How to Earn Your First Love Dollar (Blog)
 

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Steve Pavlina's blog:

How to Earn Your First Love Dollar

wait...just....a.....second......

Did you write this post because of what came up today, or was that just an absolutely incredible case of synchronicity?

What a wonderful article, Steve. As usual, it feels like it was written just for me (yes, as a matter of fact, I am a goddess. :p)

First Post?
Great blog Steve. I ate up every word of it.

I've made about $2 total with my blog that I started a few weeks ago. Mostly from friends checking out my site and clicking around. But hey, $2 is $2. And $4 is $4. Etc, etc.

I LOVE 'love' money. It's free money. I know I had to work at building my blog and work on it daily to keep it updated. But I LOVE doing that, so I don't really consider it work.

One thing I found really interesting is you said you made $2 or so when you started with AM. I'm assuming it was thru AdSense. And now you make 500x that. That's over $1,000 a day. Is that all from AdSense clicks? Or from your book, adsense, donations, etcetc?

Thanks again Steve :D

Lmao. Damn you Angela. You beat me by seconds :P

I closed my eyes and did the intention, and my primary spirit guide, Julia, took the opportunity to put up an image of my blog being redesigned.

I was in a meditation a few days ago and she started with the blog redesign stuff. AND of course, me being me, I was like "JULIA...I don't want to PAY someone to redesign my BLOG..."

She's even showing me exactly how it should be designed in order to garner ad revenue...

And she told me to Google "blog design" to find someone to do it.

Now I guess I actually have to go out there and take that step so I can start earning more money from my blog. A big :P to my spirit guides, and to you, too, Steve! ;)

-Erica

For details on how I've made money from blogging, see:
How to Make Money From Your Blog

That article is a bit dated, but it will give you the general idea.

Today my income is a lot more diversified. Adsense is no longer the biggest contributor. Most of my income now comes from profit-splitting deals with publishers whose products I recommend.

This month Learning Strategies is re-running their 59% PhotoReading discount for StevePavlina.com visitors. I plan to make a blog post about it tomorrow. I learned PhotoReading two years ago and still apply it today, so it was a no-brainer for me to recommend it. Visitors who buy it get a hefty discount, Learning Strategies gains new customers, and I earn a commission, so it's a nice win-win-win arrangement. It's also a good way for me to keep my articles and podcasts free for everyone.

I evaluate TONS of personal development products and only recommend a small percentage of them because I'm incredibly picky. Publishers send me new items every week, so I always have a huge stock of materials to go through.

Currently I'm reviewing a new Learning Strategies program with Jack Canfield on the Law of Attraction -- 22 CDs plus an extensive workbook. I'm about halfway through it.

I love that I now have a way to generate income from studying personal development materials, which has been a passion of mine for more than 15 years. Before I ran this site, I read hundreds of books and went through dozens of audio programs that I paid a lot of money to buy... never realizing that I could actually earn money from reviewing and recommending the best products I encounter... simply by working out a profit-splitting deal with the publisher.

It's pretty funny how such great income-generating ideas will stare us in the face for years before we even notice them.

@Erica: That's funny because just in the past few days, I've been talking to blog designers about doing a makeover of StevePavlina.com. A redesign of my website is long overdue. So there's another synchronicity for ya!

I love this article Steve! It's very practical and it really shows you that following your heart and what you love doing always pays out.

Cheers

Thomas Herold
CEO Dream Manifesto
Dream Manifesto - The Quantum Method for Manifesting Your Life Dreams

Wow, I must have intended this article :)
It's exactly about what I think at the moment.

Thank you, Steve!

Steve,

I bet if you sent an email every time you went to exercise to someone else who was trying to exercise regularly, they would give you at least a dollar a day! You could set this up pretty easily to be a one click thing from your phone or computer before you hit the gym!

I know you're hurting for love dollars ;)

Lmao. LOVE MONEY :D

I love the article (and how quickly it was posted after the last one).

My real problem is that I'm not earning any money right now, love or otherwise. I keep thinking about all the things I need money for (like a car to get a job... a place to live... an engagement ring and the expenses which are expected to follow). It seems hopeless. Focusing on just earning one dollar, though, I think I can do that.

Did I mention I'm an aspiring web designer? ;)

YES! I finally hit a milestone in my Personal Development Blogging career today. I actually beat Steve to a post by about 2 months and 14 days. Woot!

I pretty much wrote a post about this exact idea on my blog a few months ago. ( How to Make Money Doing What You Love - Your First Dollar | How to Make Money Doing What You Love )

You have no idea how many times I've had an idea for a post, and then I'd write it down in my journal and flesh it out a bit, getting ready to write it only to find Steve write the exact idea on his Blog the next day and beat me to it. It's like "doh!", he beat me to it.

