EXCHANGE OF VALUES

It's so easy to be discouraged when starting out and the steps are slow and awkward. It's easy to look at the high earnings of the "big boys" and painfully see the gap between you and them. It's a distraction and discouragement to do that and unhealthy. Use them as motiviation, learn from them, and keep the possibilites in your vision....this is healthy! In the mean time, be realistic.

If you have to measure your growth by weeks or months at first, then so be it. If you genuinely know you are doing your best with what you have, this will be good for you and a source of encouragement. This is not an exercise intended to give excuses to be lazy! It is a way to stay motivated and measure your progress realistically. If you have someone at your level, buddy up with them to be accountable.

Measuring progress

• 33 cents in itself is fairly meaningless in a week or a month standing on its own. For someone who made 33 cents every couple weeks or for a month-to do so, in a week or day, is a measurable impovement.
• Evaluate where you are and where you've been.
• Set an attainable goal with an attainable date.
• Once you meet it, figure out what you did to accomplish that (repeat or revise as needed), and set another goal.
• REPEAT (this is how to progress and move forward)
  

Exchange monetary value for a concrete value when goal setting.

• Go through your goals and make a list of the monetary value (33 cents, a dollar, etc).
• Now go back through your list and figure out what you could purchase with that and exchange it.
• Examples:
• 33 cents=1 candy bar on sale
• $1=one item from value menu at McDonalds
• $2.85=a gallon of gas

If your site earns you a candy bar, or a burger, or a gallon of gas a week or a month, it takes on new meaning and value! Take it one step at a time. Before you know it your site will pay for its own hosting, a nice dinner out, a week of electricity, etc.