Make Things Happen – My story

This motto guides my life. Literally! It’s the one thing I’m sure I will never stop believing in. As I go through life, I have come to realize that stressing over things, as opposed to actually doing them, doesn’t help. I’ve noticed that I manage to get the best out of a situation when I stop over-analyzing and re-thinking things and just get them done.

I don’t know why, but it seems that with Internet Marketing I did the exact opposite. I was making good money from the Internet, even though I didn’t know what meta tags were. Once I started learning about Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization however, everything stopped. Why? Check out what happened…

I had a gaming website focusing on a particular game. I had many visitors per day and a lot of people ended up playing on my server. Then server costs started to pile up and I realized I had to do something about it. A friend suggested I put a couple of ads up, so that maybe that way I could cover at least some of the expenses. At that time I didn’t know anything about Internet Marketing; word of mouth was mainly how I managed to gather all the people on my website and server.

So I added some AdSense from Google and just left it there; waiting to see what will happen. The first month’s income was $94.76. I was amazed! Now I was really curious how the system worked.

Now, in order for me to get money from the ads I added to my site, someone had to pay for them. Except for branding, I couldn’t think of a reason why someone would pay good money for an ad on my site. So I started reading up on ways to improve my ad income, I targeted better ads and spots and eventually had more clicks. Second month’s income was $293.37. What a success! I was able to pay for the server and still keep some pocket money by doing something I adored.

To make a long story short, I managed to make $1,767.91 in one month. Now that even got my father worried! I mean, I was still living at home, theoretically not working (cause let’s face it, doing something you’re so passionate about isn’t exactly considered work) and still making good money? … After I convinced him that I wasn’t a drug dealer, he decided to sponsor me, so I could get whatever I needed to become an expert in the field. Internet Marketing here I come!

I literally bought everything that existed on the Internet at the time, including (but not limited to!) seminars, videos and e-books.

I don’t know why, but after that, the passion I had in the beginning was gone. I wasn’t as motivated, created few new things and did little else but read, read, read. I think now that this hesitation I had was routed in my false notion that I wasn’t ready to compete. Back then, the more I read, the more I found out about people better than me. This just kept me reading, waiting for something magical to happen. It seemed like I knew way more when I was doing “Internet Marketing without a clue™”.

That time is long gone now. Had I known that confidence and action weren’t in the index of any book, electronic or otherwise, things would have been much different now. The key is to act; it’s never too late. At the same time, it’s never too soon for change and improvement.

My whole point is: Stop following what’s happening and Make Things Happen!

What’s your motto?

P.S. This story could have been published a bit later, but hey, it’s never too early to get you thinking about what you want to achieve online, and how long you’ve postponed it! ; )  Hope I helped even a little bit. Angel