[DavidDavidDavid]

Evey,

I've also just decided that an internet business was the best fit for me, particularly WRT start-up costs!

Doing further research, I realized that a great "beginner's site" for me would be some kind of informational resource...so right now, I'm working on being an "infopreneur" even though I'd like to try my hand at "hard goods" eventually (info product like e-books and self-produced DVDs will be a logical and interesting link between the two)....

Just as an antidote to the very overtly pro-SBI! ethos here: SBI! has got some creepy cult-mentality types, and if you're a tinkerer like me (which I imagine from you even attempting PHP on your own, something I'm not going to touch!) you might have a hard time on their forums, like I did. Recently, I had people calling my posts "diarrhea of the keyboard" because it seemed to them that I was posting a lot of questions challenging the SBI! way of doing things.

What I was doing, as I kept pointing out, was just looking under the hood and wondering why things worked the way they worked...that was too much for people, and that crazy anti-intellectualism you see in American culture popped up and I was accused of thinking I'm smarter than everyone, etc., by none other than Ken Evoy himself, when all I was doing was wondering out loud -- one question, for example, was whether "empty forum prejudice" (an "empty" forum looks so bad to people that they never visit anything else on the whole site again, apparently) could be mitigated by otherwise extensive and interesting content.

Just wondering aloud got me roundly chastised, so I'm telling you now, watch what you say because it's walking on eggshells over there. Put it this way: they have their own SBI! Rapid Response Group volunteers who show up at public forums to counter anything that might seem to speak negatively of the product/service. That's pretty creepy, and I say that as someone who was in a religious cult myself as a teen (anyone remember Herbert W. Armstrong's old Worldwide Church of God??), but of course they like to say that they're just really passionate. But to me there's a difference between being Mac-passionate and being cult-like. It's not a religion they sell, but the hope of financial independence and outsmarting the techie types is what they do sell...and, to indulge in some armchair psycho-analysis here, I think maybe my questioning and my confidence came across as a challenge to people with rather low self-esteem and afraid of failing (perhaps already failures in life, as per conventional benchmarks of success) -- indeed, I had stated in one post that I wasn't worried 'cause I already gave myself permission to fail at SBI! since I was looking at SBI! as more of a learning experience than anything else -- and so their worries and pent-up emotions boiled over and got projected out onto me...if you ever see the movie "Malena" that's what I'm talking about: small-town provincialism finding a scapegoat for its worries and hypocrisies....

But it's otherwise a very good thing, the details of which you hear over and over; just be careful if you like to poke at things and take 'em apart...they don't look kindly on that there as they regard SBI! as a sacred object rather than just another tool to be used as one sees fit. (I recommend Army infantry, too, but that's also another world where the people tend to be very parochial in their outlook and take offense easily.) The forums are actually very useful so long as you're mindful of the collective sensibility, and if you look at the price as tuition for an online course, you almost can't go wrong in what you'll get out of it all. So it's good that you are willing to learn, because there can well be a fairly steep learning curve at first, but just be care you don't go kicking the tires too loudly, so to speak. You should also know that there are certain advanced Web 2.0 kinds of capabilities which involve additional costs, like having a forum or a real blog -- and, since you're learning PHP, SBI! doesn't allow you to run scripts on the servers, for technical reasons related to the kind of product they sell and how it works.

Now, as for loneliness: I think that's one of the biggest reasons why people fail...and why "persistence" is touted as the save-all characteristic necessary for success. You really need to have true confidence in yourself -- not even in what you are doing, but in your *self* -- to really see things through...otherwise, yes, sheer dumb peasant-persistence will carry you on...they're all skills you must learn, so don't shy away...as the poets say, no one really knows until they know also the darkness...read Hermann Hesse's great existential essay "On Trees" if you need a bit of thoughtful (as opposed to mindless rah-rah) inspiration...you know the difference between loneliness and solitude when you know yourself....

One last thing: I must echo 1000feet's prescription -- get a job! Nothing like learning to balance competing demands in one's life in order to learn life-skills. The main thing a business needs beside The Next Big Idea -- the main thing that creates Next Big Ideas -- is life-skills...wisdom.

It can't be taught. It can only be learned. Part of which is sometimes by exposing yourself to stimuli...which is often just ridicule or drudgery -- but learn you must!