nice but I’d never want to rely on it as my only income. It hurts. It hurts my pride, but most of all it hurts my family. This is not the end of the world, between my affiliate activities and a couple of pay-per-click systems I am still making a very liveable wage. My problem and the one that may end up meaning I duck back into paid employment for a little while is that I now know that I can no longer afford to lose 1 more major source of income. Luck has dictated that I lose any of the “give” that running my business has afforded me up until now. I will of course be working extra hard to open up some new doors but at the end of the day I have the deep down feeling that what will happen is now firmly out of my hands.
This is not supposed to be a woe is me, everybody feel sorry for me post. No matter what happens I will always feel myself lucky to have had the opportunity to do what I’ve done. I just wanted to give people some idea of what the other side of this full time income from the internet can mean, sometimes it’s a little bit stressful!