Archive for Opinion
Making Money Online – Update
Posted by: | CommentsI have explored a lot of different ways to make money over the last several years. One thing I have learned is that you can make money doing just about anything if you have the drive. Just like all the other websites that offer “Advice” and “Information”, the one thing they don’t offer is how.
The reason they don’t give you full details is because they want to sell you something. I make plenty of money online without having to sell stuff on this website to make money.
My latest venture in making money online is with photography. I have been having more and more time, not because things aren’t going great, but because I have been working to make things easier in what I do online. So I have had time to go back to being a professional photographer as my hobby and passion. Of course, instead of shooting wedding, I have found plenty of money in selling stock photos and to magazines again.I will be keeping my readers updated as the next weeks go by in my work on it.
When you are at the bottom, what do you do now?
Posted by: | CommentsI just had to deal with a person for the last month that was at the bottom of life.
What do I mean at the bottom? I mean financially, emotionally, physically, socially, and mentally at the bottom. She had no job, income, home, car, money, and everything she had in the world was in four suitcases. She has been in this state for more than three years. Going from one place to another living off anyone that would take her in.
She couldn’t have gotten any lower. That being said, what do you do with a person who is that far down? Do you try to help them? Do you not worry about it? Do you just list her as a lost cause?
What if that person has no desire to help herself? No desire to get a job, get any help, or even take care of her own health without someone telling her to do it? This girl was over 45 was diabetic and couldn’t even be responsible enough to take care of her own blood sugar levels without being told.
So the question is “What do you do with a person like that”?
Maybe this post is a vent since I tried to help her. Maybe this post is just disbelief that a person like that exist. Maybe it is just that I can’t understand why someone would not try to help themselves in that state. What ever it is lets look at the mental and emotional reasons which keeps her at the bottom.
Her goals in life consisted of losing herself in an online games/fantasy world, trying to live as a spiritual person, and finding someone to take complete care of her mentally and physically.
While that doesn’t look like a lot let us look at the first one. Her favorite thing to do was to play in the online game/community of “Second Life”. She would go without sleep to play it all night, which resulted in her sleeping in the daytime or not at all. You know how going without any sleep is like I’m sure. She spoke as if “Second Life” was her home and reality was just a fantasy place in which she had to deal with at times. After a couple of weeks of trying to help her I realized that eighty percent of the relationships she talked about was on that game and not in reality. She spoke of getting married, family, fights, and other things as though it was real. When I finally pointed out that she was addicted to the game she flat denied it. She told me it was her escape from the emotional problems and her abusive past, which it was. She was addicted to the game because it provided her with a place to escape, a place to think about instead of facing reality and the mess her life was in at the moment.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think games are bad. I am actually a hardcore gamer, but when it starts to effect reality and your life you really need help. I can still sit and play WOW for hours if I have the time but I also know where the “Log out” button is and I am not afraid to use it. I have over fifty games on my desktop right now and I do love to play but work and reality do have to come first.
Basic needs. What are basic needs? Do you have your basic needs? If you are reading this website and wanting to learn to make money then you probably already are meeting your basic needs.
Basic needs are those things which allow you to function in this society. Here is a list of basic needs: Place to sleep or apt/home, food, income, clothing…
If you have the basic needs met then you can start to work on the rest of your life. She didn’t have the basic needs. She came to me out of a bad situation with none of the basic needs. Her whole world was four suitcases and a netbook. She valued the netbook above everything since it was her way of being on the game. I took her in to get her out of a bad situation which meant the person she was getting away from would not be able to follow and would have done little good to follow her here anyway. He would not have survived long here in St Louis since I know too many people and would have been about to get rid of him fast. Even the basic need of clothing she couldn’t meet because she only had ten pieces.
In an attempt to just improve her clothing situation I was ready to spend some money on her since she is a likely person just a bit confused. Since I buy a lot of things wholesale I could have increased her clothing by a factor of 50 at just a fraction of the retail cost. She refused to even allow me to know her clothing sizes. She wasn’t my size so I couldn’t even give her stuff I didn’t wear. So she was almost naked and didn’t want it to change. What do you do? I offered to buy her clothes without any expectations that she would pay it back, if she just improved her life I would have been happy.
