Near the bottom of the article, though, it struck me that the same advice he gives in the article works well for dealing with disappointment:

If any of this makes you mad, that’s a step in the right direction. Anger is a higher level of consciousness than apathy, so it’s a lot better than being numb all the time. Any emotion — even confusion — is better than apathy. If you work through your feelings instead of repressing them, you’ll soon emerge on the doorstep of courage. And when that happens, you’ll have the will to actually do something about your situation and start living like the powerful human being you were meant to be instead of the domesticated pet you’ve been trained to be.

This is great advice. Instead of just letting the disappointments and stresses of life kick our butts, we need to use them as motivation to move forward. Yes, it’s incredibly difficult to change the habits that have gotten us entrenched in bad situations, but if we’re able to channel that emotion, that discontent, that extreme discomfort, into something useful, there are tremendous strides to be made in success, satisfaction, and happiness.

I know a lot of bloggers will answer that they would do it for free or that it’s a a labor of love, etc. I don’t have any problem with this idea at all. Honestly, much of my blogging has been more of a cathartic, networking experience rather than an outright attempt to make money.

Yes, I make a few bucks from this blog, but not nearly enough to live off of. With that said, though, how many of you are making any kind of money from blogging? Maybe I should start another survey to find out. I think there are probably many bloggers out there who are making some money from their blog even if it isn’t doing away with the need for the day job.

In his article, Mark speculates that there are probably more people who have won more than $25,000 from lotteries than there are making more than $25,000 per year from blogging. I wonder if this is true. Anyone care to admit to being a part of this elite crowd?

If you’re interested in making a bid on a well-developed, very professional blog, then stop by and check out the impressive stats in the post linked above. This is a great opportunity to buy into a blog that is just beginning on it’s journey to success. There is already a significant amount of traffic and income, as well as a good number of RSS subscribers. With a little more time and effort, this blog has the potential to become a full time job with full time income.

Good luck to Adnan in his further adventures. I’m sure he’ll do well regardless of the path he chooses in life. Here’s to you, mate!

Maki has written this article in response to a post by famed SEO guy, Jim Westergren, who has shut down a successful web business in order to pursue his dream of creative writing. Why did he do it?

Jim was making a ton of money online, the kind of money we all dream of. At it’s peak earlier this year, he was bringing in tens of thousands of dollars per month. Amazing, huh? A lot of those who follow his blog were shocked and saddened that he would leave the world of SEO and just drop his whole business. It does seem shocking, given the amount of income and the success of the business.

The reasons he is doing this are many. The primary reason, however, is because he wants to write fiction. He didn’t start out in SEO for the sake of the business, he started doing it because it held the promise of making him enough money to write. It seems that the business then took over his life. At some point in the last couple of months, he decided to throw in the towel.

This is a great story and provides some valuable lessons for us. One is that it’s possible to be incredibly successful in internet business with very little investment other than your time and energy. This has been proven over and over again and will be demonstrated many times more in the future.

Another lesson is more of a cautionary warning: it’s very easy to get overwhelmed by the demands of a business that you create. Like traditional offline small businesses, online businesses tend to expand in such a way that they can easily take over your life and run you rather than the other way around. It sounds like this is what happened to Jim.

His business began consuming more and more of his time until it just burned him out. He knew that this wasn’t what he wanted to be doing with his life. In the end, the only solution he found tenable was to divest himself of the entire thing by shutting down the business completely.

Several commenters on his blog suggested he outsource the day to day business. This would allow him more time to pursue his own interests. This sounds like a good idea on the surface. Unfortunately, things had gotten to a point where he found this to not be a workable solution. Maybe if he’d tried this earlier on it would have worked out.

That lesson is an important one for us to remember. Yes, there are a bunch of success stories out there where people have created one man internet empires. There are many more stories, though, of people who experienced some early success, but then burned out before really hitting their stride.

So, what do we learn from this? The lesson I take away is that we should be keeping our life goals in mind as we continue our efforts to be successful in our online endeavors. We should be thinking about what we really want out of life, how we want to live. That should be the goal rather than some arbitrary dollar amount. The monthly income goal that we establish is only to allow us to have that lifestyle, right?

