The Importance Of Making Meaning

Photo by JdeePanIII

This is a follow up article on the Making Money Online Hype versus Reality series.   In Part 1, we dispelled some of the myths about earning huge sums of money when you’re starting off, that you need to be realistic with your expectations.  In Part 2, we gave real life examples of people who did make it big, and you can see the photo of Jeremy Schoemaker holding his Google adsense check of $132,994.97 which shows it can be done, and how you should persevere with your efforts to succeed in this game.

Now, in Part 3, I want to share a video from Stanford University with my readers, for anyone who is into making money, this is a must watch video because it teaches the importance of ‘Meaning’, and why it is important to focus on this rather than think about making money.  I have found this video really inspirational and is one of the reasons I decided on a new blueprint for this website to focus on the quality of content.

Entrepreneurship And Making A Difference

The video was produced around 2 years ago, but it’s message is still very clear and relevant to us today as we blog our way around the world seeking to make money from our efforts.  It is from a series of talks by Guy Kawasaki, of Garage Technology Ventures, and is about the ‘Importance of Making Meaning’ in your company or business venture.  Guy Kawasaki, states that:

“The core, the essence of entrepreneurship, is about making MEANING’.

Most people start companies to make money, in our case we’ve started Blogs with the same intention.  But what Guy tells us is that of all the companies that he started, funded or was involved with, the ones which are fundamentally founded to:

“Change the World”
“Make the World a Better Place”
“To Make Meaning”

are the companies that make a difference, they are the companies that succeed.  He goes on to say boldly, that if you set out to make money without making meaning, you probably won’t make meaning or money.  This takes us back to the fundamental question, why are you Blogging?  We have to answer this question, time and time again, to ensure our focus is right and correct for what we want to achieve.  It’s a very deep statement, and you need to realise its importance, because money and success is a by-product of something you have done really well.  Believe me, there is no substitute for hard work.

His message is clear to us, the core reason why you should start a company or venture is to make meaning.  Now lets see what he’s trying to get through to us.

How To Make Meaning

There are 3 ways to make meaning:

1. Increase the Quality of Life
2. To Right a Wrong
3. Prevent the End of Something Good

Your motivation can be to change people’s lives, by looking at how you can make things better for them and that will give your blog a purpose and an identity, a reason for people to come to your site.  Or it could be you find something wrong in the world and you want to put it right and fix that.  Maybe you see something beautiful and you can’t stand what’s happening to it, and you want to do something about it.  All these things will give purpose and MEANING to your blogging efforts, and I tend to agree with what he’s saying.

Without one or more of these three things, you probably need to reconsider what you’re doing.  I see a lot of blogs out there, and the authors admit they are their own ramblings, they are not out to change the world, they are just blogging about life, and using their blog as a journal.  There’s nothing wrong with that, and there is space in the blogosphere for everyone to survive.  The message of this article is to those, like myself, who have been drawn into the ‘Making Money Online’ hype, to give meaning to your work and give it a higher purpose if you want to succeed.

When I started off, my intention was to share some of my knowledge of networks and what I was learning about blogging with my readers, so that they would benefit from this.  As far as this blog goes, I think that’s a good purpose, to teach and educate, so people can learn to do things themselves and thereby improve the quality of whatever they are doing themselves.  I had no knowledge of Domain Names, had never owned one myself, so as I learnt things about this, I wrote about how you can get your own domain name, register it, and then link it to your blog.  I think, this is the crux of it, there are thousands of websites out there with so much information on them, but when you get down to it, you really want to come to one place where you can find everything you need.  Once your website does that, it has authority and as it’s popularity spreads, you will gain the relevance and move up in Google’s rankings.

Conclusions

I hope you will take the time to watch the video and listen to it’s message.  The points are well made, because if you’re swallowed up in the Making Money Hype, then this might just give you the grounding you need to give purpose and direction to what you are doing.  I know it’s made me think about what I’m doing, and to take away some of the stress of blogging and trying to drive traffic to my site.

With the right meaning, your efforts will have purpose, and that in itself will bring you the rewards.  Let’s go out and make a difference in the world.

So here’s the Video.

Enjoy!

Daniel Hunt.

Footnote:  Who is Guy Kawasaki?

Guy Kawasaki is a founder and Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures. Prior to this position, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. and sits on the board of BitPass, FilmLoop, and SimplyHired. A noted speaker and the founder of various personal computer companies, Guy was one of the individuals responsible for the success of the Macintosh computer. He is also the author of eight books including The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. Guy holds a B.A. from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from UCLA, as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Futurepost:  I have been asked by a good friend of mine to do a guest post on his blog, so my next post in the coming week will be on the reasons why you should set up your blog on a web host of your own choice as opposed to a hosted platform such as blogger.com or wordpress.com.