She had no income. So get a job? No. Her excuse was health, clothing, and other reasons which kept her from seeking employment. So I tried to let her work for me doing some graphics and other writing since she was very good with a computer and doing such work. She did the bare minimum I asked, decided to make up her own lists instead of mine, and hurried through everything to either sleep or play her game. Then she decided her health was bad enough to give the excuse she couldn’t look for a job and get SSI at the same time.
Now on top of all this and much more. She had a daughter who is 12 that lives with her ex. Her daughter has problems of course. Her ex is an alcoholic, which isn’t what she was escaping from but a problem. She cared so little about her own daughter that she would rather let her live in a trailer with an alcoholic then be a responsible parent. She also has a son which is almost 30 but has disowned her since she left him with her mother to raise instead of be responsible as she should have been. In my book your kids should and always will come first above everything. There is no excuse to put them second except with your own health.
I try to help people when I can, especially females. The problem is when do you give up? When do you say enough? If the person is at the bottom and they have no desire to help themselves you can’t force it on them. They have to want to help themselves. So when do you quit trying?
The situation I just told you about is very real. The woman is now in another state with her brother since he broke down and took her in now. Even her family has given up trying to help her which is sad.
Now the question is how much are you willing to help yourself with making money? You have the basics, but do you have the drive and sheer will to help yourself with going further? You have seem what the bottom is for someone, so what about yourself? Do you want to make money on the net bad enough to learn and push yourself into finding the right path for you?
Why did I try to help this person you ask? I did because I have always had a soft spot for people at the bottom like she was and still is right now. I grew up so far below the poverty level that poverty looked like being rich to me. I have several siblings which were int he same boat as myself. I have watched each of them over the years (since I am the youngest) go up and down. I have some that are at the level I am now and other which have always been at the bottom and even after 50 plus years are still there and will never change.
I can post advice, tips, tricks, helpful information, and all kinds of stuff to help you reach your goal. What all the other blogs online and my blog can NOT do is make you put forth the effort and the work to succeed. Remember that old saying, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for one day, teach him to fish and you feed him for life”? Well, myself and others are teaching you to fish, if you don’t want to learn then what do we do then?
Finding Your Talent
Posted by: | CommentsEveryone of us has a talent or more than one talent. It is part of what makes us who we are inside.
Everyone has a talent for making money as well. Okay, so your talent may not be in the stock market, but you do have a talent somewhere to make money. The goal is to find that talent. Find it and then explore it to the best you can so you can use it to make money for yourself and family.
One of my talents for making money is writing. One of the major passions in life has been to write, I didn’t care if I made money or not but writing was something I had to do. It wasn’t for a long time that I actually started making money writing. I didn’t really plan on it then, it just happened out of my love for writing.
While not everyone is a writer and if you aren’t you shouldn’t try to force yourself to become one, you do have a talent somewhere. I know of people with talents you would think of and they make money doing it. One of the best talents is a creative talent. A creative talent is often thought of as writing, art, singing, and such. There is more to it than that, do you have a knack for being able to find rare car parts? A friend of mine does and he uses it to make money on the internet daily. Actually he lives off his income from it now.
Another one of my friends has the talent of composing music, he now makes a living doing it.
Want a weirder talent? I have a friend and she makes her living as a Pro Domme. What the hell is a Pro Domme you ask? She gets paid by the hour to tie up males naked and flog and torture them. Yes, guys (often CEOs, managers, doctors, lawyers, etc…) pay her a lot of money to do just that. You think it is prostitution? Actually, there is no sex involved and she is never even naked. She has a 100% legal business doing this job. She normally gets paid $200-$800 per hour. Do I pretend to understand why someone would pay her to do this, not one bit. She does make well into the $500K range a year though.
The point is everyone has a talent. We all have a talent to make money we just have to find it. So the question I pose to my readers is “What is your talent?”
Multiple Streams on Income
Posted by: | CommentsSo do you have multiple streams of income? How many sources of income do you have?
I have believed in multiple streams of income for a long time. Even if the streams makes just ten dollars a month it is an income. The less you have to do for that income makes it even better.
What are good streams of income? They are usually things that once you do them you don’t have to mess with them again or very little.