Now, we have to differentiate, as Mark does in his video, between making a small amount and making a living off of the internet. Mark is specifically talking about the latter. As he notes, it’s not terribly difficult to make enough to pay for your hosting, for instance. Things get much harder when you try to push it further than that.

Mark is contending that it takes a special type of person to push it far enough to make that much money, to be a real internet entrepreneur. Most people just don’t have what it takes. It’s clear that some of the qualities of entrepreneurs in the offline world are also needed to succeed in online business.

Internet marketers and other internet business types need to have persistence above all to stick with it through the early trials. In the video, Mark mentions making it past the first year as a good first goal. I have to agree, although, FreshBlogger hasn’t been around for quite a year yet (give it another week!), that the first year is hardest for many reasons.

Will sticking it out for a year guarantee success? Hardly. It definitely takes a lot of hard work and determination to make enough money online to quit your day job. Even though, theoretically, anyone can do it, not everyone can do it. If you don’t understand the distinction, then consider this: Anyone can buy a carpenter’s tools, but not everyone can build a beautiful desk or cabinet using those tools.

The same can be said for internet businesses. The tools are abundantly common these days. Just about everyone has a computer or has access to one. You don’t have to be a programmer any more, either. You can set up a blog or website very quickly using freely available software and templates. In a few more minutes, you can put some advertising on your blog or website and you’re in business? Right?

Yes, you’re in business, but then you have to have that crucial element before your business can be successful. Obviously, that element is people. Customers. Anyone who reads your blog is your customer, even if they aren’t buying anything. You’re delivering a product to them, your written thoughts or ideas.

I hope this message doesn’t turn people away from trying to make money online. I don’t think that was Mark’s intention at all. Clearly, it was intended to inject a little sobering reality into all the starry-eyed talk of making money online.

There are so many stories out there about people making tens of thousands of dollars a month. Yes, some of these stories are true. There definitely are people who are making a ton of cash on the web. Most people who are trying to aren’t, though. Many of them are making a few bucks. And maybe that’s enough because even a little bit extra helps.

In light of my recent post wrapping up the survey asking about using sponsored posts, I’d like to know how many people do have blogs just for the purpose of generating an income. I’m posting another survey in the right hand sidebar that asks this question.

Don’t worry: The results of this survey will, of course, be anonymous. I realize that this can be an issue for some, especially when revealing whether they blog for money.

Go ahead and vote and let us know whether you have a blog just for making some money.

How are bloggers usually approached for legitimate business deals? Is it always from someone you know? Would you be open to discussing business arrangements with strangers who you meet on the internet? How would you safeguard your own interests?

For those of us who have been blogging for a while now, it’s not entirely uncommon to be approached about doing joint ventures. Often we won’t know the person very well, but sometimes it will come from another blogger we know well. If you’ve been in a situation like this, I’d love to hear your comments and experiences. Let us know if you’ve had a successful business deal come out of internet contact from a stranger.

It struck me that one of the people in the video says that the first entrepreneurs were the first farmers. This is because they took big risks and made something useful and valuable out of the naturally available materials around them. Take this one step further, though, and you can see that anyone who used or uses his or her abilities to make a living from what the world provides.

When I think about this, it seems that most people must have some innate entrepreneurial ability inside. Even the hunter-gatherers took what they found in their environment and turned it into food, tools, and housing. This incredible blend of necessity with invention must have had a great effect on the development and success of mankind that we enjoy the fruits of today.

Unfortunately, many people today don’t utilize these natural abilities. Each of us does have talent and abilities to use for our own benefit. We may not know how to turn barren ground into farmland or skin an animal to make clothing, but we know things that we could use in some way to enhance our ability to survive in this modern world.

Obviously, you could blog about any given thing you know how to do and have a passion for. This may not make you rich, but those hunter-gatherers didn’t solve all of their hunger problems just by making a better spear. They still had to go out and hunt and repair that spear when it would inevitably break or wear out from use. It certainly made hunting easier for them, though.

Take some time and think about your own entrepreneurial abilities. Think about your passions and creative talents. There is some ability or knowledge you possess that you can use to make life a little easier and a little more rewarding. If nothing else, blogging about it will give you a great new way to share what you know and make things a little better for yourself and those around you.