Yes, I want to be financially free, I know many people do too. But what does this really mean? And why do we want it so much?

Let's start with the second question. The origin of the desire is quite simple...worrying about money is such a drag! And ass long as we are not financially free we have to do “jobs” we don't like, while ultimately our work should be freely chosen as an expression of the fire inside us. One of the realizations I had recently is that even if your work is well aligned with your passion, as long as you are doing it FOR the money you aren't free.
Money and work are two different areas of life. The two SHOULD NOT be dependent on each other. Therefore having financial affluence will greatly supports my development in the area I feel most passionate about (art and computer graphics, as well as traveling and spirituality in my case).

What then is financial abundance? It's certainly not a concrete amount of money, not even certain figure of monthly income. I believe it's a skill, the ability to create wealth according to one's needs. Any number of things can happen to a fixed amount of money – it can get lost, stolen, robbed, made worthless by changes in the economy, it can burn down in a fire or be spent by your spouse :P . We've all heard of people who win millions from the lottery only to lose it all in a few short years.

The ability to create abundance on the other hand is not affected by such events. There are no fixed figures either. An abundance mentality dude (or gal), the kind of dude I aspire to be, would have the skill to create any amount of money according to his needs. On the opposite side of the lotto-millionaire example above we have successful people who take on challenges to create something substantial without using any of their existing money or influence...and they succeed.

So it seems it's all in the mindset.

Great! Now how do I plan to get there? My answer is – gradually, one little step at a time.

The idea came to me a week or so ago when I made my first few cents from articles posted on infobarrel. I thought to myself: Well I made a few cents...it's close to nothing...but I can do it again, right? Sure I can! Anyone can make a few cents online. Write some content, post it somewhere, throw some ads, promote it and it's done...no biggie.
But can I make a dollar? Hmm, seems very, very attainable, after all it's just 100 cents :) . By the time I've made it I'll also have content that already made a dollar and that content probably won't just die out. Chances are it will continue to create some “cash”. Also I'll have gained some knowledge of how to promote my content. Most of all I'll have gained the EXPERIENCE of making a dollar online. I will KNOW I can do it. Can I make one more then? – Yes, and I know it! I'll gradually increase the steps to 2$, then 5$ and so on, building upon actual personal experience.

Maybe it sounds childish but I want to give it a serious try. I think it is precisely the playfulness in this approach that will help me along. When we set our goal to “earning a living on the intarwebs until next month” and it doesn't work, we tend to give up. In my case though it's just attainable goals with relatively loose deadlines – as long as I am making progress, I am doing good.

My main “source of compensation” will be contextual ads, as this is what lots of people attempt to use. Thus if I have success with this plan it will serve as inspiration for others. On the other hand I don't want to relay solely on ads either. I'll also invest time into micro-niche marketing and so called “bum-marketing”. Last but not least I want to use my artistic skills in a way that produces passive or semi-passive income.

To recap, my plan is to open my mind towards new possibilities little by little. The recipe is: set an achievable goal, reach it, repeat until it becomes a conviction, set a higher goal, which now seems attainable based on previous experience and so on. The keyword here is “experience” - it's not a dream or a wish or a promises of self-proclaimed “financial gurus”.
Oh yeah, at first I'll be using free tools only, I won't invest any money that I don't have.

I'll post my results every two weeks. If you want to keep an eye on my progress subscribe to this blog or follow me on twitter.