Motivational

Make Things Happen – My story

make things happen

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

About the author

Angel

14 Comments

  • If you just make things happen then you’ll have more time to think about how to fix any mistakes that happened along the way and will be able to correct them sooner.

    If you think too much ahead of time, you’re wasting valuable time and might scare yourself into never taking action, therefore, never learning and improving yourself.

    What do you think?

    • That’s exactly what happened to me. The longer I waited to start something, the more I got afraid that it will not become a success when I would start it.
      And that’s the real problem.

  • You have great stories to tell, and tbh, I wanna get more details of the story of someone who -to an extent- succeeded in squeezing the lemon called Internet, for money! :)
    Give us more!

  • Great story. I guess this is just a phase that everyone has to pass in order to succeed to what they do.

    Most people in our field have a 4-5 years period that just read or work hard without any result, but I guess that’s the price you have to pay in order to make money when you sleep ;)

  • Hi Angel, guess who?
    I love your story and you know it, looks like that my “The Three Hands Theory” is working! Soon, the up-searching First-Category hand might soon discover something worthy! I’m dying to hear IT!
    By the way, have you seen my comments on Lydia’s article?
    By the way #2, how are you doing on the Heidelberg project? No sweat, but let’s see an Abstract some time not too far in the future.
    Procol

  • It doesn’t matter how good a person is or thinks he/she is, there will always be better and more experienced people than us in the blogging world. It’s a learning step for us.

  • Angel, really enjoyed hearing your story. The circumstances that drew you in seem so accidental in retrospect. I started getting really interested in how the Internet works when I launched by blog . . . and heard crickets. Still learning. Interesting that you went through a period of hesitation and self doubt. I like that in people. :)

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