George Blogs!

One of the few positive things about having a brick-and-mortar 9-to-5 job is that, for the most part, your weekends are reserved for your family. Unless you are a high-flying senior executive who has to work around the clock to secure that business deal or go on a business trip to meet your counterpart, weekends are your opportunity to relax, enjoy life and spend some of that money 9-5 money on something other than transportation to your office.

For Internet Marketers, however, the reality is also difference. Our office is what we got to sleep in and wake up to every day. Our desk is the same desk at which we write love letters and have breakfast. Our company computer is the same computer that we use for gaming, watching YouTube and checking e-mail.

In short, as an Internet Marketer, the distinction between your personal and private life is blurred at best. As a result, we often end up pulling in more hours than 9-5 people - weekends included.

Personally, I have no objections to working during weekends. In fact, ever since I got involved in site flipping, I always treated them as an opportunity to get more work done. As they said in Wall Street, money never sleeps - regardless what time of the week it is.

What about you? Do you work on weekends? If so, do you generally do more or less IM-related work? Share your thoughts and let us know!

This post is dedicated, first and foremost, to my World of Warcraft guild on the Bloodhoof server. While, for the most part, they are a great bunch of people whom I thoroughly enjoy killing pixels and polygons with, there are some unfortunate exceptions who, I regret to say, have been less than enthusiastic about my online success. Certainly, my jovial announcements in guild chat on how I successfully sold a site for $597 have been greeted with rather mixed response, ranging from dissatisfaction on even mentioning the subject to accusations of spending way too much time talking about myself.

Since I actively link to this blog on my guild’s forums, I thought I should take this as an opportunity to present my side of the story. I have been accused of being an elitist, arrogant, condescending show-off who can only ever think and talk about himself and the money he makes.

Ladies and gentlemen, here is my official explanation - yes, I am an elitist, arrogant, condescending bastard who lives and dies by the mantra that greed is good and who measures his success and that of others solely by earning power. I don’t care what kind of person you are, whether you help orphaned children or live your life in the likelihood of Mother Theresa. All that matters to me is your ability to make money - regardless of how you do it.

I don’t care if you are a drug dealer or an arms smuggler, if you spend your weekends at the office working towards the next promotion or run your own business from the basement of your mother’s house. If you are making any amount of money, you are successful - and the more money you make, the more successful you are.

Now, I know what you’re thinking right now - that this is an extremely shallow and materialistic outlook on life. But you know what? There’s nothing wrong with being shallow and materialistic, so long as you are able to afford both of these qualities not by the virtue of inheriting money from your rich parents, but by working day and night around the clock to be successful.

Bottom line is, there is absolutely nothing wrong with showing off your success and rubbing it into the faces of others, so long as you - and you alone - are responsible for it. If you were born into an affluent family and are now prancing around blinging your way to popularity, then you are rubbish, pure and simple. You deserve neither the money nor the bling - your parents earned it, not you. In terms of personal success, you are nothing.

Conversely, if you earned each and every penny of your fortune yourself, then, in doing so, you have earned the right to show off and otherwise flaunt your success! Believe me, there is nothing more satisfying than standing up in front of all those have-nots and saying “Yes, I am successful. Yes, where you spent your time whining and complaining about the unfairnesss of life, I pulled myself together and forced my way to success, no matter the personal cost. Yes, I have the guts and the courage to get out there and stake my claim in this world. And, because of this, yes, I am better than you.”

What do you think? It goes without saying that this is a very cruel, harsh and materialist philosophy - but, to me, it reflects the truth of life and focuses one on professional success by doing away with superfluous values such as social justice, equality and charity. All that matters is the unending, unrelenting pursuit of cash - because, ever since the beginning of time, cash has been - and remains - king.

Tushar over at TusharDhoot.com made earlier today a very interesting post that’s pretty much a mandatory read for anyone still harboring illusions or misconceptions about the earning power of online jobs. He basically points out that a high school graduate without a university degree will make an average of $9.25 an hour. Considering that you can easily earn double that working online in one of the jobs he mentions, there’s a valid argument to be made that, if a high school degree is all you have to your name, you’d be better off working online that scrambling around desperately for a full-time brick-and-mortar job.

From experience, I am inclined to agree with him. I make more money online from the comfort of my home than I ever did at my previous part-time job - and I hold two Master’s degrees and live in a fairly high-income country. Not only do you get to make more per hour, but you also don’t need to worry about ever losing your job, dealing with an annoying boss or idiotic co-workers. But more importantly, you get to walk down the street and smile at the fact that you earn more money from home than all those losers who have pigeon-holed themselves into a 9-5 daily grind.

And, if you are ever in the mood to look for a brick-and-mortar job later on, guess what’s going to look more impressive on your CV? That you worked for a year at McDonald’s or that you started your own online business? Having worked in HR, I can tell you from experience that if there’s one type of person all recruiters love, it’s self-starters. Even if your business was not an overwhelming success that propelled you to heights of fame and fortune overnight, simply by having the courage to set up and down your own thing rather than limiting yourself to the employment opportunities out there, you will score a lot of points with the HR person reviewing your CV.