Dreams, Plans, Money and How it all Fits Together

Yesterday I talked a little bit about software development, and internet marketing and how they relate to my goals. I want to elaborate on that a bit in this post.

Dreams vs the Need to Pay the Bills

I’ve always known I wanted to be a programmer and I’ve always loved games so putting those two together gives me game programmer. When I went to university, I decided to focus my studies towards game development but along the way I began to realise that the reality of the games industry did not fit in with what I wanted. The pay is very low, the hours are very long, there is a lot of maths involved, and the majority of development jobs are based on consoles, and my passion is PC games, MMO’s in particular.

It wasn’t for me. However for my final year project I developed an RPG creator (don’t worry if you don’t know what an RPG is, it’s not important!) and it didn’t need any maths! I really enjoyed the project and it gave me a taste of what I could do. Making money as a games programmer in the industry is hard enough, doing it on your own is virtually impossible. So, for me to really be able to spend my time writing games I’m going to have to develop an income stream first and then put that on auto-pilot to free up my time. Easier said than done!

Trying to do it all at Once

My overarching goal is to write software but that does not pay the bills in the short term so right now I have to focus on something that can generate an income for me now. The problem with that approach is that I am quitting my job to follow my dream, but I’m still not following my dream! There has to be some kind of balance, I do not want to lose sight of the big picture and my ultimate goals.

The obvious answer seems to be to just split my time between software and internet marketing but it’s not quite as simple as that. With every kind of business venture that I undertake, I like to read around the subject, find the best books, websites and blogs about that subject and consume them. I don’t have all the answers so learning is a huge part of the process and this takes time, lots of it.

Both internet marketing and software are big topics and can easily break down into a dozen or so sub topics each. If I try and do both right from the start I will be spreading myself too thinly and I’ll end up getting nothing concrete done.

So Much to Learn, So Little Time

It’s a cliche but it’s true. Right now I’m new at all these new aspects of internet marketing (the web has changed a lot since 2003 when I was last involved in the industry). If I keep learning then that will not always be the case. For example, take blogging. I am new to blogging and there is a lot to learn. I found an enormous number of resources related to blogging in areas such as content creation techniques, copywriting, engaging your readers, getting RSS subscribers, technical aspects, social marketing etc etc. The list goes on and on.

I have a lot to learn but if I spend an hour a day reading this information, and then a couple of hours a day putting it into practice then my learning backlog will drop right down and I won’t need to spend so much time on it. Once I have learned the basics it becomes just a matter of keeping up with new developments.

Once that happens, I can spend my time on something else. There are two specific areas that I will focus on in the early weeks / months and they are 1) blogging and 2) niche marketing which I will talk more about in my next post.

Once I have absorbed all of that information and I’m getting good at implementing it I will have more time on my hands. That’s when I can branch out. So the idea is that I focus on only one or two new things at one time before taking on more stuff. So I don’t expect to be starting with software for the first few months for this reason. I’d like to gradually reduce the time I spend on IM and increase the time I spend on software. I’ll always need to keep abreast of new developments in IM though simply so that I can market any software that I write.

Stumble it!