Well, I participate here in hopes I can finally wrap my brain around "how to make money". So far, no magic faerie dust has been found to help me fly, financially. I would totally love to be the next person to post "Thank you HN. X months ago you helped me with my business idea and now I have left my BigCo job, moved to the city of my choosing and am happily working from home!!!"
Historical facts:
1) People tend to speak highly of my writing ability -- even published authors and publishing company founders -- and I have had what began as an email of mine on a list wind up being quoted (after much editing) in a book.
2) I tend to be very polarizing: People either love me or hate me. Not much in between. The only thing I have found so far that reduces the amount I get attacked is to go out of my way to avoid public praise. This isn't a real good tactic for advertising something but has worked well for helping to encourage a budding grass roots movement for folks who are really deathly ill and whom all the experts have written off.
3) People find me provocative, which is generally a bad thing if you are trying to be helpful. In the entertainment industry, "provocative" is a good thing. I also tend to be a ham, which is something I find I have to seriously tone down when trying to "give advice". That isn't working well for me. My sense of humor is critical to my ability to cope effectively, so it is practically lying for me to give advice without a few (er, a few zillion) tongue-in-cheek, humorous observations thrown in.
4) Comedians are the people with the socially accepted role for making the kinds of social observations I am very good at making. Giving people that information straight up really, really bombs. I know: I've been doing it for years (and going down in flames for it, over and over). The serious version of my observations goes over about as well as dousing someone in gasoline and setting them on fire.
Anyway, I would love it if you were right and I could easily make big bucks this way (or even enough little bucks to leave my job). But it isn't fitting with my understanding of the direction I need to go.
Is it a problem that I know almost nothing about the legal side of a do-it-yourself divorce? I was quite sick so my husband handled that part. I know the social engineering stuff, I'm sure way better than he did (I always knew what to say when he was upset during the divorce to get him to feel okay about how things were going, which is critical to not lawyering up).
Polarizing is much better for selling books than being 'meh' : a 10% following by motivated people is better than 100% of people who can't be bothered...
Historical facts:
1) People tend to speak highly of my writing ability -- even published authors and publishing company founders -- and I have had what began as an email of mine on a list wind up being quoted (after much editing) in a book.
2) I tend to be very polarizing: People either love me or hate me. Not much in between. The only thing I have found so far that reduces the amount I get attacked is to go out of my way to avoid public praise. This isn't a real good tactic for advertising something but has worked well for helping to encourage a budding grass roots movement for folks who are really deathly ill and whom all the experts have written off.
3) People find me provocative, which is generally a bad thing if you are trying to be helpful. In the entertainment industry, "provocative" is a good thing. I also tend to be a ham, which is something I find I have to seriously tone down when trying to "give advice". That isn't working well for me. My sense of humor is critical to my ability to cope effectively, so it is practically lying for me to give advice without a few (er, a few zillion) tongue-in-cheek, humorous observations thrown in.
4) Comedians are the people with the socially accepted role for making the kinds of social observations I am very good at making. Giving people that information straight up really, really bombs. I know: I've been doing it for years (and going down in flames for it, over and over). The serious version of my observations goes over about as well as dousing someone in gasoline and setting them on fire.
Anyway, I would love it if you were right and I could easily make big bucks this way (or even enough little bucks to leave my job). But it isn't fitting with my understanding of the direction I need to go.