I did mention this was a true story, so I'll bare all. Last November I reached a major junction in my life. I was working 60 hrs a week in a highly stressful position, then I had my 50th birthday. Something snapped, in a nut shell I quit my job which horrified my family as mine was the main income. I had burned out and had enough.

All my life I have had a dream to be a writer, but knew realistically I didn't have the talent or skill to be such, so next best thing was to build a website. I mean I'd read it was easy and you can earn a whole lot of money. How stupid could I have been.

As I mentioned earlier, I knew nothing about development, just thought I could buy a domain name add content and that was it. I remember the very first day I registered how2begin, I went out that night and celebrated 'I had a website'. Oops!. Next day I discovered I had to build the site. HELP!, not being a person to give up, after 3 days of solid researching on the Internet, I was still no further advanced, then in steps my honourable teenage daughter Sam and simply says just buy a "website in a box".

Ok, now I'm away. I soon became almost obsessed both with my ideas for content and creating the right image. None of which worked. Basically you get what you pay for, a cheap website builder will get you nowhere (unless it's just a page or so you require). Support from this company was practically useless and chargeable so I decided to teach myself html. as I had discovered there was a back door into my site, which hopefully would allow me to add and display content as I wanted. Still again I was coming up against BRICK walls, it seemed everything I wanted to do was ?not permissible'.

I did eventually have the semblance of a site, which wasn't really that bad and decided to go live. No one visited, I really mean No One. So again it was back to learning what I had done wrong. I started to buy all the ?you must have's to boost your ranking & traffic' what a waste of money. Then for weeks I went into every forum I could find, not posting, but just reading, sucking up all the information I could acquire, by now months down the line I really had become obsessed. I would liken it to ?being plucked from your home environment and dropped in the middle of a jungle with an alien tribe and with no means of communication or resources that you understood to help you exist'. But would I give up ? NO WAY. As far as I was concerned, I had gone beyond the point of no return. So 12 + hours a day at my PC was becoming the norm.

I finally decided that I had to start posting in forums and asking questions if I was going to get anywhere and keep on learning. I have to add at this point, posting in forums was the only truly sensible thing I did in this whole venture. I really started to learn, indeed I'm, still doing so, but it was from a forum, that I had my lucky break (we all need these now and again).

I was offered by a hosting company to re build my site. (There was a God in heaven after all) I can't thank Tony enough. Despite all those months of hard work, I believe without his help, it would have taken me a further 6 months, to produce anything worth while.

To conclude ? knowing what I know now, would I have ever started this venture, You Bet I Would. It's been hard, hard work, some nights I wake around 3am, and have to come down and do some more work, just to satisfy those hungry ideas I have running rampant in my brain. But at least I'm working on my own terms and creating my own stress. Still no sign yet of those thousands, but my peace of mind now is worth more than any amount of money.

Thank you for reading this article ? Remember Don't Ever Give Up.