I have done this mistakes in the past too and they have affected me a lot, but now I triple check everything and test any assumption to make sure it’s true.

A few months ago a friend contacted me and said “Hey I bought an Adsense ebook that had to teach me how to earn about $200 daily and I only managed to earn $2 in 1 month.” Of course he didn’t learn anything from that ebook and only offered him a few free HTML templates, though him how to place his Adsense ads. I’m not saying there aren’t quality ebooks out there that are worth buying and reading, but you need to be careful what you pay for and of course you won’t get rich just by reading an ebook.

Also you can find a lot of people that offer surefire techniques of getting #1 on Google for any keyword and many other techniques like this. And of course they guarantee you it works, they say it has worked for them with hundreds of keywords and so on. And guess what ? A lot of naive people fall for this stuff and take it for granted.

I know it takes time to verify everything and even more time to test and research the advices you read, but at least you’ll know what you’re doing and not just rely on what others say.

I’ve been telling you that if you like to do something, then try to become the best at it and you will see the results really fast. This is what happened to Feross, he got a good job offer before getting his degree and this only proves I’m right. I’m really curious if he accepts the job and hopefully he will keep us posted.

I think I will make a series of posts with examples and motivational ideas related to this subject, because I really believe in what I’m saying.

Update: Feross is already working at Facebook, so he didn’t take the job.

And don’t get me wrong, I don’t say not to get a job, but make sure to be one of the best in your domain, so if your boss decides he doesn’t need you anymore, then it will be easy for you to replace it to something similar or even better. I’ve said it before in my previous post, do something you like and be the best.

Now I’ve found one more reason to say this. It’s TweetMeme, a service based on Twitter, which allows you to place a ReTweet button on your website. The problem ? Twitter’s developers have just made their own retweet button and people start using it instead of TweetMeme’s. Now I don’t say TweetMeme wasn’t a good idea, because it has a lot of traffic and ad revenue, but now, instead of growing, the service will probably go down if they don’t manage to develop something else. And guess what ? I’m pretty sure they will continue to depend on Twitter, which will never ensure stability.

TweetMeme is just one example of a very vulnerable business idea, but most of the webmasters face an even bigger danger. Most of us depend on Google and most of the traffic is sent by the search engine and if it happens to get our website banned, then we could say we are doomed. That’s why you need to put your eggs in more baskets and insure you won’t get bankrupt if one of your income sources doesn’t work anymore. This has happened to me a few times and I’ve seen my businesses or websites hit the dust in a matter of hours or days and I have to tell you, it hasn’t been nice at all. But I will tell you more about this in a future post.

You should know I love your feedback and I’d like to read your opinions about this.

I think you will not earn more than if you were doing something you like, because your chances for becoming better are decreasing. Consider that you’re going to do it for at least 8 hours a day, 5 days a week your whole life. This means you’re going to spend a lot of your life doing something you don’t like.

You’ll probably think it’s almost impossible to like going to your job and do your work, though if it’s something you really like, then you will do it with pleasure and always try to become better.

Personally I’ve chosen internet marketing and every morning when I get up I think about it and what can I do to learn more and become a better internet marketer. And I don’t do it to earn more money, because this is not my main goal. I don’t have a 9 to 5 job and I have days or even weeks when I do nothing because I feel tired, though there are other days when I work 16 hours a day because I find something interesting and I want to learn more or try it. And I never complain about it because this is what I like.

Even if I spend more than 8 hours a day at my PC, it doesn’t mean I work all the time, because I get tired sometimes, but guess what I’m doing in the meantime ? I do something I like, reading blogs, forums or an internet marketing ebook, which means I learn something and get updated with all the news from my niche.

Are you willing to learn more and get better in what you are doing ? If not, you should really think of getting another job and doing something you like !
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So starting from the hypothesis that you are in Microsoft’s place, would you just lay off all your employees and stay with the Windows XP or try to make a much better operating system so you can grab more money from your current customers and even reach more of them ? This is the question you have to ask yourself if your business is successful and have reached the comfort zone. Even if you don’t have to work as much as you worked in the beginning, you still have to evolve and you need to do it fast, because nowadays times are changing at lightning speed, so you could wake up next morning being out of business, because you didn’t pay enough attention to some vital signs.

