Using Money Consciousness to Fuel Your Internet Marketing
by Stephan Miller
I remember when I read the "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze" by William Saroyan. I knew I had to become a writer. It inspired me. It changed my life for years. Of course, I was twelve then and a lot of things did this. But I stuck with it. Every book that I found about writing, I devoured. Everything I saw had possibilites as a story. The books I read fed my interest and in turn I wrote a lot. Did I publish anything? No. The writing was an end in itself and was gradually put on the back burner when other things like making a living became more important.
I also loved to program. To have an idea, write a few lines of code, and watch it come alive on the computer screen. It was creation. But after a while, I realized that I could only write so many "Hello World" programs before I became really bored. I wanted to create something useful, something no one else had written before, not just useless practice programs. The problem: I had no idea what to write. This interest also got moved into the background.
How did I bring these two interests back to life? With a catalyst, the thirst for freedom. I did not like what I was doing for a living. I woke up one day and thought, "Would I be doing this if I wasn't getting paid for it?" Definitely not. It was a big awakening, even though the question seemed so simple. Ask this about your own job if you are still working a normal 9-to-5 and see what you come up with. And be truthful. You might be surprised.
But this was not enough to get me writing and programming again. I needed what I have heard called "money consciousness." Is this a zen thing? Not really. What it involves is being in a state of mind where everything you see everyday suggests an idea that you can make money with. Believe me ideas are everywhere. You just have to train yourself to look for them first.
And how do you go about this? Read. Read all the books possible on making money and creativity that you can find. Not so much to learn, because that will come, but to put yourself in the right state of mind.
How many of you watched Top Gun when you were younger and wanted to become a fighter pilot or Young Guns and wished you were Billy the Kid. Well, this process works the same way. Just because you are no longer a kid doesn't mean you won't be greatly infleunced by what you watch or read for entertainment. As you begin reading books on internet marketing, the biographies of great entreprenuers, and articles on making money your mind will tend turn in a money making direction. Gradually, day to day problems that used to be just nuisances will become gold mines if you can only come up with a solution and package it for sale. Fruitless internet searches will become possibilities. How? Because you will know that others are searching for the same things and not finding them just like you are. You just have to build the site and wait for them to come.
Here is where your past hobbies, interests, and advocations will come into play. You can use them to put your newly found "Midas Touch" into action. I did this with programming when I wrote Hotbid. I did this with writing when I realized that I had ideas I could sell if only I could put them into words. And finally I did. The fact that I could make money doing what I loved was heaven after working at so many jobs I hated. The fact that I had no boss was an added bonus. And everytime I feel my drive lagging I pick up one of those books that I have read two or three times already and before long, the thirst for financial freedom returns and new money making ideas fall from the sky.
So the key to turning your interests into cash is to gear your thoughts toward money. An artist might look at beautiful landscape and see a painting, a botanist would see a research project, while you look at it and see a new resort. One way to do this is devour any book on making money that you can find. Then use your hobbies and interests as the vehicle to make money using the thirst for financial freedom as fuel.
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Stephan Miller is a ebay seller, freelance programmer,
writer, and webmaster at
http://www.profit-ware.com
Home of Hotbid Auction Market Analyzer
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