I’ve recently discovered the website digital point. It’s a marketplace of sorts where Internet business people, hobbyists et al converge to network.

I’ve made a few dollars there selling odds and ends, which in this business can be anything - a text link, a website template, an actual website, an ebook - mostly digital products that get traded between buyers and sellers. I would be classified as both a buyer and a seller, as would many of the digital point members I’m sure.

Coming from a background of earning more than $100,000 as a software developer with several products on the market, having to resort to selling myself on a forum like digital point is more often than not frustrating, mainly because of the very thing that caused me to decide to get out of the commercial software development industry. After my software products started showing up on warez sites and people started contacting me for support who hadn’t bought my programs legally, I decided it was time to bring an end to my adventures as a commercial software developer. I’m just one person after all, and if Microsoft couldn’t bring a complete stop to the piracy of their products, what hope did I have? So I took my products off the market and gave up the 50% share I owned in a popular dating application I’d originally developed then later hired a programmer to improve for me. That programmer has now taken my original product and created an even more highly competitive dating application that will no doubt make him some decent money. I am thrilled for him, and I don’t regret my decision to move on to something else; but when I’m faced with situations where, in trying to sell my merchandise on places like digital point, I’m getting asked if it’s really mine, if it’s original content and so forth, it is excruciatingly disheartening considering the reason I am on a site like digital point to begin with.

Obviously, having had my products stolen and distributed on warez sites, pirated and sold for money, I know from experience that theft is a highly common problem across the Internet. Every time I write a post on any of the blog sites that I struggle to maintain, that post instantly becomes at risk for theft, unless of course it’s just so badly written; but even then there’s always someone who’ll take your material and use it for their own gain and you’re seldom able to do much of anything about it. I learned that the hard way.

Sites like digital point are useful if you’re able to get past the tendency to suspect that everyone who tries to sell is a shady character. I suppose I can understand considering shady characters seem to dominate. There’s always someone trying to trick you out of money, out your ideas, out of anything they can conceivably trick you out of. That’s the nature of the Internet. It’s really not unlike any other kind of marketplace. On both the buyer’s side and the seller’s honesty is rare, and everyone is held under suspicion. Everyone is a potential con artist until proven an honest business person.

As you try to figure out what to do to make money, whether you’re specifically interested in finding ways to make money online or you’re open to any ideas for making money that include starting a brick and mortar business, the first question you should ask yourself is, “What things am I passionate about - what do I love to do?”

One of the reasons people are unhappy in their jobs is that they are doing something every day which they hate. Most people who love what they do don’t mind getting up every day to go to work. It’s mainly the people who don’t enjoy what they do you’ll usually hear complaining, whether they have to get up to go to work every day or work from home; whether someone else employs them or they are self-employed.

If you’re thinking about starting a business, you should make a list of things you enjoy doing, things you have knowledge about that you’re skilled at executing and you should focus your search for business ideas around your list so that you narrow your possible choices down to things you will enjoy doing at which you’re capable.

Never get into something you know absolutely nothing about in which you have no real interest strictly because you hear there’s good money in it. Sometimes it’s possible to learn something new and become good enough at it to make a living; but most of the time unless you already have an interest in a field, even if you’re able to learn enough to make a good living doing something you’re not interested in, your lack of interest, which naturally equates with a lack of passion will drain you, and you’ll find yourself feeling frustrated, bored and fighting every day to muster up the energy and work up the desire to do your job.

When you love what you do, you don’t have to dig very deep to find the desire to keep doing it. The benefit of being passionate about your work is that your emotions will usually be positively rooted so you’ll be able to get things done. When you’re not into what you’re doing, your mind will tend to wander. Your emotions will be rooted in frustration, depression, and every negative emotion imaginable. You’ll be feeling bored, restless, drained, sluggish, unmotivated; and it will be impossible for you to achieve much of anything because your mind will be under the heavy weight of your negative emotions.

More people who start businesses fail than those who succeed. George Allen is quoted as saying “people of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don’t know when to quit”; but most of us don’t have the patience to keep trying something that isn’t yielding success in a time we consider reasonable. Most of us end up quitting out of sheer frustration. Usually, the ones who stay the course and end up achieving success because they were determined to succeed and didn’t know when to quit are the ones passionate about what they do. Loving what you do can help keep you motivated to do it even after the time has passed by which you expected to achieve success. As long as you remain motivated, your chances of becoming one of the success stories are more favorable, and that is the advantage that loving what you do provides, the ability to keep doing it even when success appears to be eluding you.