Thanks for taking special care in retorting. One liners are the best way of expressing thoughts…….I think being such a GREAT WRITER … you must be aware of it. Moreover, I think my one liner touched your heart…….. oh… 1 more thing… from where do u get the hot pics of the sizzling babes, buddy……..

Ann: One-line reviews. Always loved them for their utter waste of bandwidth: no info, no opinion, no useful thoughts. Great stuff. As for “A guy saws”, I would assume that he does so with a saw, much like anyone else.

Starting in January I’ll be bumping that up to 50-60 USD per hour, and I should start to see some passive income being generated from the website + the e-book I’m finishing up in December.

The only person standing between you and success is you. You can either get out there and make something of your life or you can continue to blame everyone else for your (generalization here; not pointing fingers) lack of progress in the career you have chosen.

Prior to freelancing I ran a construction company in Colorado as a 3rd generation contractor. Feel free to check my bio on my website. 100% of my credentials are verifiable. My family has generated over 750 million USD in business across the US over 72 years of business. I learned a lot regarding motivation and business before I moved, and then I took the same business savvy I used running my construction company into the market when I started freelancing after my wife and I moved to Bulgaria in 2008. If you only see 1 dollar articles, then you aren’t looking hard enough.

Know your niche. Browse for work. Constantly. Never accept no for a final answer. Knock down doors if you have to. You do what you have to do to put food on the table for your family. I’m 29 years old, 100% debt free, and my wife and I can afford to travel throughout the world 4-6 times a year. It’s not something that just magically fell into my lap because I’m “talented”.

I never finished high school. I never went to college. I am 100% self educated. I say none of this to be arrogant (although it might sound like it at first glance), but to prove a point. You can either let life control you, or you can control life. It might sound like a cheesy line from a cheesy motivational conference, but it’s true.

My very first writing gig was writing quests and storylines for an RPG for kids, based upon my passion for video games. That led to writing game guides for Killer Guides. I then took my construction knowledge and wrote some stuff for Home Anatomy. That led to working for Delegate2, Demand Studios, Green Diva Mom, Trav Buddy, Flashing Swords…the list could go on.

Do I get 100% of the jobs I query for? Absolutely not. But I do land the majority of them, and it’s not because of my education or my so-called talent, because as far as the industry is concerned I lack a formal education, therefore I lack serious credibility. But you know what? I spin a good yarn, I can get inside the heads of my client, I always deliver on-time, and I do whatever it takes to get the job done…even if that means working holidays or crazy hours to keep my word with a client.

Don’t hope for tenacity. Reach down, grab your pair, and get out there and kick the world’s ass!

How would you feel if the only jobs out there offered $1/500 word article?

In any case, marketing skill seems to be one of the most important out there. Technical niche is another. Skill is important enough. It seems to make the difference between those who make $1 and those who make considerably more. Of course, skill is irrelevant if you can’t deliver a product. And all that is irrelevant if you don’t have a customer, which leads back to marketing.

The rough draft of the artwork for my book is finished… the photographer has done his thing. I’m just waiting for the copies so that I can move onto touching up the images. Then there’s inserting the text into the images. Then there’s the marketing.

I can tell you a lot more about what it takes to put a book together now than I could have a year ago. It is like a mountain that you look at, which, because of its great size, seems so close. So, you start your hike. So many hours of hiking later, and it still seems so close, but not much closer than before. Perhaps it’s that dream where, rather than the hungry monster chasing after you and you cannot lose it, you are the monster which cannot catch the prey. But, like hiking for the mountain, eventually you get to the top, yes?

Since I’m still not at the top, looking down and enjoying the fruit of my labour, I cannot really say how worthy it has been of my effort, but it has been the greatest challenge of my life.

Skill is a funny thing. No one is perfect. So, you kind of have to understand the limitations of those who work for you. You have to find a way to make up for those limitations in one way or another, or else the product you have will not be the best you can make it. And, even if it is the best you can make it, it is questionable whether or not it will succeed financially to pay for your time and expense.

I can tell you it takes patience, perseverance, determination, strength, and faith, to name but a few aspects of character that’s been tested of me. The talents of a team, combined… are they enough to succeed?

You and I are going in different directions, Spike, but I feel that we face many of the same ultimate challenges.

In my effort, I have been the employer, the investor, the artistic director, and the author. In the end, it may fail, but at least I won’t look back on a life wondering what it would have been if I’d tried. I have put everything into it, and, if that’s all I get out of that, well, so be it.

Rowling, I recall, failed 16 times before she succeeded. And hell, now she’s one of the wealthiest authors in the world. I hope I have her tenacity and success, or at least a fraction of it.