Writing books is a good example of a stream of income that once you create it you don’t have to deal with it again. You don’t have to write a novel but just a short ebook.
How many streams of income can you list?
How Creative are You?
Posted by: | CommentsHow creative are you? Do you have an artistic side? Do you love to create and find new things to create and ways to make other things better?
Being creative is the key to being self employed and making money online. If you want to make it in being self employed you have to always be looking for the next creative thing to make money from.
Can you learn to be creative? Yes! You can always look around for classes on drawing, writing, photography, and similar things that will help the creative juice in your start to flow and once it starts just let it run wild and go for it.
I have been a writer for over twenty years now. One thing I have used it for is to be creative in building websites and finding names that match them well. A website name should “ring” out and be remembered. If it is easy to remember than people will come back more.
Be creative and if you aren’t learn how. Survival being self employed is how creative you are.
Sweet Dreams
Posted by: | CommentsThe one thing I have learned in this world is that song “Sweet Dreams” hold more true than most people will admit.
We live in a world of users, abusers, and those wanting used and abused.
Most of the people you encounter day to day is one of them. This being said it really comes down to being honest with yourself and what you really want out of life. If a 9-5 job just making ends meet is fine for you then more power to you. If you want more though, you need to get out of the cycle you are in an go for it.
People will stay in the cycle or rut they are in because they are use to it and comfortable. It doesn’t matter how much they are being used or abused, if they are use to the situation they will stay in it than do anything to get out. For example, I can walk into a Walmart store right now and tell someone that I can teach them how to make more than they are making now and all they have to do is change the situation they are in, how many people would do it? The truth is very few, the ones that have been there the longest wouldn’t even consider it.
They are so use to the abuse and being used they can’t walk away from it. They can’t break free to seek out what they honestly want in life. They are literally trapped with no ability to escape on their own.
Most people think it is their paycheck or money keeping them from changing their life. They give the excuse of family, illness, and many other things. The real truth is that they are scared to death to even try.
You can blame it on anything you want. It still comes down to you and the mental conditioning you have been put through in school, family, and society that has told you how to act, where to work, what to expect in life, and to not try to get any further. That mental conditioning is something you have to break free of otherwise you will never get free.
I just spent about four hours talking with a woman trapped because she is mentally conditioned. She is stuck and wants a better life, the only thing holding her back is herself. She made 50 excuses as to why she can’t walk away and change her life, after four hours she couldn’t justify any excuse for staying. In those four hours I made her step back and take a look at what is going on and her situation. I showed her what is happening to her and why it is. She now is now considering doing what she has been wanting to do for a while. The same thing she gave the me the excuse she would do it in a year. Her saying a year was just her way to see a light at the end of the tunnel to justify staying. Her one year would turn into two, then three, and then twenty years down the road she would be trying to figure out what happened and be so beaten down by the situation she never would have gotten out of the situation she did not want to be in any longer.
You have to do the same thing. You have to break out of that mental conditioning to get where you want to be. The longer you stay and the more excuses you give yourself the more beaten down you will get and then you will break and never get where you want to be.
How much do you procrastinate?
Posted by: | CommentsDo you procrastinate? If you are like most people you do quite a bit. Most people procrastinate to some point.
I was talking to my sister the other day. She is a big procrastinator. She is coming to her end of employment with the USPS and she is not sure what to do now. She has been trying to decide what to do with her life for the last 20 years now and she still has no clue.
She tried college and quit. She tried photography, she quits and starts repeatedly. She even tried taking classes on photography and swore up and down that the professor didn’t know anything about what he was teaching. She tried becoming a pharmacy tech and quit after working it for 3-4 years. She has asked me more than once about becoming a blogger and then she gets to the point of not being interested in it anymore.
She procrastinates about everything including cleaning her own house. Yet she is sure she knows what is best for every one else.
Do you procrastinate as much as she does? If so, it is why you aren’t self employed and making more money.
I know you have heard about learning how not to procrastinate. You have been told tips and ideas to prevent it. The real question is have you decided to change your habits and quit procrastinating? You already know you are the only one that can do it. You already know you won’t change your life to get what you want until you do. So why are you still making excuses?
You have reasons and not excuses? One word for that, bullshit. The biggest excuses I have ever heard.
- I’m waiting for my kids to get older.
