Hi! I am THE day job quitter. I quit my day job because I hate all the stress that comes with it, we’ll talk about that later. Right now, I just want to say outright that this post (my 2nd one on this blog) would be quite long (hopefully) in an attempt to lure the great Grizzly Bear, who by the way is one of the greatest resource online to learn how to make money online to give me some link love hehe. But if not then no problem. This blog would serve as a journal of my making money online ventures. I would put here my experiences and frustrations of making money online and give out some tips here and there whenever possible.
Now where should I start hmmm…Let us start with my first day of work. I first started working on April 25, 2005. And just for the record, I graduated from college 2 days before that which was a Saturday. Since that was my first job, it sure was exciting. I had hopes of doing okay with this first job of mine hoping to be able to climb the corporate ladder slow but steady. The first 2 years was okay. I started out from the bottom as a programmer. Life was fine. Though the official working hours was from 8am to 530pm, we normally had to do a lot more extra hours just to be able to cope up with the work and make sure that we don’t get delayed with any of our projects.
Fast forward a little bit to December 2007. This was my first encounter and attempt to make money online. A college friend of mine said that he was making a substantial amount of money using the internet! At first I was ab bit skeptical. I have heard of numerous scams online and I thought that cautiousness would be the best way to go. I asked him to teach me so that I could try out making a few bucks online. He didn’t oblige but instead told me to go buy Ewen Chia’s Secret Affiliate Weapon ebook worth $9.99 if I remember correctly and that I did.
His ebook was about affiliate marketing. In it, he outlined the basics steps a newbie has to take to be able to earn money online. Things like having a list, an opt-in page, etc… were all mentioned there. They of course made a lot of sense to me since I had nothing to reference to. But looking back from today, it seems that whatever he has written can be found in the internet for free. Yes, his ebook was not a scam but I could have gotten them for free. What’s more, the information written there was nothing specific. There was no in-detail explanation of what to do. It was just a sort of an introduction to the making money online world. But nevertheless I did not give up. I continued on until I found out about Google Cash.
The concept of Google Cash was simple. Join an affiliate program, create an ad using Google Adwords, point the ad to the merchant’s sales page using your affiliate link and hope that the potential customer would buy. The method worked but not for long. I think that was the time when Google waged war against affiliates. That was the time that Google introduced quality score and all sorts of stuff making it hard for affiliates to make money using the GC method. Nevertheless, I still made money. That was my first taste of income online and it felt good. The only problem was the money I had made online was gross income. If you combine my expenses (Adwords advertising expenses…), I got a net income of approximately $0. Yes that’s right, zero.
There were several problems. First, the program that I joined had a small payout. Too small that my efforts seemed worthless. Second, I only joined one program! I had no portfolio, I had no other programs to lean back on in case I fail. By the way, I live in Asia. And by that I want to point out that I do not have a large salary to fund my online ventures. That is probably one of the reasons why I only had one site because that is all I can afford. My advertising were actually on credit (credit card) and making substantial income online was starting to get stressful. Not only did I not earn, I get my check a month after I earn then I had to put deposit it into my dollar account – another 12 days of waiting. All in all, I had to wait almost 2 months just to get my hard earned money and the worst things was, that money was just used to pay my advertising expenses. 
Come August 2008 and I was sent onshore to Arizona, US on an assignment. That was the same month I “paused” on my online ventures. I figured that since I was in the US at that time, I’ll continue earning online agenda there…which never happened. I borrowed a few affiliate marketing books from the library but never got to read them. I got complacent with my dollar active income day job earnings there since it was quite big (for me) compared to what I was earning back home. Big mistake.
After 6 months, I went back to my home country and decided to marry my longtime girlfriend. During that period, I had no time for online work. My time was devoted to preparing for the big day which fell on December 2009. That same period was a very stressful one at work. Working hours ranged from 8 hours to 20 hours! That was fine with me to show gratitude to the company that gave me the opportunity to go to US. But at the same time, I was hoping that I would get a good rating for that fiscal year and get promoted. Boy was I wrong. Not only did I not get promoted, my rating went down the drain. It was the rating I could not take. I slaved myself to death working for the good of the company and you give bull@#*& rating???!!! That was when I realized that I should continue pursuing my making money on the internet goals. However, since my wedding was near at hand and I needed the money, I simply had to persevere.
My big day came and went and today is the year 2009. I told myself that I would give the company another chance to redeem their mistakes (who doesn’t make mistakes right?) while at the same time making money online part-time. I restarted my making money on the internet venture on January 2009 but this time using Adsense as my vehicle. I haven’t “met” the Great Grizzly Bear at that time and so I relied on gurus who claimed that they know everything that I needed to know. Gurus who claim that they make money online by teaching others how to make money online. At first, I respected them. I tried to sift through their blogs for information but it was very difficult to say the least and it was if they did not want to share their knowledge. I did not want to buy the stuff they were promoting as I was burned before. I wanted to make money online with as little overhead as possible.
As time passed by, I hated their blogs more and more. They contained nothing but fluff and guest posts. Though their blogs looked pretty and all that, there was nothing substantial for me to absorb. There and then I realized that they were there to sell me products and not help me out. They are businessmen who were out to catch the unwitting newbies and sell them crap. Half their site was product endorsements. I was disgusted.
