I’ve been an entrepreneur all my life, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that I decided I wanted to be a self-made trillionaire (ha, the Firefox spellchecker says this isn’t a word, not yet anyways).
Several years ago, while I was a cook at a small restaurant up the street, I had what I thought was a brilliant idea for a website. The problem at the time was that a) I had no money to get started, and b) I didn’t know the first thing about creating websites. Yes, I knew how to make a website in GoLive or Dreamweaver, but even basic HTML was a mystery to me, much less programming.
Well, it took about 5 years of work, but I bought a huge shelf of books, learned to write copy, design good-looking websites, learned to code CSS, then PHP, then Ruby, SEO and everything else, and now have a fully functioning version of my vision from half a decade ago, complete with several thousand users and really good Google placement.
Unfortunately, while I have had some success getting reviewed by big tech blogs, and people are using my site regularly, it is still, after a year and a half in existence, not making me a living. Not even close.
I did a calculation the other day, and based on consistent growth patterns over the last 6 months or so, I am on pace to make a decent living off the site in about 36 months. I think in internet years, that means my site will be obsolete before I can make a living off of it.
So what am I doing now? I have promised my wife (yes, someone married me, despite all of this) that I will either make a living off the site in the next few months, or will move on to a “real” job. Frankly, I’m tired of being broke, and it’s time to start making some real money. Here goes nothing.
