The Perfect Job is a Lifestyle Choice

I've lived through an amazing time.

At university, the computer they used (just one) was the size of a house, used valves instead of transistors, and was programmed using punch tape. If you made a mistake it printed out random numbers until you, quite literally, pulled the plug out. Wonderful.

For my first job I needed a suit, and I had to respond to customer's letters by writing, "I am in receipt of your favour of the 18th ultimo..." Utterly brilliant. It sounds medieval but it's not that long ago.

I also did the most amazing thing - I commuted to work. I got up at six, got stuck in a traffic jam for two hours and did exactly the same thing on the way home. I did this for over 20 years! I believe some people still do this.

I literally gape - open mouthed - at the opportunity the Internet has provided for anyone and everyone to live their own lives in their own way using tools that make that first million-dollar computer look like a child's toy.

And this is for all ages. For someone aged 60+ to 'retire' with another 20 years of active life within them is not something I aspire to. We can all, 20 or 60, grasp the unique opportunity of living life to the full.

I'm writing this whilst on a mini-vacation. I have a lot of these. I spend two, sometimes three hours a day on my MacBook writing, and it must be said, earning a pleasant living doing so. The rest of the day is mine. I can earn enough money in those two hours to fund all the hours I have.

When I first started Information Publishing I had to use direct mail to promote my message. That meant I had to risk $30,000 on mailing out thousands of letters to people who had bought a similar product to mine. Just think about that for a minute - thirty thousand bucks, without any guarantee of any response whatsoever. And on a good day, 98% of those letters were ignored. That's on a good day. On a bad day, say when something nasty happens in the news and takes everyone's attention, I lost the lot.

Today, as one simple example of making sales, I could use Google to locate an online forum on some subject or other - anything from My Little Pony to Formula E electric racing cars - and ask people on that forum for ideas, tips, anecdotes and stories (with the forum owner's permission, of course). Then I could turn that into a Top Ten Tips eBook and offer it back to the same forum for a few dollars.

Then I'd seek similar forums on the same subject and offer it there as well. That's just one method of 'instant sales' and there are many more.

And the cost of all this? Virtually zero. Of course, I do have some costs concerning web-hosts for my webpages and some software for running it, but I used to spend/risk over $150,000 a year just to get my message out there. Now I can contact more people than that just by joining a Facebook group.

I make no bone about it. This new world is fantastic. Yes, the Internet is full of crooks, trolls and nasties. But so is life anywhere. We can choose the best of it, avoid the rest, and use it to finally live the dream of an independent life where all of it is a vacation.