Getting lucky can be hard work. No, not that kind of “getting lucky” you perve…

December 21, 2007 · Filed Under Gas Money 

I’m a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. ~Thomas Jefferson

I love quotes and some of the most inspirational for me are ones dealing with “luck”. I may win really small lottery tickets here and there and I seem to be super lucky when it comes to email since I get winning sweepstakes notifications all the time but overall I’m not all that lucky with the odds type thing. That being said, I often win contest and competitions that I take part in and although I’d like to think “talent” has a bit part in that, most of it comes from actual work.

For example, I recently won Gyutae Parks’ very cool pre-paid John Chow Review Contest. Although it took a bit of imagination to figure out, I actually spent a good amount of time and made an honest effort to win. Meaning I spent time each day racking my brain for possible solutions, researched various post on Gyutaes’ site looking for clues, researched various post on Johns’ site for clues and I even went as far as watching to see the usual time Gyutae made new post so I could set my alarm and get up to see what the new letter of the day was to get an early jump at new guesses. That alone may have been what gave me the winning slot as soon after I made my guess there were quite a few people who figured it out and posted as well without noticing my post. I don’t know how many total hours I put into it but I did put in a good amount of time. Sure that might negate some of the value because I used up my time and depending on the total hours spent I may have made less than minimum wage lol, but I really wanted a John Chow review (had actually recently emailed him about it) and definitely didn’t have the cash to put down on it.

Another example could be the “write our funny customer reply email” contest that DealDotCom.com used to have on the weekends back when they first started out. I happened to win the only two they did and although part of it was because there weren’t many entries, I also did spend a decent amount of effort coming up with and writing funny replies. I tend to be funny and sarcastic naturally (at least in my own head) but even for those I didn’t just spit out post and hope I won. The post I made had multiple drafts, which alone would show there was some effort, before I made my post. I’m still waiting to see the results for the t-shirt contest they had which I put even more effort into ;).

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t seen anyone claim that I won only because I got lucky and in fact it has been the total opposite in all those cases where the other people taking part have been very supportive and generous. But I have been wanting to write about people complaining they don’t get anywhere because they are unlucky and this seemed like a good stepping point.

I’ve seen quite a few different blog post and forum threads with people saying how some super affiliate or “guru” just got lucky and basically saying that is the only reason they got anywhere. Although there may be some small piece of luck with various parts of their success, I would be willing to bet that the majority of their success comes directly from the effort they put into their work and what they learned because of that. In all actuality, odds are they are unlucky much more often than they are lucky because they have likely failed at a lot of the things they tried and lost a lot of time and money getting there. But as they learned and worked harder their “luck” improved and they make their success look so simple that it gets confused and credited with lucky breaks.

That all sounds kind of preachy and can be annoying but for all those that write off all the “winners” as just being lucky a-holes, if they took the time to become lucky they might see it in a different light.

I still don’t expect to win the lottery any time soon even though I will probably try. But I have a lot of confidence that I will get lucky as I advance more and more in this “affiliate marketing thing” because I am going to make that luck happen ;).

I’ll end this with a few more quotes that I like:

Luck is what you have left over after you give 100 percent.
~Langston Coleman

It’s hard to detect good luck - it looks so much like something you’ve earned.
~Frank A. Clark

The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.
~Harry Golden

PS A huge thanks to Gyutae Park for sponsoring the contest. If you haven’t checked out his blog you really can learn a lot, including how to “win” :). Also wanted to thank all the other cool people that were taking part in the contest. And of course, thanks to John Chow in advance for doing the review even if you are doing it only because you got paid to…you lucky bastard! >;)

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