Notes follow after the “more”:

“Do what you love, love what you do”

As a consultant, I meet people who are slogging away at 9-to-5 job for 40 years, so that they enjoy another 20 years of retirement.

Does it make spend 40 years to enjoy yourself for 20 years?
It certainly doesn’t sound very fun.

Why not enjoy all 60 years instead?

Do something you love, and which continually fires you up.

Linked In: Haven for the nosy

With comprehensive bios, you get a sense of the Internet Marketer’s path.

A common question I continually receive: how did you get started?

An easy solution: study profiles on LinkedIn.

I am fortunate to “work”, or rather be in an industry with people who are really fired up

Always a pleasure to talk to people who are just as excited today with what they’re doing, as when they first started out.

Let me poke around the backgrounds of two of my friends.
I’m sure they won’t mind…At least I hope they won’t mind.

Sam Harrelson
Sam has been Prof of Religious Studies at Gardner-Webb University located in North Carolina.

Sam’s other experience:
Affiliate manager, COO for online advertising network
blogger and new CEO for revenuews internet marketing content portal and community
US East Coast GM for Clicks2Customers, serving as an evangelist and building relationships with key north american customers

–

or look at Robyn “SleepyBlogger” Tippins who’s been:

• b5 blog network editor
• worked as a blogger/writer/content developer
• word of mouth marketing project for Intel
• “video game work” at PR agency Fleischmann Hillard

I’ve talked to Robyn regularly and she’s doing very well business wise, and enjoying what she’s doing too.

Robyn’s currently Community Manager at Yahoo! blogging community MyBlogLog.

–

Someone who loves what they’re doing:
just need to read their blogs, or twitter updates or meet them at events like sobcon, affiliate summit to know they’re fired up about what they’re doing.
can see it in their eyes, and from the way they talk. just excited to do what they do.

–
–> people are constantly emailing me for “secrets to internet marketing success”

The biggest secret or motivator for me has always been to focus on what’s exciting.

What makes you wake up at 3am, not because you have to, but because you’ve tons of ideas circulating in your mind and you need to work on it immediately.

Sure, there will be days, when you have 500 emails to go through, and you can’t always pass it to an assistant, but i think when you take something on, you take it all on. when you’re dating someone, and if it escalates into something more serious, you accept them for who they are, warts and all.

Loving what you do is a choice you can make, it’s something in your control.

The choice is in your hands, and you can choose to work for 40 years, to enjoy the next 20 years after that (assuming inflation doesn’t catch up with your savings)…

Or you can instead make a choice to find something you enjoy doing now.

It’s coming to about 6 years since i last worked for somebody as an employee,
During the early days, you won’t have the certainty of having a fixed paycheck coming in at the end of every month,

I’ve always learned something new with every new project and each new consulting assignment I’ve taken on.
As an Insider’s insider, you’ll be surprised how things work behind the scenes.

–
To wrap up, you’ll know you love what you’re doing, when it leaves you feeling energized at the end of the day, or giving you a high.

If you play your cards right, and find something you enjoy doing and throwing yourself fully into it, there’s no doubt that you’ll find a pot of gold not just at the end of the rainbow, but at each step of the way.

Here’s a snapshot of some member avatars:

I guess one might ask, “How’s listing yourself in the directory help generate more income?”

While it might be a realistic expectation to want to see a tangible ROI on your time in BumpZee, it might not be so ready in coming.

BumpZee is a community of affiliate marketing peers, rather than consumers, and it serves as a hub for affiliate marketing content, aggregating blog content specifically.

You know the old marketing mantra where it generally takes 7 exposures before you commit to a buying decision?

I believe on the Internet it could be as little as 5 exposures, however, the one caveat is the sheer amount of information we’re constantly bombarded with.

This “info overload” syndrome means that we need to get our names out there, whether through publising a blog, expanding our MyBlogLog community, or by participating in forums and social networking sites (hence leading to my “social traffic generation” paradigm).
Through BumpZee, I’ve become a more regular reader of:

• Carsten Cumbrowski
• Nevada desert camper Sam Harrelson
• Jim Kukral
• Wayne Porter

Being “social” only makes sense because it’ll give you a leg up in:

• Tapping on the expertise of others by learning from their experience
• Branding yourself in your chosen niche
• Facilitating the search for joint venture partners for collaborative product development and marketing efforts

I’ve found these tips to be useful in establishing your “online turf”:

• Use your first and last name. There’s only one major “Gates”, “Dell”, “Branson”, “Trump” at any one time. Unless you’re confident of constantly dominating your chosen niche, it’s easier to identify yourself by your first and last name.
• Use your photo as your avatar. For branding purposes, I know using a bikini-clad model might help recruitments for your social network, but it will ultimately hurt you if you don’t build face-to-name recognition early on. My preference is for the slower-and-organic route.
• Participation in the community. The major problem with the Dotcom crash of 2000 was that most companies spent hundreds of thousands (and millions in some cases) on their websites and left them there in the virtual wilderness to rot. I believe one of the major developments in recent years has been the evolution of SEO and traffic generation strategies. Likewise for online branding purposes, we’d need to do the equivalent of “SEO and traffic generation” for our personal brands too. This may involve visiting blogs and leaving relevant and content-rich comments, participating in forums and doing likewise, and taking note, participating in and commenting on industry trends. The “blog in the wilderness” concept doesn’t fly anymore.

Are there other strategies you’re using?