I get the very occasional email from people who have seen my blog or some of my sites who want to give up their day job and work full time on internet based programs, asking if I can offer any advice. I certainly don't put myself up as expert on these things - I'm learning all the time from others - so am not that comfortable offering advice but there's one thing I think I learned along the way which I may as well share, for what it's worth.

"Keep raising the bar"

I remember way back when I started out and had a couple of sites, mostly just running Adsense. It seemed like a miracle to me that I could earn actual money from companies like Google. Before I knew it, I was earning $20 on a good day from a few sites. And this is where I made a mistake. I spent a long time - many months in fact - having that target figure of $20 in my mind and all I was interested in was hitting that $20 again. If I kept reaching $20 or thereabouts I was happy.

Looking back, I wish I had said to myself after just a few days - "$20 is great but now lets aim for $40". In short, I should have continued to raise the bar and increase my expectations and not settle on what was a very modest figure.

I've found that having the mindset and expectation for greater things has helped me make them happen. By all means acknowledge and congratulate yourself on benchmark figures on your journey, but don't rest on your laurels and keep pushing for more.

Labels: adsense, advice