It's so cool for me to read Steve's post because I know he didn't read mine before writing his, yet when I read both of them side by side, I totally see the same "channel" being tuned in and interpreted slightly differently by our different personalities.

ie. Here's a quote from mine:
Here's a quote from Steve's:
Here's a quote from my article:
And from Steve's:
Sorry, I'm just excited... finally found that channel Steve's been listening to. :D

I've actually earned a puny amount of money by doing what I loved before. I just wished I had read this blog post back then! I once had a website that I worked on for about 3 weeks. It barely had any content and I was lacking in every kind of skill that I needed, but I still managed to make over $2 from AdSense. Then I quit. I didn't quit because I wasn't making enough - I was actually impressed with what I earned. I don't know why I quit. Somebody took my domain name when it expired, too.

Another time I had come up with what I thought was a great way to cook hamburgers and went to a couple of people's houses and sold them at parties - hoping to eventually start a catering business of some sort. I quit that, too, after only two runs. :eek:

I could definitely earn a buck by playing guitar. I did decide to start a new website and actually follow through about a month ago, and it's already bigger and better than my old one. No ads yet. I want to be an inventor. That was random, but so am I.

Many years ago i downloaded his first two photoreading tapes. In those two he only talked about how good it worked.

I met a guy who tried photoreading. He told me that it indeed taught him to read faster, but that it in the end was nothing but speed reading. No 60 000 words/minute (that was the reading speed he advertised back then).

Steve - Did you read my diary? :)
 

Wow I can so relate to this post.

This is a diary energy from 2 years ago when I really wanted to be a healer and I was bashed over the head with an invitation to help someone for money but ran away! I love your analogy of being in your pajamas. That's how I felt!

"Aug 2006. I keep replaying in my mind the conversation I had with someone at a supermarket till yesterday. As I was packing my shopping I started chatting with the till operator and then he told me, completly unrelated to what we were chatting about, that he had ulcer and asked what I thought caused them. I replied I thought it might be a lack of B vitamins or possibly stress. He said he took a multivitamin and then said that his back and neck hurt from working at the till. I just offered sympathy, but I wanted to offer more. My first thought was to give him the phone number of the healer that I see but somehow that seemed wrong. I also thought that I could help him by offering him some Quantum Touch energy or some EFT but for some reason I hesitated. I felt embarrased offering someone my services when I hadn't completed the qualification.

This is the weird bit: He looked at me with a really intense stare and said, “I thought you were about to say you were an aromatherapist or something. You could book me in for an appointment.” So I just said, “No sorry I’m not, hope your back gets better soon,” then walked away.

As I walked away, I looked back and he was still staring at me with intense curiosity. He smiled and I smiled back. It was the intensity of the look and the direct invitation to book him in for a session that has made me replay it over and over. It was so out of the ordinary.

I think this is a message that I need to listen to. I have used intention setting before and a couple of days later something happened that synchronised with my intention (not the whole intention, but a nudge that things are moving in the direction I want them to). The direct invitation from the guy practically bashed me over the head with the message that I can help others by raising their energy but yet I turned tail and ran away from it.

I need to work on my self belief about my ability to help others. I’m going to keep on noticing and observing my interactions with other people especially where there are direct invitations. Next time I won’t run away (I promise)."

I just realized that probably almost all the money I've earned in the last year or so has been love money. I've been in my first year of college and i've been working a number of part time jobs. Since I'm very interested in computers, I've tried to get jobs that would let me pursue my interest (ie IT, tech support on campus). I got a tech support job in the beginning and for a while I was content. I also took a part time job with alumni services, but I hated that job. I quit it because I didn't like and I reasoned I could do without the money. However within a few weeks of quitting it, I got a higher paying job doing tech support for the language lab, something I loved.

Steve: How To Make Money Working Out
 

You mention (jokingly) at the end of the blog post that you'd like to make money working out. You have the perfect platform for doing that right here: do a 30-day trial of a workout program that inspires you. (If you haven't found one that inspires you, just put out an intention to find one.) You're sure to get another bump of traffic and ad revenue.

By the way, inspired by you, and a need to drop 50 pounds, I've been doing Doug Graham's 80-10-10 raw diet for the past week. So far I've lost ten pounds with hardly any cravings, or even any detox symptoms, even though I'm coming off the SAD diet -- it must be exactly what my body needs now. It's been fantastic. And you can bet I'll be blogging about it. ;)

Awesome, Jeff!

I'm not doing 80-10-10 right now -- currently I'm experimenting with various superfoods -- but I still lost 6 pounds in the last 30 days from eating raw w/o even trying. Losing extra fat is pretty easy on this diet.

If you're coming from a SAD diet, then losing 25+ pounds in a month from 80-10-10 isn't unusual.

Just as an aside: Business Opportunities Weblog | How Much Is Your Blog Worth? which was posted some time ago and valued Steve's blog at around half a million thinks it's worth almost (well, less than 20k off) a million now...

In my experience, most people do not say yes to opportunities because they lack fundamental self-esteem -- they don't think they deserve it. It's very common. Freelancers constantly underprice themselves -- same problem.

In this capitalistic society, we measure values of services and products by the price tag. That's why cheaper is not always the better deal, and that just about every business instruction tells you to price it fairly and deliver more value.

