Should I Try Making Money Online?
My blogging colleague Paul Piotrowski recently wrote a great blog post How to Decide if Making Money Online is for You . I recommend you read the whole thing. In the post Paul relates how he often gets asked this question:
“Paul, should I try making money online?”
First of all, regardless how well you craft this question so that it doesn’t sound like that is what you’re asking me, it still doesn’t change the fact that you’re asking me that question.
Realize that I am not you, so there is no way I could ever make that decision for you. In fact, there is nobody out there who will ever make that decision for you. Only you can decide the answer to that question….
and offers some cogent advice as to how the questioner, not Paul, should go about answering the question for him or herself.
… Traditionally, what most people do when they are trying to make a potentially life-changing decision like this, is that they try to “weigh their options”. So, they either do it mentally or they get a piece of paper out and they start writing out all the benefits and drawbacks of going down a certain path.
For making money online, their list may look something like this:
Benefits:
- Can work from home
- Unlimited income potential
- No boss
- More time with the family
- Flexible schedule
- Full control over what you do day-to-day
- Interesting, ever-changing work
- Get to express creativity, make own decisions
Drawbacks:
- Lack of stable “salary” compared to a job
- No guarantee of income
- Many “proven” systems, but not sure which one to follow
- Constant changes in the marketplace, must stay current
- May require some access to capital
- Higher risk than working for someone else
At first glance, making a list like this may seem like a productive and reasonable thing to do when trying to make a decision. However, for those of you who have actually done this, you may have found – as I have – that making lists like this is pretty much useless. It doesn’t help you make a decision at all. It just complicates things even more….
Paul’s post, and especially his conclusions just rang so true to me I couldn’t resist tiding his coattails on this.
For years I was paid to work as a government staffer and my work very often consisted of nothing more than making pros and cons lists like this for any number of questions our senior leadership had to face.
We often called these tasks ‘Decision papers’, but even though they sometimes had decision recommendation tacked on the end, our generals and senior civilian officials almost always made their own decisions …often as not, contrary to their staff recommendations.
Sometimes we who were back toward the end of the tail were a little miffed when the decision wasn’t what we had worked on .. after all, shouldn’t the tail wag the dog at least once in a while?
But looking back from the perspective of time, these folks almost always made the right decision, the one they were getting paid to do.
We, the staffers, were paid to do research and develop lists of details, they, the senior leaders were paid to make the decisions.
Many of you reading this today are one man or one woman bands. At first glance you might feel as if this talk of senior leadership is superfluous and over your head.
But I suggest you stop and give that thought another ‘think’. You, and you alone, are the Chief Executive Officer of your life. Regardless of your thoughts as to how well you are paid, it is your job and not that of anyone on your staff to make decisions for you.
Gather the information you feel you must have … raw, quantitative information only, the you decide, and if your decision is to execute, the execute, decisively and without doubt, hesitation and second guessing.
It is, indeed, the only path to success.
And by the way, if you wanted to add this blog to your subscription list and/or Paul’s blog as well, I surely wouldn’t advise against it.
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