The Second Beginning 5 Years Later 2 comments

Hello and welcome back to my website. It’s been a very long time since I last posted (almost four years actually), and so much has happened since. Some of those things and experiences could be considered positive, some not so much (depending on the perspective), and some were quite eye-opening.

Throughout all those years of inactivity, this website never left my mind, quite the opposite! I couldn’t stop thinking about what could have happened had I never abandoned it, and felt increasingly guilty for doing so. It was always obvious that the break is temporary, and sooner or later, the project will be continued.

Regardless of what happened and what could (and probably should) have been different, the time has finally come to pull myself together and start taking this business seriously once again. Hopefully, this time for a significant period of time, which will give me the desired results, both financially and otherwise.

The First Beginning In January 2016

This website was created in January of 2016. Originally, it was called “Business Freedom” and placed on the domain BusinessFreedom123.com, but on December 12 of 2016 was rebranded as “My Lonely Website” and transferred to the current domain MyLonelyWebsite.com, which sounds a lot less generic and conventional, and a lot more memorable.

The first article was written on 2016/2/22 and the last on 2017/1/13. During those eleven months, I wrote 7 pages and 13 posts, so 20 articles in total, which is absolutely pathetic!

That would be a very good number to write in one month, not eleven! Unfortunately, at the time, I expected to see a noticeable amount of traffic. Needless to say, it did not happen, I got discouraged and mostly abandoned the project for a very long time.

I never abandoned it completely, and every once in a while did design improvements and ran PPC ads, which were somewhat profitable, but once again, not to my satisfaction.

The Guilt, Lost Time and Opportunities

Throughout the last four years, the thought of missing out on potential achievements has been slowly eating away at me. Lately, I just couldn’t stop thinking about what could potentially have happened.

In 5 years and with a lot of work, a blog in a relevant enough niche can easily get 100k visitors a month. Providing relevant affiliate offers and creating my own products would have allowed me to make at least $10k a month! That would’ve given me all the financial freedom I ever wanted…

But it obviously didn’t because I got lazy and wanted to find an easy way where money basically makes itself with minimal input on my part. That is, of course, possible, but in most cases, I would have needed a pretty sizeable investment capital to begin with, which, needless to say, I didn’t have and still don’t.

Starting a blog from scratch and getting enough traffic to make a comfortable living with a few articles (or creating a consistent stream of passive income of any kind with minimal effort) is very highly unlikely and requires a tremendous amount of luck. Might as well have bought a lottery ticket at that point.

The price for my laziness and lack of motivation is not knowing what could have happened and potentially never being able to make a full-time income from blogging.

The regret is just too much for me to handle. I have nothing to blame but myself.

What Changed Since The First Beginning?

Quite a few things, actually!

First and foremost, I’m now actually motivated and ready to succeed in blogging, unlike I was back in 2016. Which is very similar to what I told myself back in the day. But this time it’s different, because now I have to make it into a full-time business, otherwise I would be forced to find a job again.

I would much rather be homeless than going to work unless it’s a very specific kind of job that I have very limited chances of getting. I have to make it work this time, and there is very little room for choices.

My savings from work will last me about six to seven months (up until July of 2021), so there is still some time left. But after that, it’s basically either living from blogging or homelessness. Really hope for it to be the former.

Secondly, I’m ready to handle all the responsibilities and likely challenges of running this type of business.

Back in the day, I thought running a business would be a bit easier and straight forward. Now that I came to terms with the difficulties I’m ready for pretty much anything. The possible legal issues no longer seem so daunting, either.

As always, everything is a matter of performing enough research and gaining understanding.

And the research I did perform. I read and watched videos about pretty much every topic related to a website-based business. Free and paid traffic sources, writing quality content to my audiences’ satisfaction according to the guides of the search engines, the technicalities of running a website, etc., etc., you name it.

Thirdly, it’s time to take matters into my own hands. I will no longer be a helpless victim of my circumstances. I spent many years wallowing in self-pity and being resentful towards people around me for having better lives with zero effort.