Right now I consider myself in the comfort zone, because I earn much more than I predicted one or two years ago, I have everything I need, but I’m aware this is not going to end well if I stop evolving, researching and trying to build a better business. Why did I reach the comfort zone faster than predicted ? Because I learned a lot and tested a lot, which lead me to a few ways of surpassing my competition, especially due to the harsh times we’ve been living in the last years and some other changes they haven’t been able to make profit of and I did. So, like I’ve said before, I’ve reached my comfort level, but there are a lot of huge competitor who have hundreds of times my budget, so I could be dust if I don’t keep up with it.

Even if you don’t agree with me, at least take a few minutes and think about it, maybe you’ll find some areas your business is not like it was anymore and this should make you think again. Right now, another example came to my mind. Let’s say you’ve been an audio cassette maker, would you still produce audio cassettes right now ? Yeah sure, not even my grandma buys audio cassettes in 2010.

Please let me know what you think about it !

Exposure makes everything much easier, because friends can write and talk about you, letting other people know you exist. So try to make as many friends and connections as you can, work hard on this and it will help you on long term.

Most of you who started a company or website are trying hard to promote it and get it in front of the others and that’s not pleasant at all. What if you launched the site and got tons of traffic from the first days ? That’s what known people in the industry do, like Shoemoney with AuctionAds, JasonCalacanis with Mahalo or Danny Sullivan with Sphinn.

I have faced this problem for a long time and now, after I raised a decent number of connections, I feel much comfortable to launch a new site and promote it, with their help.

From my experience I will try to offer you a few tips to make connections and friends faster.

1. Use all major Instant Messaging platforms ( Yahoo, Gtalk, MSN, Skype, AOL ) to interact with people.
2. Build social media profiles and try to keep them updated as soon as possible, but only with interesting stories. Don’t spam, don’t exaggerate, do it naturally. You will raise fans that will help you promote your own stories. Always keep in touch with some of your fans and they might help you more. Choose the ones in the industry.
3. Help others and they will not forget you. Offer to help even if the person doesn’t request it, he will like you more.
4. Act nicely. Don’t argue, don’t start flames, because your reputation will suffer and you don’t want this. At least be sure you are right if you have to fight with someone and the others will agree with you.
5. Make relevant and interesting comments on other blogs, so the blogger and readers to be curious who you are and visit you.
6. Get in touch with your readers, they can prove very useful sometimes, interact with them.
7. Use the better social network of the moment – Twitter. This microblogging platform is great to interact with others and socialize. You can get to everyone and see how they do it, ‘steal’ their marketing ideas.
8. Make a brand out of you. Use the same avatar and nickname on every website and messaging platform, so people can find you easier.
9. Link to you and your social network profiles from everywhere you can. And most important, interlink them, because some friends from one social network might also be on other and add you. Every extra connection counts.

If you follow this nine tips, you should start gaining exposure and ease your job. Along with the exposure, you can talk with your connections, exchange tips and tricks, become a better marketer.

Add me on Twitter, Stumble, Sphinn or Digg.

Image Credit: VoicesNow

To prevent this from happening anymore, I made an exact scheduled and imposed me some rules that I will try to follow and see how much this helped me. Here is what I though of:

1. Make a well defined daily schedule and try to respect it. Do exactly what you proposed to, in the exact order. Make sure to make the schedule as reliable as possible.

2. Laziness is keeping a lot of us away from working, but if you really want to achieve your goals, this has to go. Be sure to include enough rest in your schedule, so you won’t be tired and lazy, because this can be an important factor in decreasing productivity.

3. Use instant messaging and emails only when you really need to. I figured that this was keeping me away from working and that I was spending a lot of hours with no sense, chit-chatting. The best option is to keep them closed while working, but if you need to talk with someone, stay invisible for the others or set a ‘Busy’ status. If it happens and someone disturbs you, try to keep the conversation as short as possible and get back to work. Even if you are disturbed for a very short time, it can distract you and you might lose your ideas.

4. You probably won’t want to put your cellphone on ‘silent’ mode while working, because there might be someone that really needs to get to you, but like the instant messaging, don’t spend too much time chit-chatting and follow your schedule.

5. Try not to let anything on the other day and do everything as scheduled. If you start doing this, it’s a step back and you won’t reach your target on time.

6. Take short breaks. If you work for too long without a break, you get bored and tired, so take short brakes, but not while working on something. Finish what you currently have to do and relax doing something you like, then get back to work.

7. If you feel tired, take a short nap of a few hours, because it’s very important and could decrease productivity.