If you do not accept that you yourself, and what you do, have value, then you'll go on being a valueless (worthless) existence.

Tragically unnecessary, if you ask me.

But I myself used to be like that -- and it took me a good year or two to get that script out of my system. It was a simple rewriting of erroneous belief, but it was in me so strongly, the habit so deep, that it took a lot of conscious efforts. But it's all internal work -- it doesn't depend on any change to happen externally. Actually, as with everything else, outside changes follow the inner changes.

If a miserable sulker like me could change, so can anyone else! :D

ari

where to start
 

spot on article yet again! I am finding it very difficult to think/feel/remember what I love doing. Beyond the animal joys of food/sleep/sex/comfort that is... I have always found getting what i want easy - now i just dont know what that is longterm. tricky...

Gulp
 

I'm in the same boat - I'm a generalist. I have lots of shallow interests, but NOT ONE I love where I'd do it full time, for free if necessary. The overriding interest is reading, but I can't even fathom where you'd find work that pays you to read without a journalism/writing degree (if you have no desire to review books to boot...)

Anyone else still not know exactly where their passions lie?

Thanks for your post. I've been working on changing the same mindset. Sometimes it all comes together, sometimes I "forget" the progress I've made, and return to the long-practiced waking dream of not thinking I have value. But I'm getting the better of it now. Change isn't overnight but you can learn to stop feeding those old thoughts/beliefs.

Just what I needed
 

Once again, Steve, you nailed it on the head. Really great. It reminds me of a church I used to go to in Baltimore. The minister, Swamiji Shankarananda, would meditate beforehand to be guided as to what the audience needed to to hear. I imagine you do something quite comparable.

I, too, sometimes have a hard time figuring out what I truly love to do and it makes me think that maybe I don't know the answer because I haven't done it, yet! I try to reflect on everything in my life, like my family, my current work, playing sports, exercising and look for the common ground, the underlying passion that keeps me positively committed to these things. I know I like getting stuff to work for people/problem solving. I love reading personal development books, too.

I know you have the article on "discover your purpose", but do you have something for "discover what you love"? Maybe I'll apply the lesson of the first to uncover the latter. I have The Journal software on trial right now so I'll go take advantage of that. I'll let you know what I discover.

For those who are having trouble picking something they love to do, instead of thinking of the job think about it from a non-job perspective. In other words, don't try to label what you love to do with a job title. Do you love chatting and talking with people? Do you love being outdoors? Do you love solving mysteries? Do you love working in solitude?

For example, if you love solving mysteries that might lend itself to private investigator, biology researcher, forensic psychologist, IRS auditor, etc.

Likewise, if you have a list of a bunch of things you like to do but they seem shallow to you, see if you can discern what aspect of these things you love. Maybe it's not the whole job, maybe it's just an aspect of it. Like, "I love photography because I can be out in nature. Oh, and I really like soccer because... oh I get to play outside. And I really love hiking because it's outside. And I love going for long drives because I love watching the sun set." You might find a pattern that suggests you simply want to work outside. Then go from there.

When I did the exercise in my blog entry, The Path to Purpose, I realized that exploring and sharing what I know about the afterlife and the paranormal is what kept coming up again and again. I realized that with this love I could start a magazine, become a parapsychologist, develop my psychic abilities, start a blog about the paranormal, write fiction stories or write a tv series with a paranormal slant, etc. So many ways to express that love.

Must have read my mind, Erin, because soccer was next on the list while doing my exercise of listing those things. Thanks for the added advice...actually, looking at my list (and it's actually even on there), it appears that I love to try and experience new things.

I can rarely stick to one thing for too long. I like to learn what I can and move on. I love reading personal development materials, constantly bringing books home from the library, I like to solve different types of problems, but if I keep coming across the same problem/project, I get bored. I love music, especially the experience of hearing something new that really moves me. I love to travel (not that I do it often right now with 3 kids). I love hanging out in public places, being friendly with random strangers.
All of this seems to point to learning, trying and experiencing new things.

See the problem I have with making my first dollar doing what I love, is the fact that I write about a Soap Opera. I write recaps, articles, etc. And while i've been having a steady increase in traffic from Google (up to about 50 views a day), no one clicks on links that could potentially make me my first dollar.

I'm open to making money online, my only problem is that people aren't to click happy when it comes to ads. And I don't know any other way to make money blogging besides AM.

What about adding a link to a paypal donation page, and a link to Steve's post and say "I'm trying to earn my first dollar doing something I love. Would you be willing to be the one who's the first person to help me earn money doing something I love by donating $1?"

Yah, good point. Or add get an affiliate link to Amazon, selling DVDs of the exact soap operas you write about. (Soap operas come out on DVDs? I have no idea....)

Your calling lies where your need and the world's need meet. Once you figure out what your need is, then you figure out how it can meet the world's need.

Very creative stuff, once you get past the script that says "what I do is worthless."

Have fun! :D

ari