How I Made My First Earnings On the Internet and Why It Took Over 96 Articles: Practice Makes Perfect
Wisdom from my dad and the relation between efforts and results
I remember how I tread the pedal and move forward. It is the hundredth time I do this and the hundredth time that I nearly fall if my father did not hold my bike.
But we try again and start from the beginning.
I tread the pedal, and the bike slowly moves. I keep my balance and make a meter, then two. At some point, this feels so good, that I don’t notice my dad letting go. I keep treading, rotation after rotation.
I smile and search for my father's eyes, but he is already 10 meters behind me.
And then I fall for the hundredth and first time.
My dad picks me up, dusts off the dirt from my knees, takes the bike, and we try again.
The Relation between Effort and Results
I am happy to announce that I eventually learned to ride a bike without any help and I don’t fall anymore (at least not very often). I don’t even think about how hard it was to learn to ride it anymore and how many times I fell. I take it for granted.
But it isn’t really for granted. A lot of effort went into this skill and for a long time, I did not receive any results at all. Today I need no effort to keep balance and get from A to B. It happens by itself.
This results/effort relation is something that applies to everything in life. It can be summarized in this graph.
In the beginning, the effort feels enormous, as if it will crush you any second, while the results are zero, because…well you haven’t done anything yet.
While you continue to practice you need less and less effort, while the results slowly start to appear. You finally start to see little results.
What this means is you need to get started and you need to work for a long time, without seeing any results. You need to be willing to move through the valley of despair, paved by fear, anxiety and doubt.
But the results will show up, we must keep going and trust the process.
Becoming rich, by doing nothing
It is the end of October, and while the days get shorter and there are fewer occasions to ride my bike, my screen time rises exponentially.
I am consuming video after video, I hear all the podcasts and read all the books about how to build up a passive income online and become financially free.
The content that takes up most of my attention, is the “how to make 10,000$ in the next month” kind of videos. I fall for them because they contain a magical promise.
Making money, without doing anything. Becoming rich by taking a short cut.
I am sorry, but this life is not a video game. There are no cheat codes or hacks to make big money within a matter of days. If you are unwilling to do the work, there will be no results.
It takes countless unpaid hours and a lot more emotional work than you might think to overcome your fear of getting started.
By setting my expectations too high, I did not give myself the chance to challenge through “the valley of despair.” I needed to lower my expectations.
A ridiculous idea
The one idea that made me finally start, came from one of the countless YouTube Videos I binge-watched during this period.
It was the objective of making one dollar on the internet.
I was amazed by that goal. Some might call it small, others even ridiculous and maybe they are right.
But this one dollar is the proof that this thing can work, that you can make money online.
Because when you do it once, the next step is easy. Just do it again and again.
It is like learning to ride a bike. You will fall a hundred times before you drive a full meter. But once you drove this one meter without help, you know you can do it. You prove to yourself and the world that you are capable.
Now all you have to do is try again and next time it’ll be two, then three, then 100 meters and at some point, your muscle memory does all of the work, carrying you wherever you want to go.
It is the same with making money on the internet.
Where I stand today
The difference between me and Steve Bartlett is, that I am a ten-year-old, while he is a Tour de France racer.
I manage to ride my ten meters a month and fall. He rides millions every year.
And that is okay. I am still figuring this out, but I opened the box of the Pandora. I learned that this can work if I continue to show up and practice. It takes time until the results will appear.
Don’t stop trying, until you make at least one dollar. Dedicate yourself to it. Make it your only goal for 2024. One dollar is all it takes.
So I am telling you the same thing my dad told me every time I fell and he picked me up:
You got this. Give it time, we will try again tomorrow. Practice makes perfect.