Work or PLAY from Home?

Work From Home?

Type in the phrase "work from home" or "work at home" into any search engine and we all know what will happen. How many millions of ads on the internet use these words? It's what we all want, right?

Do we really want to work from home? I don't think so. What most of us really want to do is just STAY home. We want to PLAY at home. We enjoy sitting in front of our computer and PLAYING with it for hours! We don't want what we do at home to resemble what we do at work. If we really wanted to work from home...we might as well go to work! What would be the difference? A commute?

There's absolutely nothing wrong with this. This isn't an assault against the work ethic. It's just an honest look at our true motivations. Is it possible to flip the switch from playing at the computer for free to playing at the computer for money? YES! We use the same muscles, physical and mental. So what's the difference?

Focus. I must make a confession. I play games on my computer. Role Playing Games (rpgs), strategy games, even online poker. Last night I finished 2nd in an online poker tournament with 156 players (brag), it lasted 3 hours and 40 minutes! One of my favorite rpgs (Baldurs Gate ll) has an estimated completion time of 200-300 hours. (If I live long enough I'll finish). So is there a way to get that kind of focus on internet marketing? Can it be that much fun?

Yes to the first question, maybe to the second. To get laser focus in internet marketing, first we need to identify the activities that we're going to call "work". Unless you're a web designer or in some capacity work for an internet company, these activities fortunately are probably far removed from what most of us do at our jobs.

You need to learn to enjoy writing. Most of your "work" will involve writing. Writing articles, participating in forum discussions, writing and answering emails, helping solve peoples problems will involve email or telephone conversations. You will write ad copy for sales letters and websites, you'll write to your upline and downline, to affiliates and partners.

Yes you can take short cuts or short circuit this writing process. Most affiliate and networking programs have ready made everything to get you started quickly. You may be able to buy enough advertising to avoid active participation in the internet marketing community. Eventually if you're just cutting and pasting your way to riches it's going to start to feel a lot like WORK!

So how do we make a game out of this? Make it fun? First recognize that this is not work the way we normally define work. Work is where we're someplace we'd rather not be. We can be constantly under pressure and threat at work. We can fail at work, get fired, get yelled at, be embarrassed, disappointed, get demoted, dictated to, issued ultimatums, you get the idea. Compared to this "working" at home isn't really working at all, it's PLAYING! Where's the pressure coming from? From you? Do you have to succeed or else? And soon?

We need to make a game out of this internet marketing. It's easy to do because it really is a game. All these activities that we decide to identify as "work" should be more accurately identified as "play". In a computer game, I may be 200 hours away from saving the world, indeed I may never complete the main quest. However I will be thrilled with every monster I slay on the way. I'll reach into it's bloody carcass pull out the bag of gold and I'll laugh and say to myself, "Why is this Monster wearing pants? If I were a monster, I wouldn't wear pants!"

Secondly, we need the proper perspective. Sure we want residual income. We want financial freedom, be our own boss. But we need to get into the process. Make a habit of the internet marketing activities that we play every day. Master the process and the results take care of themselves. Learn to enjoy the process through practice and your computer "playing" will be more fun and it will be clear to everyone that you're enjoying yourself and they will want to be associated with you.

So yes we can learn to focus on playing at internet marketing. Can it be as much fun as slaying monsters or bluffing someones grandmother out of a big pot in no-limit holdem poker? I'm workin' on it! ;-)

(c) 2004 by David McCammon