Passion vs Reality

A lot of entrepreneurs and internet marketers will start out with a dream and a vision: with something that they really believe in and want to make into a massive success.

Maybe you have an idea for an incredible website. Maybe you just LOVE fitness and want to blog about that for a living. Or maybe you just get a real kick out of running a business and using technology.

Whatever the case, you know what you really want to do. But it’s not bringing in the cash. At least not yet.

So now you have two options: you focus on the thing you love, hoping that all the time you invest will one day result in it becoming a huge success. OR you work on something else that will bring in the cash and promise yourself you’ll get back to your passion project when time allows.

Neither of these things is an option.

The first option means that you’ll work on your own blog or your own mailing list and grow it. Growth will come, but it will be slow and it won’t be enough to sustain your lifestyle. Eventually, you’ll go bust and you’ll cave. Even if the site becomes successful, the break even will be so high that you wills till go bust!

Option B doesn’t work because you’ll never get around to that passion project. The website will sit there collecting dust while meanwhile you’ll do search engine optimization for clients. They’ll earn hundreds of thousands from the work you did for them but you won’t have the time to do it for yourself!

Trust me, I know about this: I used to pay writers to write for my own blog because I was too busy writing for other people’s blogs!

This essentially comes down to working ‘in’ your business instead of ‘on’ your business. The business is operating, but all you’re doing is running around chasing deadlines and working for angry clients. Meanwhile, nothing is changing and you’ve capped the amount you can earn at how much work you can do in a day.

You’ve learned to loathe your own business and you’re close to burn out! Sound familiar?

So okay: how do you go about solving this dilemma?

The answer is that you follow the steps outlined in section 2. That is to say that you need to identify precisely how much you need to earn in a day as a minimum. You can then chase after that target amount and then you can cut off the day there and start focusing on your own project.

Spend the morning doing the SEO, web design etc. for other clients. Or spend the morning working on your generic website that brings in money but that you have no real interest in. Then as soon as you hit that threshold, switch and start working on those future projects.

Better yet, learn how long it takes you to do that minimum amount of work and then divide your day into blocks. Spend the first half of the day working on the busy work and then when 2pm comes, switch to your other work. The stuff you’re passionate about. The stuff that will take your business to the next level.

This is essentially what we call ‘bootstrapping’. This is how you can afford to start a small business, even if you don’t have any funding or any experience. So many people think that they can’t afford to start a business or to become a digital marketer because it means that they’re going to need to give up their job, take out a massive loan and effective stake all of their hopes on a single idea or business.

The reality however is quite different.

The quickest and easiest way to start pursuing your dream lifestyle as a digital marketer is to start a side project or a side hustle on top of what you’re doing now:

If you run a website, provide SEO or generally work online then that shows you to be a particular kind of person who is willing to take risks, who is forward thinking and who is creative. You have taken the initiative to take advantage of the most recent technologies in order to start earning a living entirely your own, and you have used a variety of skills in order to accomplish this.

As such then, you should hopefully recognise the importance of continuing to push yourself, of continuing to take advantage of new technologies, and of developing your existing skill base further if possible. The more you learn, the more you practice and the more you experiment, the more opportunities you will create for yourself and the more successful you are eventually likely to be.

So, what’s the best way to develop yourself and to learn? Simple: take on a side project. And even once you begin to start raking it in as an internet marketer, you still need to have more side projects on the go.

Why a Side Project?

The idea of a side project, is simply to start any project that sits outside of what you do to earn your main keep. So that means something on top of running your main blog, or providing web design for clients. This is what you will do with the extra time you’ve afforded yourself by working for yourself (even if you work 9-5 you still have lunch and a commute either end free to tinker when other people are still busy).

A side project then should allow you to take the skills you’ve learned and start developing them and making better use of them. This way you may well find you create a secondary earner that can supplement or even replace your main income, but even if that doesn’t happen you’ll still learn valuable skills and add more strings to your bow.

Good Side Projects

A good side project should be something that is somewhat related to your main ‘career’ while at the same time allowing you to expand on your skills and move into unknown territory. For a web designer then this could mean a side project that teaches you some better coding skills, or that improves your ability to create digital art.

This will give you something different to do to take your mind off your main job occasionally, but will also at the same time help you to develop new skills that might just allow you to take your business to the next level.

Some Examples

App Development: If you run a website or do anything else that involves design and/or basic coding, then learning to develop apps is a natural extension of those skills. This is a fun and rewarding process if you like logical thinking and there’s actually a lot of money to be made here – whether you have a commercial hit, or you decide to start offering that service.

A Personal Blog: There’s a good chance that the topic you chose for your ‘primary’ blog is going to be one you thought would prove popular and one that was easy to monetise. That means there’s also a good chance unfortunately that you won’t find it particularly fascinating – which is why it’s a good idea to run a personal blog as well. And you never know, that one might just take off two giving you two steady incomes.

A YouTube Channel: YouTube is actually a surprisingly lucrative place to work, and with a few videos it’s relatively easy to gain a following and then to start generating profit from that following. This is a very fun way to make a little extra cash, but it can also add an extra dimension to an existing site or provide more channels for marketing.