When I Grow Up, I Want To Be A…

When I was 6 years old I wanted to be an astronaut, like most boys who were born in the USSR. My parents told me I had to have good grades in order to become an astronaut which was fine by me since I had A’s in all of my classes.

Then my cousin told me how I had to be in perfect physical shape to achieve this goal and he suggested I spin around for 10 minutes and if I don’t get dizzy and lose balance  I’d be able to keep my balance is space and could fly the spaceship. So I went on, turning around for several minutes until I finally lost my balance and crashed on the floor. My dream was shattered to pieces.

After this disappointing experience I decided to become a pilot, then a truck driver, then a musician and so on, until I became a teenager and started paying attention to the ladies – that’s when I stopped thinking about my future career, at least for a few years.

When I grew up I went through a lot of typical jobs: I sold ice cream from an ice-cream bike (yes, an ice-cream bicycle), I worked for a telemarketing firm that sold some shady insurance, I cleaned windows, I painted staircases with a friend, worked at a warehouse, worked at an office for a local software company but nothing felt right.

Long story short, I stumbled upon Internet Marketing in 2007 and I have been doing marketing since then. You’ll never meet a kid saying: “When I grow up, I want to be an online marketer”. I was growing up in the 90’s when the whole notion of “Internet” was so distant and unrealistic, let alone building a career using this “internet fad”. However, in 2014 the situation hasn’t changed all that much. I did meet a few teenagers who want to start their own business at a very early age – however, I am yet to hear someone say: “When I grow up, I want to become a blogger, social media expert, search engine optimization specialist, etc.”

Recently I wrote a blog post explaining why you shouldn’t rely on a college degree. However, there is another big issue with our education system: it’s simply out-dated and can’t keep up with today’s progress. Although Medicine, Law, Chemistry and some other programs might need very little or no updating, many other programs are almost obsolete.

Some of today’s very well paid and in- high-demand jobs didn’t even exist 5-10 years ago. Here are some examples: Affiliate Marketing Specialist, Social Media Manager, (SEO) Search Engine Optimization Manager, (ASO) App Store Optimization, Website Statistics Analyst and many others. Companies are desperate for professionals in these fields – however there is no college degree where you can learn any of that. You can certainly get a Marketing degree which will teach you how to make a proper TV ad (which is useless unless it’s done for a big corporation) but a marketing degree will not teach you how to do SEO, how to manage social media profiles or how to analyze your website’s visitor behavior.

In 2014 an estimated three (3) Billion people are using the Internet. That’s almost half of the world’s population and the number is constantly growing.

This means more and more companies will look for experts in the Internet Marketing field. More and more businesses will open up online (someone needs to sell stuff to all these new Internet users, right?). Why not you? Why not build a career or even better, your own online business? The earnings potential is limitless and it’s just the beginning so everyone has a chance to grab a piece of this pie. The good news is that you can learn how to build a website, how to SEO, how to do social media marketing and a lot more on the Internet marketing subject completely free.

So what’s it going to be? Will you build a career in the world’s fastest growing industry or will you keep jumping from one low paying job to another? Now is the right time to say: “When I Grow Up, I Want To Be An Online Entrepreneur!”

Have anything to add? Have a question? Comment below!

– Alex