We all are Opportunists

• Have you ever checked on the price of an item everyday on Amazon, Flipkart or eBay that you wished to buy so badly but waited to see if the price drops?
• Have you requested your friends who went abroad to buy goods for you when they return because they were overpriced in your country?
• Have you gone on a vacation with your family because there was an offer on the ticket prices?
• Have you been attracted to those 1+1 offers?
• Have you purchased something beyond your planned limit intentionally so that you will get that free stuff as a complement?
• Have you ever purchased Horlicks or Boost from a departmental store and intentionally asked the shop keeper when he forgets to give that sipper bottle or badminton racket that was mentioned as free in the product label?

Believe me! It doesn’t matter if you are from a rich or a middle class background. Every person belonging to any age category would want to use these opportunity the best they can. Offers and Freebies are one way how business market today grabs everyone’s attention. Not just business but even Government offers free stuff to get our attention. How many of us have been victim by selling our votes to political parties who announce free goodies and false statements during election campaign? We fall prey to these in one way or another.

Let us say you are a ‘Photographer’ who loves taking pictures. You may be a professional wedding photographer, wildlife photographer or a product photographer who makes a living out of it or an hobbyist photographer who does it for fun or just to learn the art. Most hobbyist photographers don’t stick to a particular style unlike the professional ones. Professional photographers make money right away from whatever they do but people who are trying to reach a professional level are always open to any opportunity that comes their way. A simple example would be stock photography. There are a lot of photographers whose actual style is completely different but they still do stock photography side by side to get that extra cash coming.

The same goes with ‘Bloggers’. You may be a professional blogger who owns a website on a particular niche like Tech/Gadgets, Food, Product reviews, DIY stuff, Fashion/Beauty etc… But then when there is contest out there somewhere which comes to your attention, you tend to participate in them though the contest’s theme doesn’t suit your niche. How would it be to see a website full of product reviews having one post related to a social issue? Or the other way around where a person who writes always about social issues on his website, writing a review on a mobile phone to promote it? Of course we can make a separate category on our website and move these unusual posts to them and show that we are still sticking to niche blogging but there are times when we do things different from our usual way to get benefited out of it.

The journey of transforming from an amateur to a professional in any discipline is hard and it’s harder if you are doing it as a full time job.

There is a saying, “If you are good at something, Never do it for free”. But we should also check ourselves that we don’t do everything that we are good at, just for making money. The important thing here is striking a balance between what we do and why we do it for.

But then we must think about something here.

“We all are Opportunists in some way” Aren’t we?

Oh and I didn’t write this post just out of the blue. Someone asked about it and I made use of the opportunity to express my view on it. You can see the rest of the posts related to this on #Indispire.