My friends and family think I’m crazy.  Someone once said to me:

You don’t get enough donations to pay to operate your site. You pay ten times what you receive in donations to your hosting provider. You spend hours working on this site for absolutely no monetary benefit. People flame you and call you an idiot when they find spelling errors, typos and broken links, yet you’re still working on this site after 12 years? WHY?!?

Because every once in a while, I help someone and that is worth it.

I have a full time job already. I enjoy it most days, but I’ve often wondered if there is another way to make a living. I’ve always dreamed of making a living with this site.

It’s very time consuming to support this site. I have a family and a job and very little time for maintaining this site, as much as I enjoy it.   Millions of people have browsed to my site to learn from me, so at least someone finds some value in what I do.

Is there another way to pay for the site and for me to make a living?

Sometimes, I’m asked to quote references for my tutorials and posts.  Here’s one example I received recently:

--- start ---

Hi!  [..really enjoyed your site|liked your tutorial on..]  would you please
provide your reference for that? I really need the reference.

--- end---

When you write something from your own knowledge and expertise, you are not required to use references.

I have a college degree in Internetworking and multiple certifications from various vendors including Cisco, Sun and IBM.  I am a certified instructor who is paid to teach others what he knows. I have worked hands-on with the technologies on a daily basis for over 20 years. That’s what’s known as an expert, and more generally speaking, an authority.

As an expert and an authority, I am qualified to write original articles on subjects within my area of expertise without requiring references, or at least, not too many of them.

Besides, quoting/referencing myself would be silly.

–InetDaemon