It's seems so easy. Everyone, except you, has become a millionaire. Buy a domain name, rent a server, hack some code and accept credit card transactions. Then watch the cash roll in. This will be it! you cry out - again. But all you have is hope and luck; and a lack of sleep.

You see my poor, dispirited e-preneur, of the things you have to do, one thing is vital for making you rich online (or offline). Every secret has been revealed to you. Gurus everywhere have detailed these secrets except the one secret that really matters.

Content.

Why do you think the gambling and pornographic sites attract so many paying customers to the checkout? Content.

What have large corporations spent billions buying? Content.

Don't expect to become rich just because you cobbled together a few pages of HTML2.0, cut&paste some javascript and then added flash, sickly, animated banners imploring your disgruntled and download-halted visitors to buy something from an affiliated e-commerce site.

You won't. You will simply become tired and disgruntled like your departing visitors.

Content is what they want. Content is what you must give.

Three hours of my time went into writing this article. I could watch two movie features in that time. That would be entertaining instead of hard work.

This is a modest piece of work that many would easily criticise for one reason or another. And yet I have written anyway because I know there is an audience for my content. You are one of the many visitors who has nodded their head in agreement while reading my article.

Hacking HTML tags is easy. Putting things between the tags is the hard part.

At my rate of writing, I could probably fill one edition of a quality daily paper with readable prose after many weeks of solid effort. And that doesn't include the proper selection of articles, layout, graphic design, advertising management or promotion. That's just typing the words to fill the space.

Large operations require a lot of talented people. Pause to reflect why kids fresh out of university can command salaries that dwarf their parents' combined incomes. That's what it costs to attract enough skilled people to get the job done.

And you want to do it all on your own?

Turn your hope and luck into satisfaction and control.

Why do you want to be filthy rich?

The basic reason is the same for all people - You want to be filthy rich so that you can do whatever you want.

And what do you want to do? If you cannot write down in detail all the things that you want to do, then you have discovered something very important.

You haven't specified your life goals.

Sure, you have a desire to get the cash cow makin' milk. And you are persisting to make the cash cow happen. But it's painful. You actually don't like reading books about programming CGI's or hacking HTML tags.

You aren't really doing what you want to do and you are still poor.

You are too busy implementing a system with no direction. You aren't quite sure what you want. And since you haven't specified your goal, you are working like a mouse in a cage to replicate a multi-billion dollar project, instead of relaxing at the beach with a comfortable passive income.

Learn what you like so that you can specify your life goals.

This is the secret that will solve your problems:

You must do what you want now because your life is your primary content creation task.

Your life is your content.

Share with the world your deepest passions. Those who appreciate what you share will gladly pay for the pleasure.

Do you resent paying for a fine restaurant meal or that thrilling cinema experience or a riveting book? Of course you don't.

You will gladly pay for something that you want.

Watch grown men smirk with childlike joy while they hand over their credit card for a new golf club. Sometimes you just can't pay enough. Look at the pained faces of people who reach their loan limit at an auction, watching their dream home go to someone else!

Do nothing for free and always pay for quality.

Your life is your content.

Be true to yourself to earn a living with no effort at all. The wisdom of the great traditions is always about giving and forgiving. A person who maintains personal integrity will attract wealth without effort. People will trust you with their money.

When you can be generous in spirit and wallet, you will have turned fear into success.

What are the restrictions to your creativity?

People who have learned to be generous and to pay for quality understand a very important law of human finance:

To be wealthy you must simply manage the money that flows around you.

Earn more and spend less. And what you do spend, you spend on quality.

You have money coming your way all the time. Where do you send it? You send it away just as quickly for who-knows-what. We all regret some of our spending habits.

Changing your decisions about the money flowing through you will allow you to remove one restriction to creativity. I highly recommend Your Money or Your Life for excellent guidance on developing your money awareness and beginning your path to financial independence.

Your next step is to start changing your decisions about the time passing you by. Time is more valuable than money. Money is tangible and its absence will encourage an attempt, however crude, to get more. Time is had once and then it is gone.

Trying to master your powers of decision over time before you have mastered your powers of decision over money will not work. When you stop spending and start saving you will automatically create time.

What you have done until now is waste time for no money. Your life is so restricted that you don't have time to do the things you want to do.

After you have gained powers of decision over money and time, two major restrictions will have been removed from your life. The final freedom awaits you:

The power of decision over your life.

Believe it or not: you will transcend the worries of every decision. You will only have to make one decision ever again. But you will have to make that decision every morning of your life:

Do I choose to live or die?

"Phew! That's fairly intense" I hear you think. It is.

This one decision underpins every choice you make. And the choice will always be simple. You will do exactly what you want to do. Anything else is an acceptance of death.

People like to get caught in traps.

You know why. I know why.

We are those people. We have all been the living-dead in dud offices or soul destroying menial jobs. We are all human.

Forgiveness is generosity of spirit.

When you have the power of decision over money, time and ultimately your life, you won't be able to be generous enough. You will begin to perform miracles.

You will make other people smile and give yourself a desirable society. There will never be a difficult choice again.

Until the curtain is drawn on your play, do what you want to do.

end of rant.

(C)opyright Sylvano Lucchetti.