Venkat was full of self-pity. “I’m good for nothing. My father, a Vedic scholar, ruined my life. When all my friends pursued regular education, my father forced me to study Vedas in a Vedic school. Now my friends are earning more than Rs.20,000 a month as software programmers. I earn less than Rs.1,000 a month.”

“Everyone is good for something. Education can give you salary. Resourcefulness will give you prosperity. There are millions of software programmers. But only a few thousand have the special knowledge you possess. You must be thankful to your father,” I told Venkat. “What is the use of the knowledge that does not give me prosperity?” Venkat was not ready to buy my reason.

“Only self-employment can create prosperity. Any useful knowledge can be converted into a self-employment opportunity. So, please don’t belittle any sacred knowledge. You can create a steady income stream with the help of your knowledge in Veda or with the help your friends that are good in software programming,” I told Venkat.

“Can you please tell me about a project that I can start with the help of my friends?” Venkat requested me. “Ralph Wilson is a professional pastor. He has two degrees in Theology and had done a bit of writing in the religious field. In 1995, he put his writings in a religious website. Even though he did not have professional knowledge in eCommerce, his neighbors sought his help, after having a look at his website, to put their businesses on the Internet. At that time he did not have any work. So, he knocked on doors for work at a lot of industrial parks. He did not succeed in it,” I told him.

“Just now I told you that knowledge in religion is good for nothing,” Venkat felt better. “But, wait,” I told him, “Ralph decided to help others start business websites. Pastors are trained to write religious newsletters and give speeches quoting from the Holy Bible. Perhaps, these skills helped him start a eCommerce website! He surfed the web, read hundreds of articles and made a list of useful, latest articles on the Internet. He would write a free weekly newsletter that gave a summary of these articles and links to them. He saved others’ time by providing this useful service. In a short time, the number of newsletter subscribers went from zero to one lakh. He published this information on his website http://wilsonweb.com/ and people started to visit his website regularly. After sometime he launched a paid newsletter. The paid subscribers get two issues a month plus online access to all the back issues, plus password protected access to hotlinked summaries of ecommerce articles from other sites. Thousands of people subscribe to his newsletters every year and he makes a lot of money. He works from home and he does not employ anyone. ”

“That’s inspiring. Do you suggest I can start a similar website?” Venkat asked me. I replied. “A similar website on a subject that is close to your heart will be a good money spinner. Your friends are software programmers. They must be knowing the hot topics in the software field. Create a website that gives links to useful articles on those topics and to related software products. For example, Dot Net and Java are hot current technologies. Millions of students and programmers learn them. You can create a website to help them. You can make money through advertisement and affiliate programs once you build a decent traffic of web visitors.”

“Can you give me the Internet addresses of similar websites?” Venkat asked me. “Aspin.com comes to my mind. Visit such websites to learn how these types of websites work,” I replied.

When Venkat set to work on this project, he did not know anything about computer and the Internet. Within a few weeks, he gained reasonable working knowledge in this computing technology that offers prosperity to all of us. Once he was confident about his new skills, he invited some of his ‘educated’ friends to join him in his new venture. The new partners researched the World Wide Web for a few weeks and built a beautiful website, an amazing repository, that contains thousands of links to useful articles.

When they finished the first draft of the website, a director of a big software company by chance heard about it and had a look at it. He immediately decided to sponsor the website! Venkat will soon be earning a fixed remuneration of Rs.15,000 a month plus a lumpsum payment of – Oh, Venkat has requested me not to reveal this information to anyone.