Recently, I challenged myself: I decided I wouldn’t leave the house until I could make a buck off the Internet. And the most astonishing part – I didn’t go out all day. I ended up bored and extremely frustrated – what good was I, if I couldn’t even make a single dollar off the Internet in a day?

My Process

Firstly, I decided to try pulling a quick StumbleUpon campaign; hopefully, this would get my ad revenues up (I’m using Smowtion Media at the moment, which pays per impression). No luck.

Then, I decided to take two steps back and try to hit myLot for some revenue; unfortunately, myLot doesn’t update its earnings that often. To serve as a record, my account had $0.27 in it and I posted twice. When I check back tomorrow, hopefully I’ll get an idea of how much (or little) I can make with myLot.

A benefit of browsing myLot was finding Bukisa.com; a site similar to Helium and Squidoo, it pays for information and pageviews per article. After writing a (half-assed) article about laptops and students, I signed off and watched some TV. When I came back to check statistics, I was disappointed to find that I had no views at all.

Enraged

As you can imagine, I was pretty upset. Pent-up inside my own house because of some stupid challenge (I never go back on my word, even if it’s to myself)! I felt worthless, because I couldn’t make a dime off the Internet even when I put my heart and soul into it. This despair turned into rage, and I got more and more angry.

Patience

It was only after I recovered from my temporary rage and disappointment that I realized – again – that the Internet was not a get-rich-quick scheme. I know I’d been preaching that for a while, but I never listened to myself (I mean, just look at how I challenged myself – fine, a buck isn’t a lot, but it’s still difficult to make quickly).

I felt like I had wasted time. Browsing through random programs, and stuff. And now, I’ll tell you what I’d really learned and now believe with my whole heart; that the real dollars lie in blogging and freelancing. In stuff that I can control and rely on skill, and not just mindless work.

I wasn’t in the mood to go out, so I decided to brainstorm through a bunch of ideas and write posts on them. I’m not sure if this was such a great idea (I feel kind of burned out), and my writing might have suffered a bit, but I ended up getting quite a few articles to work with now.

Disappointed?

If you ever feel disappointed in your progress, know that we’ve all been there. The key to making money (anywhere!) is persistence – so if you’re disappointed, sit back and call it a day. Go out! Enjoy life. But at the same time, you have to wake up the next morning, and go hard at making money again – otherwise, you’ll end up stuck in a plateau, and might even journey into a valley.

Image Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/35022021@N07/3769970445/