I’ve been in the tech industry at various levels and in various sectors over the last 10 years, locally, regionally and internationally. Been following my passion for all things dotcom and telecom and have had some successes and a couple of flops.
Still mostly based here in Kingston, Jamaica I’ve always felt that Jamaica was always 5 years behind the rest of the world in terms of Internet access, online entrepreneurship and a larger Internet culture that yes includes the gamers and bloggers. I believe too that our lagging behind is unnecessary as we have great bright, driven skilled individuals here and I’ve been meeting even more of them lately.
They tend to be university graduates or young professionals already in jobs, bored out of their minds looking for a challenge. When I talk to them, online or face-to-face, the single consistent question I get asked is this…How do you make money online?Now outside of the fact that there are numerous ways to do that. I typically smile and ask them a bunch of questions, such as – what are you genuinely interested in, what trends have you noticed, have you done any research to see if there are any market gaps, are you targeting a local, regional or global audience and are you prepared to commit for the long haul. After about the third question, their faces tend to lose the wide-eyed enthusiasm – I’ve made it too businessy, all too serious for them.
Hey I’m all for experimentation, but if you want to get somewhere, nothing beats research and setting some goals. But I’ve been where they are and a lot of my colleagues who’s made their share of mistakes and who now wallow in loads of hindsight insight know what I am talking about.That said, these younger people typically in their early to late twenties are living in a time where it’s easier now to launch a website with out the help of a programmer; to start a blog; to make, edit and upload a video; to start an online community or email list.
That’s just half the battle however, if you want to make money online, it’s still going to be w-o-r-k.One of the bloggers I read regularly is a six-figure income blogger, you may have heard of him-johnchow.com, a Chinese dude living in Canada. He was voted as one of the Top50 most influential bloggers online. He has written a couple of excellent posts, the first is The Biggest Reasons People Fail At Making Money Online and the other is Why you Fail to Make Money Online.You see Jamaica for the last 10 years and maybe longer has always been on the edge, on the brink, on the verge of getting it and really embracing all things dotcom and telecom and using it to move the economy forward especially when it comes to our tourism, export trade, reggae music and culture and our intellectual property assets.
The fastest man on earth is Jamaican, yet we’ve been so slow and shortsighted in going online in a big way and using it to make serious money.I’m hoping these posts can inspire you and here are a couple of others sites to get you going as well. Check out Johnchow.com, Justmakemoneyonline.com, Shoemoney.com and Cashingcoconuts.com. If you’re already using the Net to Make Money, tell me about it.
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