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A long time ago, when I had just graduated and was starting off in my career as an engineer, we relocated into some new offices and on the wall was a sign which said:

“The only certainty, is Change”

It struck a chord with me, that Life is beset with Change, and we have to come to terms with the changes that go on around us and adjust our own worlds to live comfortably in the space we inhabit.  In a similar vein, my browsing journey across the blogosphere led me to some inspiration which has made me want to change the complete look and feel of the Technical Articles blog, because I realised something important.  So, please bear with me, and join me as I recall the steps to this decision which will set the blueprint for this site from now on.

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In this article, we will take stock and review the progress so far with this Technicalarticles.co.uk site and look at the Top Ten articles which I would recommend you to read.

When Making Haste is a Good Thing!!!

When you start a project like this, it’s good not to spend too long procrastinating and drawing plans, but to just launch yourself head long into the activity and LEARN AS YOU BLOG.  Because, from my experience, that is the fun of blogging, you never really know where things are going to end up because you’re constantly learning new things and making new friends through your social communities.  Most importantly, you must always be prepared to change course, if it feels necessary.  So don’t hesitate or delay your need to blog, read some of my articles on how to get started, or search Google, and just GO FOR IT!!!  So let’s look at how my journey has gone so far.

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Let’s consider Adsense and the what, when and why you should, or indeed, why sometimes you should not use it until the time is right!!

Adsense - What is it?

Anyone involved in blogging or web site development will have heard of Adsense and it usually comes into play when you’ve got somewhere with your site and are looking for a means of monetising your efforts.  Adsense is an advertisement program run by Google, and website / blog owners can register for an account with Google to display text, image, and video on their websites.  When visitors to your sites click on these advertisements,  they generate revenue for you on a ‘per-click‘ or ‘per-impression‘ basis.  Lets look at this in more detail.

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In this article we will discuss the secret of automatic content generation and for those using the Wordpress platform how your choice of blogging platform may limit your future developments.

As your endeavours in web/blog site developments progress, you will inevitably ask how do I do this in Wordpress and you will soon come to the realisation that you need to look else where.  Let me start by explaining my own experiences in this area, and the reasons why I’ve started looking for an alternative.

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There is a lot of hype about making money online, and we discussed this in the last article, but what is the Reality.  Well I’ve given you my own story so far, and it shows that there is no such thing as an overnight success, not in today’s saturated market place.  It probably was easier, in the early days, when no-one had heard about blogging, but now it’s a different ballgame.  But don’t be disheartened, and join me in finding out how we can use this knowledge to inspire us in our own endeavours.

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In this post I’m going to share with my readers my own experience so far with setting up this web/blog site and trying to Make Money Online, and some of the things I’ve learnt on the way, so hopefully you may avoid some of the pitfalls yourselves.  Join me as we look at Google’s phenomenal earnings, how easy it is to get drawn into the hype and why it’s important to set yourself reasonable expectations.

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This is a follow-up article from the last one on Making Money from Domain Names.  In the previous article we covered the interesting developments in the global internet market on the actual worth of Domain Names, that the market has grown big enough for people to actually consider looking at Domain Names as actual real tangible assets, much like property or real estate.

If you’re wondering about Domain Names, and have thought of a brilliant name that you’re just dying to get out there and register it before someone else claims it, then you can read the step by step guide in my article on How to Register your Website/Blog DNS Name and go to my preferred domain name registration service 123-Reg (my affiliate link) to do this.   What we’re going to consider now is, once you’ve got your Domain Name, something you can call an asset, what do you do with it, if you’re too busy with your day job and have already got 50 blogs running, ok maybe not 50, but 1 or 2.  And, more importantly, each of these blogs is taking up all the bandwidth of time available to you.

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Did you know that Domain Names are exchanging hands for millions of pounds, hard to believe is n’t it.  Let’s take a closer look at this internet phenomena.

In the previous article, we looked at how to set up your own domain name using the company 123-Reg.  Now I’m going to explain, why I think it’s important to have your own Domain Name and the reason for this article.  On Saturday last week, I came across a really catchy article as I was browsing the forums pages of my own web-hosting service provider WebHostingUk which I wanted to share with my readers.

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For anyone thinking of setting up their own blog on an external hosting solution, this will be one of the first steps you will need to take.  I’m going to run through, step by step, the process I used to do this so you can do this for yourself.

Firstly, please refer to the previous article on this series as a background to this subject if you have n’t already  read this, you can access this here: ‘How to start your own Blog on an external host‘

Now, that you’ve decided your Domain Name for your blog, let’s get it registered.  As explained, you can use a range of providers for this Domain Name Registration service, and the easiest thing to do is to Google for this and check out a few sites to see what is the most cost-effective option for your particular case.  Join me as I go through the steps with the company I used to set up my Domain Names. Continue reading >>