Needless to say, not only it didn’t give me any results, but made my situation progressively worse! Every day spent looking at others and being jealous is a day wasted because instead of doing that, I could have worked to improve my own life, slowly but surely bringing it to the desired level.

And with every wasted day, I felt increasingly worse not moving forward trying to forget the guilt of wasting yesterday by indulging in distracting activities that provide instant gratification.

It’s a very vicious cycle, but sooner or later, the guilt, shame, and regret become impossible to forget, and all the distractions stop working. Looks like that time has come for me. I’m putting an end to the cycle of regret and beginning a cycle of fulfillment, where every day I build and improve upon yesterday’s work.

And lastly, my English has improved dramatically throughout the last four years since the last post.

I watched a ton of English videos, read a ton of English articles, and even lived and worked in London for almost a year. (What really surprised me was that a very high percentage of people who have been living in London for years speak terrible English, and sometimes barely know several English words! Why would you put yourself at such a disadvantage?)

Anyway, the point is that as a result, now my English is at the level of most native speakers, and I will be able to write much higher quality content that will be much longer, more thorough, precise, in-depth, and overall helpful. As a result of which, my audience will value my work, and all kinds of success will follow.

Now I can write much faster and perform research more efficiently, which will allow me to post more frequently and speed everything up.

Of course, a lot has happened in my personal and spiritual life as well. Those types of changes will also greatly improve my motivation and performance, but this blog is not a very suitable place for that type of information.

Will It Be Different This Time?

Considering all the aforementioned changes, it’s reasonable to conclude that most likely it will.

I’m going to implement all of my newly acquired skills and knowledge every day to elevate my business to an entirely new level.

I’m planning on posting at least once a week, writing on a variety of topics to appeal to a broader audience, guest blogging on much more popular websites to get additional traffic and backlinks, paying more attention to keyword research and SEO (search engine optimization), working on social media pages to potentially build an audience there, and even possibly starting a YouTube channel!

Of course, implementing all these techniques will most likely be a gradual process, but at the end of the day, it should be worth the effort and more than enough to reach my goals.

Speaking of which…

Goals and Aspirations

In the following 5 years, so until December of 2025, I would like to become a real online entrepreneur and achieve full financial freedom.

That includes making this website a somewhat recognizable name in the blogging industry. With enough effort, it would be reasonable to expect 100,000 monthly visitors in 5 years, so that would be the traffic goal.

And, also with enough effort, that many visitors could make me $10,000 a month, and since I live in a relatively poor country, that would be a huge deal. My family and I would be over the moon happy.

How realistic is that? Well, some people never achieve anything close to that, and some do it in 3 months. The process of never achieving anything is obvious, and I can testify how easy it is. I’m really curious to see how much effort achieving will require and if I have what it takes at all.

We will see how everything turned out in another 5 years, which is a very long time, and anything could happen. Really curious to see where that much time will take me, and praying to whoever or whatever may or may not be listening to give me the strength to not give up like I already once did.

Conclusion

When people look back on their lives, share memories on social media, etc., they like to say things like “time flies,” “it feels like it happened yesterday,” and so on. It is a form of perceptual bias that distorts people’s perception of time and duration. 

When you think about a specific point in time, like an event or a memory (e.g., high school graduation), it’s very easy to ignore everything that happened in between that moment and the present.

More often than not, there are hundreds, if not more, noteworthy events that happened in between those two points, you just ignore them at that moment, and so it feels like a memory from many years ago just happened recently.

In reality, 5 years is a very long time. It’s 1825 days! Every single one of them can be used to learn, gain understanding, acquire new skills, and polish the old ones, further a goal, etc. And every single one has the potential to have multiple things, events, and experiences worth remembering.

As banal as that may sound, instead of counting the days, you need to make the days count.

No matter how much time you have wasted, there is almost always plenty of time for radical improvements, unless you are literally about to die. With that said, it’s still better to start sooner rather than later, and it looks like, for the second time in my life, that time has come for me. But this time truly.

Will I ever be truly rich and successful? Only time will tell. But for now, I’m not planning on giving up any time soon.

◊◊◊ Sincerely, Grey ◊◊◊