Don’t let success stories mislead you

Do you like success stories, especially of people who made it big in wealth, fame, etc.? Most people do. I too like to read success stories. But success stories can sometimes make you do things that you never wanted to do, things that you are incapable of. You realize your folly only when you sadly understand that you just cannot emulate what the other person did.

This urge to emulate someone’s success is the strongest in the case of success stories of people who made millions and billions from virtually nothing. Such stories are abundant in the case of bloggers and others who try to make money on internet, mostly at their spare time, and in some cases full-time internet entrepreneurs, bloggers and others.

You can find success stories of people who made four-to-five figure incomes from content based ads (like AdSense), affiliate programs, etc. Mostly these success stories are published in the sites where such programs run. For example, I find success stories of AdSense publishers when I visit the related site to verify my AdSense account. I read the stories. They are really inspiring, they have the psychological impact to change your mindset and make you do what you are capable of or incapable of.

What you have to understand from success stories is that if certain persons can do certain things, you too can, but not necessarily by doing exactly what he or she did. They were successful because they were good at what they did. They had an inherent liking and passion for what they were doing. Then they worked to make their passions bear fruits. So, they, in fact, succeeded in their missions, accomplishing their goals, and success automatically followed and along with that came wealth. So, the key is doing passionately what you are good at. Not emulating someone blindly!

So, whenever you are awestruck with a success story, take that opportunity to locate your own inherent talents, things that you can do easily and enjoy doing. Once you locate what you are very best at, think of ways to do it. If you are a blogger, think of how you can present your strengths, talents and positive sides in your blogs. Write about them; publish them in your blogs. If required, include photos, videos, or whatever can supplement your main passion.

Do not be afraid of failure. Just make sure that you are doing what you are best at. If you like hunting, write your experiences about hunting. Add tips for others to follow. With the almost infinite reach of the internet, you are sure to find many fellow hunters, bloggers and others who are having interest in hunting. If you are regular in updating your hunters’ blog, and if you write some nice experiences and tips, you will have a stream of regular visitors who want to read your blog. Like, ‘birds of the same feather flock together’. (Not necessarily hunting, you can write about photography, music, or whatever you like and know the most!)

Having done the above elementary work, look at the traffic that your blog is attracting and think of ways to increase it. You can use a little bit of SEO, link building methods, marketing methods, social networking, etc. to boost traffic to your blog (to succeed, the blogger has to know a little bit of everything, especially the technology and mechanisms that make blogs and sites successful!).

If you could do what you are the best at, taking the above as an example, you are on your way to success. Think of monetizing the site, if you have not done so. You can monetize your site by placing ads, affiliate program links, and all other options available and do not take our time much once you set up these monetizing links/ programs in your blog. If you proceed like what you read, may be the next success story that I read (and others too!) will be yours.

Please do not take the above as a sure success formula (there is no sure-shot success formula, though many sellers of success stories claim so!). Try, improve, improvise, and retry. Improve yourself till you succeed. That is the only success formula. Do not give up till you succeed!