The short answer is, I wasn’t happy with my 9-5 job and I really wanted a break.
But that is not the only reason.
Right from my college days, I wanted to be my own boss and work on things that I enjoy doing.
Life is all about adventures, So I have decided to give it a try being my own boss for six months.
When it all started?
I developed the habit of blogging when I was doing my master’s. Little did I know that you could earn from blogging.
I was documenting my learnings on cloud computing in a blog. When I was researching on changing the blog layout, I stumbled upon a blog (I don’t remember the name) that had articles on making money online through blogs.
Most of the things mentioned in those articles on making money online were too good to be true.
I started digging more into this to figure out the best way I could monetize my tech blog. I would spend hours every night after college to see how others are making money.
How Did I earn my first $?
After a fair amount of research, I have decided to go with Google Adsense to monetize my blog.
But that was not easy! Google had strict guidelines when it comes to approving Google Adsense account.
I was hesitant to apply for Google Adsense after reading Adsense’s rejection stories of other bloggers.
But, I had a decent number of unique articles published in my Blog on tech topics that had a chance of getting approved.
I didn’t overthink, and I just applied for it!
To my surprise, Google approved my Adsense account. I was thrilled and started spending more time on implementing ad-codes in my Blog. It was exciting. Again, the sleepless nights started, but I was enjoying the process.
After displaying ads, I started earning $1 or $2 per day through ads! I felt so good, and the feeling of making money all by myself was fantastic! It gave me confidence in trying out more things!
During that time, people like Amit Agarwal (labnol.org) was earning thousands of dollars through Adsense. He had huge web traffic, and his content was really good.
The World of Affiliate Marketing
Along with publishing tech blogs, I was continually reading about growing blogs and making money out of them.
Along with Adsense, the term “Affiliate Marketing” was mentioned by most of the blogging gurus.
I started following Harsh Agarwal and Pat Flynn in the blogging space. They were publishing these interesting income reports every month. They were very transparent about their money, and I could not believe that someone could earn so much through blogging. I mean, Pat Flynn was talking about six-figure incomes ($) and Harsh Agarwal in five figures ($).
And I was in pursuit of everyone’s dream of earning 20k rupees per month working for an IT company.
Along with my IT dream, I worked on my blog every day. I signed up for few affiliates and displayed a couple of banners.
Guess what? I did not get a single dollar through affiliate marketing for three years! Because I was not doing it the right way!
My First Affiliate Earning
After many failed attempts on Affiliate marketing, I continued with my tech blogs and Adsense display ads.
I got my first Adsense cheque when I into six months of my first IT job. I was thrilled, and I had that feeling of accomplishment even though the cheque was not a significant amount!
During the second year of my career, I started preparing for AWS Cloud certification and used a course from Udemy. I cleared the certification with a good percentage.
Then I wrote a blog on AWS certification preparation, mentioning all the resources I used for my preparation. And during that time, Udemy was accepting affiliate requests, and I signed up for their program. Also, In my preparation blog, I added the Udemy course with the affiliate link.
I started sharing the certification guide with other certification enthusiasts through Linkedin groups.
What happened next blew my mind! I got signup and a $31 commission on Udemy. It had a very good commission structure then, and the courses were priced above $50.
Here is my first affiliate income report! I took a screenshot of it as I knew that I would tell this story one day! that is today (Feb 2021)
This taught me one fundamental lesson. People buy when there is value. If you want to succeed in affiliate marketing, You need to write articles that ads value and recommend products you have used (A standard advice from most bloggers).
Also, I was able to sell an ad spot in my blog for direct advertisement. Here is my first earning from the direct advertisement.
Why did I Quit my Job
I have been blogging since 2010 and started making a decent income in 2014.
But I never did blogging as a full-time job. I used to publish articles whenever I would get time.
I always complain that If I had more time, I could scale my blog to a business model.
I have been thinking of taking a break for a few years now, but the following questions and fears inside me didn’t let me do it.
- What happens if I don’t get a job after a break?
- How will I manage my finances?
- How my family and friends would react?
- Will it be a huge mistake?
Also, I started hating my 9-5 job due to the predictable work schedules. This time looked perfect for me to take a break for six months and do full-time blogging and spend more time with family.
Note: I have taken this decision consciously as I have a decent amount of income to support my family and daily needs through blogging every month. I do not suggest anyone taking a career break without having a second source of income.
I really don’t know what will happen after six months. Will someone gives me a job? I am not sure. Is it going to be hard to find a job? I am not sure. Will I get the same salary as I use to get? I am not sure. But I am not letting these thoughts demotivate me.
But here is what I am trying to figure out.
- How disciplined I can be when I don’t have a full-time job.
- How capable am I to run an online business on my own?
- How to scale an online business?
- How does it feel to be your own boss?
Well, I hope I will find out the answers to these questions. I have started this blog to document all my learnings during this time.
How Do I feel Without a 9-5 Job?
I am having this feeling of freedom. I started enjoying small things in life.
If I close my eyes, I am either relaxed or thinking about my plans—no project deadlines, no politics, no scrum meeting, no demos, etc.
Also, I am not taking this time for granted. I started planning out my days to spend them productively. If you want to be a tech blogger, you need to spend more time researching and learning new technologies, which I like doing.
Soon, I will be publishing a blog on how I plan my day for Blog publishing!
See you in my next blog!
