Making Money Online: Unplugging to Get Things Done

I updated my Twitter account for the first time in nine days this morning. I didn’t realize it had been that long. I unplugged last week – as in – minimal email interaction, no social networking and no blogging (except for paid gigs).

I did so to hunker down and finish an ebook me and a co-author have been working on. As I said in my post to my Twitter account this morning, at first, it felt strange to unplug like this, then it felt downright exhilarating – freeing! I didn’t miss it at all, which should probably tell me something (ie, social networking is really not for me at all).

I like Twitter because it requires minimal effort.

So, what is the point of this post? Well, that to make money online, you have to be super focused. Let me tell you a snippet of a story which drives home this point. In tomorrow’s post, I’ll go over a few guidelines for unplugging to get things done “the right way” (I did it all wrong).

“I Want to Make Money Online, But . . .”

I was talking to a friend this past weekend about my latest ebook. I was explaining to him what it was all about, how hard I’d been working to get the thing done and how lucrative it was – which is why I was so anxious to get it done.

He was like, “You’ve convinced me to write an ebook; publishing is very profitable.” I said, “Yeah, it is. The writing is easy; the marketing takes tons of time.” And, we kind of left it at that.

Want to Make Money Online? Watch How You Spend Your Time

Later on, he was telling me about a two-hour video he watched online about the 911 commission. Actually, he’d watched two of them. This friend also happens to forward a lot of jokes, inspirational sayings and things of that ilk around. I delete them because I really just don’t have time during the day to devote to these types of things.

The more I listened to my friend explain the videos about 9/11 that he watched, the more I thought to myself, this is why most people never make money online – or achieve the dream of working for themselves. They waste too much time.

Time Is Your Number One, Make-Money-Online Resource

TIME is a precious commodity. As Benjamin Franklin so eloquently said, “If you love life, don’t waste time, for that is what life is made of.” I thought to myself, this guy spends an awful lot of time online but he doesn’t use it productively.

In finishing up this latest ebook, it took every second of my day to get it done. Writing is hard, time-consuming work. It leaves little time for surfing aimlessly, watching YouTube videos or chasing down the latest 9/11 conspiracy theory.

I’ve been self-employed for many years and have earned my living almost completely online the last three years or so. If there’s one piece of advice I would give to those who want to work for themselves and/or make a living online it would be this: look at your computer as an ATM machine.

Don’t stand around simply looking at the key pad (ie, aimlessly surfing). Put in your PIN code (sweat equity) and wait for the dollars to flow out. You’re going to get the PIN wrong plenty of times, but if you keep trying different combinations (ie, different, legitimate, well-thought-out, online business ideas), you will hit upon the right combination.

Then, you can go to that ATM and pull out dollars any time you want.

Written by Yuwanda Black from Inkwell Editorial
Posted on March 2nd, 2009 and filed under Making Money
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