There is so much hype around living the Internet lifestyle. You know the sort of thing because you’ve read countless sales letters over the years. See if any of these sound familiar to you:

• Never work another day in your life.
• Set and forget
• Autopilot income streams
• We’ve done all the work. All you need to do is press a button.
• Even if you can't use a computer, you can make money online.
• Etc, etc, etc

Now I’m sure that there are aspects of some of these that are true but when in your life have you seen this happen in the offline world? Most probably never.

My father used to say, “If you want something in this world, you have to work for it.” I bet that you’ve heard that too. He couldn’t have been more accurate. Your work might be fun, but you will still have to work if you want to achieve.

I have a couple of friends who are making large amounts of money on social media. It looks like they’re just chatting and having fun to anyone watching BUT they’re working 20 hour days for weeks at a time just to get a project running.  And, it may run for just a couple of days.

There are thousands of ways to make money from affiliate marketing and thousands more ways to build traffic to convert. The question is, “Is this a strategy that will keep working in the long term or will I have to keep running just to keep ahead with the next big thing.”

You know that there are solid, online business building processes such as those promoted in SBI or NPC that have worked since the Internet began. Then there are the constantly changing, latest and greatest systems that pop up in your inbox each morning only to disappear to be replaced by another “bright shiny object” days later.

I like to ask myself this question before I even click the link, “If this is such a good system, why are they selling it?”

Does Coke sell its formula? Do McDonalds give away their system for a one time special price? No!

Some people do like to educate people and help them. It’s not so much about the money. Ken Evoy is a good example of this. SBI has been around forever it seems, and Ken is still there supporting you even though he could just while away his days in the tropics enjoying long walks on the beach. Yes he runs a business, but it’s a business of supporting others to succeed.

If you want to build the Internet lifestyle, remember that you will have to do some work, probably each day. Even if you do everything using outsourcers, you are still going to want to check their work to ensure everything is running smoothly and the way you want it.

It may mean working odd hours or only 3 hours a week but you will work. Servers crash, databases get corrupted (don’t ask) things need updating, email needs answering, new content has to be created plus much more.

Is it worth the work? Yes, if you love it ☺

I do.

Will you find success online? Yes, when you find your place, your style, your market. Will it happen overnight? Maybe, you might hit a home run first time.

My best advice for you is to build a business around something that interests you, that you love or that you enjoy doing. All successful businesses address a need in the community and if you’re going to spend time building one, you should enjoy what you’re doing as you fill that need.

In my opinion, there’s nothing worse than hating “going to work”, especially when you work for yourself. I see too many business owners like this.

Working online is supposed to be fun! It’s up to you to make it that way.