I was talking to a friend today and he mentioned that he finished yesterday with .05 cents in adsense earnings. “What the hell am I supposed to do with five cents?” he asked me, joking that he can’t even buy a piece of candy with that.

Indeed you can probably find five cents just rummaging through old bags or boxes in your closet or the pocket of some pants you haven’t worn in a while. To most of us five cents is almost equivalent to zero cents. If we’re down to five cents in our wallet our wallet is essentially empty.

But once upon a time 5 cents could almost buy you the world. In an article published in 1987 and available via the New York Times website, Mildred Wohlford shared the following list of things you could buy with five cents back in the 20s and 30s:

For 5 cents one could buy a trip on the New York City subway (which is now straining to keep its fare at $1), a ride on the Manhattan-to-Staten Island ferry, a loaf of bread, a Hershey bar with nuts, a box of Cracker Jack that included a prize of a lead soldier or a penny doll with moveable arms. In old-fashioned groceries and delicatessens there were often revolving, wood cases containing a large assortment of penny candies, including licorice whips. My mother said the tasty whips were made from sweetened floor sweepings. She forbade my buying them, but I did once in a while and never was sick.

That revolving case was wonderful. It held lifelike, small sugar bananas and little tin frying pans, each containing a candy fried-egg or gum drops, among other delights. See article

Last Friday in West Palm Beach, Florida, a woman intentionally jumped from an overpass on Interstate 95. The woman was struck by a White van and killed. Apparently, when the van hit her, thousands of dollars fell out of her pockets and sprinkled the interstate, and what do you suppose passing drivers did? They stopped and grabbed up the money.

Would you have stopped to collect money from the scene of what must have been a gruesome accident?

The thing about money is that to get it you need to act. Even if you win it in the lottery, you first have to play the lottery. Money is acquired as a result of action taken that yields money or has the potential to yield money. Money doesn’t just happen. You don’t get up one day and decide you want money as you might get up and decide you want water. You can go to a tap and turn it on and have water pour out, but you can’t go to a tap and turn it on and have money pour out.

One of the biggest differences between people who have money and people who don’t is that people with money tend to be less afraid of taking chances, less afraid of failure, less afraid of having people raise their eyebrows, wag their fingers and thumb their noses in disapproval of them and whatever actions they take to get their money. They go after what they want and usually don’t rest until they get it. They fully understand that money won’t just fall into their laps so instead of sitting around dreaming and hoping and talking, they go out and do what they have to do to get their hands on the money they want.

I generally prefer not to make too much fuss when a new year begins. My philosophy has always been that January 1st is just the day after December 31st and that life continues on from the day before rather than starting anew.

This kind of thinking has been useful in avoiding the heavy emotions that can often plague people at the end of the year, or rather, in reducing the weight of the burden of depression caused by listening to Auld Lang Syne and getting caught up in the atomosphere of nostaglia. When you have only memories of sadness and stress and frustration to look back on, the melody of Auld Lang Syne can often inspire you to consider adding your name to the list of New Year’s Day suicides.

To avoid unwanted sensations I’ve refused for the past decade to treat December 31st as being an end of something and January 1st a beginning; but today, January 3rd 2008, I woke up thinking to myself that maybe it’s okay to regard the new year as a new opportunity. It’s occurred to me that if I choose to look at it as just a continuation then I’m more likely to keep doing the same things I was doing last year, having the same thoughts and the same attitude that clearly were not productive and did not bring about success on a personal front or a business front. By separating the new year from the old I can let go of last year’s failures. I can wipe the slate clean and start sketching a new picture not with the mindset of continuing from yesterday but with a sense of just beginning. The difference will be one of thinking anything is possible versus doubting anything will be different today from yesterday.

Sometimes you need to give yourself permission to let go of something and start all over. For some people that means accepting that whatever they’re doing is not working, which can be difficult because it means to them that they’ve made a mistake. And some people can’t accept that they are capable of making mistakes. But being stubborn and unwilling to accept that something isn’t working only delays the inevitable. All you’re doing is robbing yourself of any possible chance at success, which makes no sense if success is what you’re after.

If you’re serious about making money you might need to stop banking on doing it via an Internet business venture. The Internet is not the gold mine it’s tooted to be. The same rules apply for succeeding with an Internet based business as apply for succeeding with an off-line business. You can’t just start up a website and expect money to start pouring in just because the website exists.