It’s sometimes funny how an innocuous blog post about one thing can spark off a series of interesting comments about a related topic. Burt’s post about being busy did just that with some interesting comments about peoples’ motivation.

This got me thinking about what makes me come home from a day working in front of a computer…and spend more hours working in front of a computer!

My motivation is three fold:

1. Money - the extra income I earn from the online world enables me to live a more comfortable lifestyle with a few extra luxuries - to indulge in my hobbies (snowboarding & mountain biking) and to buy more gadgets & clothes than I otherwise would be able to.
2. Knowledge - I enjoy learning new things and there’s always something new to learn whether it be PHP, SQL or CSS etc. 
3. Challenge - similar to knowledge, I enjoy figuring out solutions to problems and get satisfaction from getting a site to do exactly what I want it to do.
4. Ego (wasn’t sure what to call this one!) - I get a bit of a kick from creating a site, publishing it on the web and then seeing how popular it becomes. It’s also a sort of culmination of gaining the knowledge and overcoming the challenge which ultimately leading to making some money.

However, sometimes even these aren’t enough, and I do just come home, sit in front of the TV and not even turn the computer on (or just go to the pub!). Remember, for me, this is extra income - I’m not relying on it to pay the bills or to buy my food which I suspect gives you that extra kick if you are full-time self-employed.

That’s just me though - it’s always interesting to hear why other people are doing it and what keeps them going - what are your motivators?

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Apologies for the lack of updates this week; I work in the betting industry and this week it has been the Cheltenham Festival - the biggest week of the year for the industry with predictions of £600m+ in turnover ($1.2bn) across the 4 days - so things have been somewhat busy in the offline world. I’m also in the process of buying a flat so that is taking up any spare time (and money!).

Anyway, on the online front, here’s a quick summary of what’s going on…

• The new site I launched almost a month ago is starting to make money. I was beginning to think it was a dead dog, but it’s suddenly started earning with £55 ($110) made in affiliate sales in the past 4 days. All visitors are from an AdWords campaign with an Avg CPC of 2p. I’ve had 45 clicks costing me 84p ($1.68) so a very nice return so far!
• The site I had an idea for and then comissioned through RentACoder is chugging along and seems to be going ok. Following my Top 10 Tips for Buyers on RentACoder has paid off as I seem to have a decent coder.
• New site - I’ve got an idea for a new site which I hope to finish this week. It’s in a very competetive market and, again, UK focused but I think I have a unique slant on it. The idea is to code a “wizard” type site where users can enter some details and it will choose the right product for them (to buy through an affiliate link of course!). I hope to get this finished by next weekend.

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