Today I got a very nice e-mail that just summed up making money online. Actually this applies to almost anything in life but especially important in making money online niche where you can be easily mislead by all the information out there. Let me share the story first.

"A giant ship engine failed. The ship's owners tried one expert after another, but none of them could figure but how to fix the engine.

Then they brought in an old man who had been fixing ships since he was a young. He carried a large bag of tools with him, and when he arrived, he immediately went to work. He inspected the engine very carefully, top to bottom.

Two of the ship's owners were there, watching this man, hoping he would know what to do. After looking things over, the old man reached into his bag and pulled out a small hammer. He gently tapped something. Instantly, the engine lurched into life. He carefully put his hammer away. The engine was fixed!

A week later, the owners received a bill from the old man for ten thousand dollars.

"What?!" the owners exclaimed. "He hardly did anything!"

So they wrote the old man a note saying, "Please send us an itemized bill."

The man sent a bill that read: 

Tapping with a hammer...... ......... ....... $ 2.00
Knowing where to tap.......... ......... ...... $ 9, 998.00"

lesson to be learnt is , "Effort is important , but where you made the effort that makes the difference"

Lets see how this applies to making money online. I wasn't much of a surfer until I turned 18 or thereabouts. Then I was interested in blogging and making money online. And the first thing I did to make money online was reading commercial e-mails . I used to join many paid to read sites and start earning money. And I used to be very happy when I earned around 50 cents a day. Then I started experimenting with blogging. I added Adsense and in the first month I made 3$ . I almost gave up blogging and making money online because I did put some effort to maintainthe blog. Glad I didn't because this blog is generating close to 500$ a month now from affiliate sales , Adsense , reviews etc. Then I was introduced to Forex trading. In a good week and when I'm lucky I sometimes make 300$ a week from Forex trading. So now I'm making an effort to learn more about Forex trading and affiliate marketing. Although it took a while, now I have a fairly good idea on where to put the effort .

So if you are working hard and not reaching the success levels you want take a while to think about where you are putting the effort. If you are still reading commercial e-mails then now is a good time to move on and look for better sources of revenue. If you are dropping 3oo entrecards a day to grow your traffic now is a good time to focus on building back links and look for long term traffic that is interested in your content. It took me a while to learn these lessons and quicker you learn the better