- My job doesn’t give me enough time.
- I don’t know how to get started.
- My spouse doesn’t give me time.
- I’m tired all the time.
I have heard them all and so many more I can’t even began to list them all here.
If you want to get started and make it then your social life, dating, sports, friends, kids, relatives, and the rest of the world can’t get in the way. You have to make time for the work to get started and make it.
Every time I read an article on how to get started making money online, investing, becoming self employed I always see the same things. Don’t procrastinate and put the work in. It is like all of us who give advice on this subject is beaten a dead horse. We can keep telling you the same thing over and over. We can hold your hand and show you how, but we are not and can’t make you get off your ass and quit procrastinating. If I could do that I would drive 700 miles and smack my sister.
I might be wrong in my opinion and everything I just said, but I see it this way, I am the one making money online and self employed and you are the one reading an article on procrastinating.
Make Money from Writing
Posted by: | CommentsDo you write? Should you write?
While I love being a writer I always had a lot of trouble with English and spelling in school. Well i shouldn’t say trouble I had a horrible time with it and in, FAIL all the time in it. So if I was so bad in English and writing how did I end up a writer? I always had trouble with it but I loved to tell stories and educate people in new ideas and stuff so I had always dreamed of being a writer.
Since I loved writing so much I needed to make it into a paying gig so I didn’t have to work that 9-5 job. I started out small writing short stories. I love horror and my favorite writer is H.P. Lovecraft considered to be the grandfather of horror. My first published work was short story horror. I got paid less than nothing for it but it made me drive myself even harder.
I now make money writing for companies doing “How to” manuals, SOPs, and other handbooks. I also write my blog posts daily, articles for magazines, and I still write short fiction on a regular basis. What is the point? The point is if you want to make money writing then you can you just have to put forth the effort and have the drive to make it.
Holidays Suck for Making Money
Posted by: | CommentsOne of the things I have noticed over the years is the slow down of the internet on holidays. If you make a lot of money off the internet you will noticed that certain areas of the net tend to slow down while others get more traffic.
The net is like the stock market, it has constant ups and downs which are all related to days of the weeks, holidays, times of year, and other factors. You will have rush hours, lunch hours, sleep hours, and the night owls.
Making money online tends to follow these trends of the net. Regardless what you make money from online you will find that it is never steady minute by minute, day by day, but it will cycle up and down.
That is my opinion anyway as I start this holiday weekend. Happy 4th of July!
Finding the Time to Write
Posted by: | CommentsFinding time to write. Being a professional writer I write in two different ways. The first way is I write for companies which pay me to write about a given subject. While the monetary awards is a bit quicker they are also a bit limited. In other words I don’t get royalties I just get one check. They give me a subject and a deadline and I give them what they want on time and get my check.
The second way I write is for myself. I write fiction, non-fiction, and I pick the subject. It gives me freedom to write what I want when I want and no deadline to restrict me. The bad thing is I am not given a check when I finish I have to sell the work and then hope for money in the end. I will other get royalties but that may take a while.
Why do I write both ways? One way pays the bills, knowing when and where you are going to get a check is nice when you have bills to pay. The bad thing is you can’t always be yourself in your writing you have to limit it to what they want and expect.
The second way is true freedom and creativity in all its form. I can truly be myself and let my thoughts and creativity flow.
Where do I find the time to write? If you enjoy writing you force yourself to find the time. When I worked in retail it was a means to an end. I knew in the end I would be writing all the time and not have to stock shelves, help stupid retarded customers (you have to work in retail to understand that one), and put up with bosses who’s only desire in life is to make more money and kiss ass.
As I saw other very unhappy people around me in the work place I decided to make and force myself to find time to do what I enjoy most which of course was writing. I write because I love to write and be creative. It is the life I dreamed of having and the life I love having.
What did I lose working full time in retail and forcing myself to write? My social life, friends who weren’t worth keeping in the first place, a not so clean house. I may have given up a lot for a time being but now I’m free from a set work schedule, free from typical work crap of a 9-5 job and I’m free from having coworkers try to run over you in an attempt to go up the ladder.
If you really want something bad enough then you will do what it takes to get there. If you find yourself making excuses then you aren’t ready to give up what you have now to get what you want.