Sometimes, when I think about what I am doing on the internet at the moment, i.e. getting going in internet marketing, I think that somehow I am not adding anything; just grabbing  business off other affiliates – or trying to.  I was starting to think how I was not adding anything to the world, just diverting business from other people to me.

I was making the mistake of thinking that the online world is different to entering self employment in the offline world in this respect.  But, let’s face it, there are 12 estate agents down the road from me, and two of them are new.  Well, these new ones – are they not the equivalent of my online scenario?  I mean, they too are not bringing a new product or service to the market, and they too are diverting sales from the existing estate agents rather than creating “new” sales out of nowehere.

After all, for the small businessman starting out, it’s surely a lower risk to enter an existing market with a twist on an existing service or product than to try to convince people to buy something totally new that they don’t understand, unless you have really deep pockets.  I mean, look at Edison’s light bulb – how long did he take to get that right and earn some cash?  And what about Dyson and his plethora of prototypes before he got that vortex vacuum cleaner working right.

No, I can see this now – for those with little capital, the initial route to self employment on- or off-line is like diverting a stream so you get a little of the water.  A stream of business.  One that’s flowing already.  Diverting some of what’s there to you, not finding a way to make a new kind of water, and not mining for a new spring in the desert.  I’m convinced that for most people who go it alone, in the early days it’s just about going where the business is and diverting a little of it to your enterprise – where of course, you will try to add a little USP, a little something that makes you something more than just another estate agent, internet marketer or whatever.

For me, this realisation helped me to stop devaluing what I am doing online.  I am fighting for business just as valiantly and just as respectably as any estate agent, solicitor or baker in the high street.

I am, to be honest, a bit ashamed of having to admit to this, but early this morning, I was struck by a sudden bout of self-pity, wondering how I can ever make this self employment work.  The Internet Marketing, granted, has had some early successes, but they are of course small, and I think it was this that started me off was thinking, as I lay in bed in the early hours, just how far I have to get to reach the stage when I am able to pay the bills from the business income.  Basically, my income for September was just under 1% of what I need to live.

I say I am ashamed because, well, I have come a long way since the beginning of August and I always knew it was going to take a lot longer than a couple of months.  My partner is supportive, and thanks to the income from that quarter, we are almost, but not quite, paying our way.  So the shame I feel at my self-pity this morning was really because I know that I am in a better position than many.  I have a chance to do something about my lot, to make a success of things in a way that I decide, unlike many people in the world who, for one reason or another, can do nothing but grin and bear their situation.

I am redoubling my efforts now, and calling upon deep reserves of drive and positivity to get me through this, because I know that most beginners in business, especially Internet Marketing, wake up one day and find themselves at the end of the honeymoon period and facing many months of slog to get to their goals.  This is the point, I suspect, that tips most would-be Internet Marketers over the edge and causes them to give up.  Not me.

It’s 8:45am as I write this.

Already today I have been working since 5.15am at the computer, writing articles for my latest Internet Marketing web sites.  I have written two articles totalling some 1500 words, and published them as Squidoo lenses.  I have also added them to a tool called Traffic Bug (which I was introduced to by the Thirty Day Challenge) to promote these articles.

http://ijumped.net poppy

All of this; about two-and-a-half hours’ work if I allow for the time out that I took for breakfast and a shower – all of this productivity – real productive work – has been completed before your average employed office worker even gets through the door and finds the way to the kettle to make that first cup of coffee in preparation for a gentle warm-up gossip and a leisurely scan through the morning’s emails.

But would I swap what I am doing to go back to office life?  Well, I might – but only under one of the following two circumstances:

1. It is my office and my own company

2. I am so broke that I am in danger of having nowhere to live and not enough to eat.

Onwards and upwards!

http://ijumped.net poppy

I was thinking when I woke up in the early hours – jumping into self-employment for me can be compared to the immigrants leaving Liverpool a hundred or more years ago to find a new life in America.  Once the decision is made and the deed done, there is no going back.  For those people there was in most cases definitely no going back,  because there was no way they would be able to afford it.  Their leap into the unknown was literally a one-way ticket.

For me, in many ways it feels the same.  When I was in my last contract, working in an office amongst employees, I deliberately held back, not getting too involved, keeping a certain distance, not building strong working relationships.  As a result, I am pretty sure I damaged my chances of future contracts with that employer, and I knew that at the time.  It was a deliberate decision to make the act of “jumping” more easy for me.

Now, today, as I type this with NIL income, no colleagues and at the dining room table, on my own, I realise that, for better or worse, like those immigrants I am here, now, in my new life, and there is no going back so I’d better move forward and give it my very best shot.

http://ijumped.net poppy

Woke up with that awful feeling of panic again.  Not the ship-sinking sort of emergency panic, but the dull ache of knowing that, despite some three months of research and work on my trial website, world-of-honey.com, I have still not got anywhere near earning any money.

Of course, a lot of advice about Internet Marketing, and about self employment in general, says you should focus not on money but on passion – do what you have a passion for; do what you are interested in.  Thinking like this is not all that easy though when you have the daily pressure of bills to pay.  Hence the little panic.

I have to step back a little at these times and think about the big plan.  I have had several forays into the world of self-employment, and they have all ended in my taking paid work for someone else, or at least an I.T. contract that has bailed me out financially.  This course of action was the result of the panic I am talking about here; a product of a mindset that made me fail in my self-employment efforts.

This time, I want so much for it to be different.  I want to persist with my ventures until I find a combination of things that works for me – and also pays the bills.  I have to be brave.  I have to be businessman-like.  I have to be professional.  I have to see the bigger picture – the long term.  I have to accept that there may be a period of a year or two during which I may not be able to pay my way.  I have to accept all this with good grace, with a smile, with the appearance that I know what I am doing.  Even if I don’t really know what I am doing at all, because the reality is that, like so many people starting out, I am learning largely by feeling my way, by doing.

I do find, though, that acting is better than thinking when it comes to dispersing a bout of panic. Producing an article, a web page, a little promo video, a blog entry!  It feels as if you are producing something, even if maybe that thing is not the best – at least you have something to show, at least you did not just sit on the bed crying.

http://ijumped.net poppy

I started this blog amongst other things to record my thinking behind my business decisions in this, my early part of my bid for sustained self-employment. I want to record these thoughts because I know that, whether I am a great success or a spectacular failure, I won’t be able to remember why I took a certain path, what made me act in that way.

So, ijumped.net is partly about recording how I arrived at my decisions, at the time those decisions are made.  So far, I have decided that I need to do “something on the internet” and I have some ideas that I will share with you soon.  I also have a little head start, because I have a fledgling web business already that is breaking even (which is not saying a lot for a web-based business, I know!)