Assorted Notes

WEDNESDAY, 13 JULY 2016

A reader on BrandSmit.NET recently commented on the Afrikaans version of the piece “Poor writer or wealthy entrepreneur” from March 2016. The following was my response.

Every writer needs to make up their own mind about what kind of writing they’d like to do. Do they want to make money with their writing? Do they want to educate? Or do they simply want to serve a good cause?

If you do want to make money with your writing, you need to identify a market and then write what those people want to read, and what they are willing to pay for. Same with anything you want to sell to make money. If you have oranges you’d like to sell, you’d better go where people want to buy oranges; otherwise you would have to find out what people are looking for in the location where you are, and then try to find ways to deliver those products to them at a price that leaves room for profit.

For me, my writing is in the first place free expression of my life experience, so I have to make sure I earn an income in other ways. If I make my writing available in printed book form, I accept that money will be part of the story. Okay, then I make a few bucks. But I would rather sell oranges every weekend outside a rugby stadium to make money than to change how or what I write in order for more people to like what I have written so I can get paid for it.

I am thus rather a part-time entrepreneur to bring in money and the rest of the time I write what I want, than a full-time writer but I have to write what is dictated by the market. If other writers want to do that, good for them – everyone has to eat and pay rent. There have also always been the lucky ones who write what they want to write, in the way they want to write it, and before they know what’s going on people are falling over their feet to lay their hands on a copy of their work.

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SATURDAY, 9 JULY 2016

A few reasons why religion attracts so many people:

1. “Ultimate Reality” – “This is the real truth. The rest is either a lie, or just parts of the truth.”

2. Membership – “You’re not alone anymore.”

3. Identity – “I finally know who I really am and how I fit into the Greater Scheme of Things.”

4. Community – “We’re all brothers and sisters in spirit.”

5. The promise of, and potential for, self-improvement

Any one of these reasons is good enough to attract people to a group or an organisation or a movement. Combine all the above and more, and you have yourself a powerful people magnet.

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THURSDAY, 30 JUNE 2016

On Monday, 12 November 2007 I jotted down two thoughts about making money. As is usually the case, I had some new insights today when I translated these notes.

This piece contains the original 2007 notes as well as the comments that I added today.

Monday, 12 November 2007 

All Internet marketing and e-book sales depend on one skill, one essential element, namely to convince someone to buy something.

30/06/2016:

This idea seems to refer to the skill that some people have to sell a proverbial block of ice to a resident of the North Pole. This is the wrong way to look at it. The idea is that you should find someone desperate for that block of ice, and then you make it available to him at a reasonable price; or you notice a particular group’s urgent need for regular deliveries of blocks of ice, and then you figure out a way to make those deliveries at a cost that leaves plenty of room for profit. No superior talent is required to sell the right product to the right market.

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Monday, 12 November 2007

What is the difference between sports bettors and financial traders who are mostly on the losing side at the end of the day, and people who make a living with it?

The losers have no system, or the approach they use is not built on a solid idea or on reliable statistics. Long-term winners are also patient. They wait until an optimal opportunity arises. And even then they only risk a small percentage of their capital.

What are these opportunities? How much capital is needed to start? How much should you risk? What do you do when a “gamble” ends profitably for you? What do you do when it ends in a loss?

Answering these and other questions depends on where you plan to take your calculated risks. Knowing what to do also requires thorough research; you need to spend enough time devising a strategy, and you need the discipline to stick to your plan when you hit that first rough patch.

30/06/2016:

I used to think the professional sports bettor is a highly skilled predictor of sports results. The fact of the matter is, the person who makes a living with sports betting is someone who looks for value in the available price compared to the reasonable probability of a particular outcome.

One example: If there are fifty red marbles in a bag and fifty green marbles, the probability of pulling out a green one is fifty percent. If someone offers you odds of $1.01 for every $1 you bet, you don’t think twice – you bet on, say green every time, and over the course of a hundred bets you will end up with a loss of $50 and a profit of $50.50 (in theory it could be more because you may pull the fiftieth marble from the bag after ninety rounds).

So the professional sports bettor does not necessarily try to look for a winner – every player and every team wins at some point, and everyone loses eventually; what they do is to identify value in the available prices.

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FRIDAY, 24 JUNE 2016

Since I am awake enough in the morning to register what is happening on the clock face, I think of work. I think of work when I eat breakfast, when I shower, when I brush my teeth and when I get dressed. I think of work when I’m travelling to a place where I work. After working at a particular place, I go home. Then I eat something, and then I work. When I watch TV, I am aware that I’m not working. When I lie down to take a nap, I think about how long I’m not going to work. When I open Wikipedia in my browser, or Twitter, or Reddit or Facebook, I think about the fact that I’m taking a break from work. On Saturday evening and the whole of Sunday the big thing is that I try not to work. I work when I make money, and I work when I am busy with long-term, ambitious writing projects that are most likely never going to make any money.

What I do when I work may differ from what you do when you work, but most adults accept this story that life revolves around work without thinking about it too much.

Our simple, often illiterate ancestors of five or more centuries ago only worked for a few months of the year. The rest of the time they did what they had to do to survive, they rested, and occasionally they enjoyed a little something of a life that only lasted on average about thirty or forty years.

This begs the question: Since when did we – the working masses – allow ourselves to be programmed with this thing that we have to work at least fifty weeks of the year, at least five days a week, at least eight hours per day?

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WEDNESDAY 22 JUNE 2016

Time for something of a different sort.

On 22 June 1986 Argentina defeated England 2-1 in the quarter-finals of the World Cup. Both Argentine goals were scored by their star striker, Diego Maradona. The first was the infamous “Hand of God” goal. The second, a few minutes later, is described as one of the best goals ever.

Here is how Víctor Hugo Morales, a journalist from Uruguay, described the “Goal of the Century” in his commentary (credit to Wikipedia for the translation from Spanish):

“He’s going to pass it to Diego, there’s Maradona with it, two men on him, Maradona steps on the ball, there goes down the right flank the genius of world football, he leaves the wing and he’s going to pass it to Burruchaga … Always Maradona! Genius! Genius! Genius! There, there, there, there, there, there! Goaaaaaaaal! Goaaaaaaal! I want to cry, oh holy God, long live football! What a goal! Die-goal! Maradona! It’s to cry, excuse me! Maradona, in a memorable run, in the best play of all times! Little cosmic comet, which planet did you come from, to leave so many Englishmen behind, so that the country becomes a clenched fist crying for Argentina? Argentina 2, England 0! Die-goal, Die-goal, Diego Armando Maradona! Thank you, God, for football, for Maradona, for these tears, for this Argentina 2, England 0.”

And here is footage of the legendary goal:

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