My colleague Frederic Premji wrote a very interesting article about Why You Don’t Need Television Anymore. Not only it’s a complete waste of time but it’s also unproductive. Not to mention it costs a lot of money each month simply to have a few good channels.
A lot of readers are asking us: How can we replace the television? There are many answers to that question and one of them is the Internet. I know there is also a cost related to having the web in your own home but the web has many advantages that television simply cannot compete with.
Here is a small list of what one can do on the internet that is productive, fun and free.
1 – Learn and read on Wikipedia
It’s very easy to spend hours simply reading different things on this website. While reading, many words are underlined that have even more interesting information. If you spend an hour a day reading on this website your common knowledge will grow, and we all know knowledge is power.
Also all this new knowledge is useful to impress people. Common knowledge shows how smart someone looks when he knows information about everything. People will see you as cultivated and that my friend is a huge bonus. Sometimes at the dinner table I start talking about a subject and impress people on the fact I know so much. All this is given to me freely thanks to Wikipedia.
The main page changes each day and always has a featured article, while on the right side there is more information about what’s in the news.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
2 – Read international news
Because of the internet and globalization it is now very easy for us to get news from all around the world. Wouldn’t you like to know how other people think or how they interpret an event? It’s amazing to get a different perspective on events than what we are used too here in North America. It is also nice when in your group of friends you have something fresh or a different view point about events happening from all around the world.
Here are a few websites well worth your time:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
– The BBC news is a good view from Europe.
http://www.earthtimes.org/
– Collection of articles from all around the world.
http://www.reuters.com/
– International news agency.
3- Educate yourself
If you are going to spend time on the internet why not do an online university course? More and more universities now offer E-learning. It’s a great and easy way to get new classes without having to leave the comfort of your own home. Remember you can learn without having necessarily the need for it professionally, you never know if in the future you will be able to use what you are learning.
4- Learn a new language
I’ve been learning a new language off the internet for the last four months. There are so many free applications to help me learn new languages I don’t have any excuses not to learn it. It’s fun and interactive; I try to practice one hour per day. There are also resources to put you in contact with people that talk the language you are learning, this way you can practice with someone that is fluent.
5- Make money on the internet
The basic rule on the internet is “traffic is money”, the more traffic (hits or visitors) you have the more money you can make.
There are two ways of making money on the internet. The first one is to sell a product or service to someone. Both can work via affiliates (typically means you can use someone’s white label product and sell it for them)
The second is to have a website that gets a lot of traffic where you get to sell advertising space.
Here is a website that regroups many different type of affiliate program:
http://www.affiliateguide.com/
I hope that next time you find yourself bored or walking around your house wondering what to do you can think that there are many productive things that can be done. Most of them are fun and don’t necessarily take a lot of your daily time. Of course some dedication is required, the same way people dedicate their night time schedule around their favorite show. This time work around your new “profitable” hobby 😉
