Acres Of Diamonds In Your Own Life

by Bonnie Boots

I was checking out a new promotion by a well-known internet marketer when I noticed a comment someone left on his blog. It said, in essence, "I've been a loyal customer. I've bought your other products. And I'm still no closer to making any money on the internet. In fact, I've spent so much money trying to learn how to internet market that I'm in financial difficulty."

" I'm doing everything you say to do. I'd really appreciate it if you could look at my website and tell me why I'm not earning anything."

The link in that writer's signature lead to a one-page website whose aim was to generate an affiliate commission on a low-cost product for scrapbookers.

To my surprise, that page revealed, among other things, that the writer was a highly trained nurse.

I could only wonder why someone with a lifetime of experience in health care would turn to the internet, looking for income, and fail to understand that the most lucrative niche for her was …drumroll, please….health care.

The answer, I think, is found in a little book called "Acres of Diamonds."

Acres of Diamonds originated as a speech given by Russell H. Conwell, famous as an orator in the early 1900's.

The heart of the speech is Conwell's retelling of an anecdote he heard from an Arab guide while touring the Middle East. It concerned a poor farmer who cursed his rocky fields and dreamed of a life of riches and ease.

Fixing on the idea of finding diamonds as the way to achieve his dream, he sold his farm for a pittance and left to explore for the precious gems. His search was futile and his life ended in poverty, despair and early death.

Meanwhile, the man who bought the hardscrabble farm discovered that the small, dark rocks that peppered the fields were raw, uncut diamonds.

This lead to the discovery of one of the largest and richest diamond mines of all time. Had the poor, wealth-obsessed farmer merely looked in his own back yard, all his dreams would have been fulfilled.

Through his retelling of the tale, Conwell illustrated his theme that seekers of success too often overlook the riches lying in plain site. In other words, they should look to what they already have and mine the value that is there.

Conwell delivered his speech more than 6000 times, all around the world, and it has been retold countless times since. Surely everyone must have heard it at some time in their lives.

None the less, how many of us walk past our own acre of diamonds every day to look far down the road and wonder which is the path that will lead us to riches?

Like the poor farmer, the woman writing on the blog I mentioned looked at the rocky road she had traveled so far and cursed it.

She dreamed of riches and begged someone to tell her where she should go to find them. And all along, there she was, sitting on a great treasure-her own lifetime of experience in health care.

Health care ranks among the all-time biggest reasons people turn to the internet. In 2004, Google itself estimated that 16.7 million health-related searches were conducted each day. That figure can only have grown.

In a 2008 survey, 98% of the women polled reported that they turned to the internet for health care. In a surprising result, 12% of them reported they got better information from search engines then they got from their own doctors!

Imagine the value our scrapbooking nurse would have in this niche. Imagine the impact she could have on the vast number of women and men who turn to the internet every day hoping for the information and even the support and encouragement they do not get from their own doctors.

Yet, what is our poor nurse doing? Trying to make a paltry few dollars in affiliate income by writing articles about scrapbooking supplies.

The lesson , folks, is the same one Conwell taught in 1900. Real wealth is most often found in your own back yard.

Or as I would put it...your greatest asset and your most likely source of wealth  is your own life experience.

What you know and what you do have real value. If you are a mother, you have wisdom and experience to share with new mothers. If you are a cancer survivor, you have wisdom and experience to share with people who have just been diagnosed. If you have a disabled child, you have wisdom and experience to share with people wondering how they will cope. I you are a student who overcame bullies, you have wisdom and experience to share with younger students.

If you have mastered any skill, overcome any limitation, survived any threat or succeeded at anything, ever, there are people who want to hear from you and learn how you did it.

Stop wondering what "niche" you should be in. Stop asking gurus where the money is. Stop trying to figure out what the most lucrative keywords are and start digging in your own acre of diamonds.

Your life is your acre. The lessons you have learned are the diamonds.

Tomorrow morning, when you look in the mirror, look deep into your own eyes and yell, "Treasure!"

Here's a FREE GIFT for you from The Internet Wizards Magazine.

RIGHT-CLICK HERE and choose "save as file" or "save link as" to download my multimedia PDF presentation of "Acres Of Diamonds In Your Own Life," which contains a copy of this article, the text of Conwell's "Acres of Diamonds," speech and an audio of Conwell delivering his speech in 1916.

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