Is working online from home going to be a dream come true for me? I don’t know yet but at least I am going to give my dream a go!
Fantastic just what the blogosphere needs: another make money online blog! Yeah but this one is different – really honestly different – trust me! There are lots and lots of blogs purporting to tell you how to make money online but telling you how they make their money online. Unfortunately quite a number of the big name blogs are sophisticated scams. Its not that they don’t make money online for their owners, its just unlikely that they
There are lots of blogs out there describing people’s travels – in fact my first blog started off just as that – a record of our trip around Australia and our move from New Zealand to Australia. Well this blogs is a description of my travels in the business world: trying to make money online.
So the back story how did I get to here:
- I’m in my 40’s a New Zealander currently living in Australia with my partner. I have a degree in science and worked as a geologist before I moved into general IT about 10 years ago.
- For years I worked to live, to varying degrees my work life varied from moderately interesting and pleasant enough to downright toxic and boring. Its saving grace was that it was very well paid. When I left my last IT job I would have been in the top 10% of income earners in the country.
- Even when work was good I was bored, and resentful of the time it took from my real life, when it was bad I was exhausted and woke up on Sunday’s dreading that I would have to go back to work on Monday.
- I worked to live: we travelled and we are serious competitive dancers. Neither of these hobbies are cheap. I felt trapped the typical: have to feed the lifestyle treadmill.
- A few years ago we started investing in real estate. We have done well out of the local property boom and in desperation, and boredom with nothing to do in my last year of IT work I ran the figures. I made an interesting discovery: we had saved enough for retirement: not to retire now but to retire at a reasonable age in say 5 years time. In the meanwhile we just needed to cover our living expenses we didn’t have to contribute to our retirement fund.
- Finally we both felt that we had a chance to make some changes: we rented out the house: put our belongings into storage, bought an old 4WD and drove around most of Australia over 7 months.
- We ended up in Perth, Western Australia,we liked the town and decided to stay for a while. After 7 months off I still didn’t want to go back to IT: not even in a new town. I couldn’t even get the enthusiasm to update my resume and start looking for jobs.
- I decided in Sept 2007 to try for 6 months full-time to make a living online.
- By Christmas 2007 I had a monthly income of around $12 plus I had made another $160 writing articles on hubpages.com. Yes I was a resounding failure at this making money online scheme.
- January 2008 I was getting desperate: I felt my ego was on the line: I had to make money online otherwise I was a failure. In reality I wasn’t really desperate, my partner had a well-paying job, we were saving money and enjoying living in Australia: but I felt I wasn’t contributing anything and that I was rubbish at the internet marketing stuff. I also wondered if it was possible to make a living ethically online. Every second blog or site I found on the subject was suggesting that I build my list with every email address I could lay my hands on – that didn’t sound like either good ethics or good business to me. How could I flog products to people I didn’t know, especially products I had never used!
- January/February 2008 looked at writing articles at 1c/word, I considered earning less doing on-line jobs as a software tester or business support. Fortunately reality intervened and I realized that I could get over A$18/hour cleaning so I got a cleaning job. Then I picked up a part-time geology role which I actually quite enjoyed. I focused on my writing online rather than the make money part and had a ball, slowly m income was increasing but it was going to be even a reasonable part-time income any time soon: not this decade either!
- March 2008. Its sometimes annoying on the Internet there is just so many connections that sometimes something just goes click – I finally found an online Mentor. I wasn’t looking for one, in fact I didn’t think I needed one – but I found Vic Franqui at Bloggerunleashed and the guy seemed to make sense. He had just started video blogging at the time and I decided if he wasn’t the real deal he was one of the best actors I had ever come across! He wasn’t asking for my money: didn’t want me to pay and was providing all this great info for free – had I found my get quick rich scheme finally?