Going back to January 2009, that was when I decided to get serious with making money with adsense. I think there is a story behind that. You see I have a personal blog to which I write anything I want. At that time, my thinking was like a blogger, get as much content as possible, post daily and the money will come. Though creating a lot of content is essential (as you will see later why), posting daily and hoping the money will come trickling in was certainly not true. However, I was fortunate enough to stumble upon a 3 word phrase that brought me money every single day! That was the time I was pumped up to research further and create some sites. By the way, this keyword was about cancer cure. I just added another word to that phrase and voila the traffic came in. I guess it had to do with low supply that did the trick. Officially, I believe it’s called a long-tail keyword.
Obviously, cancer cure is a profitable niche and so obviously that was one of the reasons why that blog post of mine brought in more than 1 dollar clicks. Other than that, I knew nothing about the other factors. I knew nothing about SEO. I knew nothing about backlinking. I knew nothing optimal adsense placement. In other words, I knew nothing. Back then, I also thought that I had to have a nice looking blog to be able to earn adsense clicks. I mean, why would people go and read my blog if it looked ugly and unprofessional? Little did I know that it was quite the opposite (thanks Grizz…). Ugly blogs bring in the clicks. Thus, I decided to learn how to create WP themes. I created an “okay” looking theme but nothing changed.
I wrote more posts in the hope that I would stumble on another profitable keyword. I wrote more posts about cancer cure trying other add-on keywords with that main keyword to no avail. I guess it was pure chance that I stumbled on that profitable keyword. I was starting to get frustrated. And then I wrote about games, Nokia games to be exact. Well, the traffic started to rise, but the CPC was horrible. I got $0.05 which certainly did not uplift my spirit. Nevertheless, I continued on. I’m not losing anything right so there’s nothing to be frustrated about …
I think it was March or April when I stumbled upon Grizzly’s blog. I actually found it while using my smartphone. Imagine walking around staring at my smartphone because Grizz’s post hypnotized me into doing so LOLZ! But seriously his writing has a way to make you stick and continue reading on. He is a good writer who knows about hypnotic writing. But not only that, his posts make sense unlike the A-listers’ blogs which did nothing but take me on a merry-go-round. I read his blog from alpha to omega but sadly I wasn’t able to take action because of my stressful day job. It demanded my soul such that when I arrive home, I am almost like a lifeless vegetable.
I believe, Grizz was also the one that pointed me to the keyword academy. Since it was only $1 for joining, I joined and boy was I in for a big pleasant surprise. Mark and Court at the academy made perfect sense (again). Coupled with their detailed step-by-step guide, I was pumped up to make money online even at the expense of my soul! I created a couple of niche sites using their technique and did not sleep through the night. I followed their backlinking timeline and true enough my sites slowly climbed up the SERPs. As of today there are still not at page 1. But then again, it climbed from being at the 100s to the 50s, 40s, 30s, etc… In short, their method works. Up until now, I am still a student at the academy so hi to all of you reading this blog post, classmate!
I also got to read about Ban Kung’s blog (or Ben) over at make money online with seo. By the way, this Ben is a robot. He is not human. He can write articles like mad and he does not get tired. He can create a thousand websites at will. He takes massive action. And he writes long posts like Grizz. In other words, he became a role model. A guru to look up to. He leads by example. He does not write fluff. He speaks his mind. He is the man (that is after Grizz, peace bro 
).
Fast forward to last week, Oct 10, 2009. That was effectivity date of my resignation. Now don’t get me wrong. I am still not earning substantial passive income to offset my day job salary. This is a big leap of faith. But I am not without a plan. My plan is to use my day into earning both active and passive income. In the morning, I am an article writer and in the afternoon I am web developer slash internet marketer trying to make passive income online using Grizz’s and the TKA method. Couple with Ben’s motivational push I guess I am ready to go.
If you landed on this page because you wanted to learn to make money online, here is a simple outline of how to do so:
- Research keyword (niche)
- Create content around that keyword via a website (own site or free sites like hubpages)
- Promote your site and individual posts/pages (SEO my friend…)
- SEO
- SEO
- SEO
Easy huh? Probably. It all depends on you. If you want to learn more about earning a living online, then make sure to check out the keyword academy.
If you want motivation, check out Ben’s earn money using SEO site. By the way there is another robot out there who can write a hundred articles in one day. His name is Mike Iser. So if you need serious motivation, check him out as well.
I am also following through with other newbies-novices like me. If you want to know about adsense startups, check out Road Warrior’s site.
Last but not the least there is Lis Sowerbutts. She talks about earning passive income online. On the hand, she also makes active income online. So I guess we are somewhat similar. The only difference is she is already successful and I am yet to become one. At least I have another someone to look up to.
I guess this is it. 2300+ words! This is the first time I have written a blog post this long. I hope the Grizzly bear would come down my way and give me some words of wisdom. It would be an honor and motivate me a lot.
See you again next time.
The Day Job Quitter (TDJQ).
P.S. By the way, I got a very high rating before I left my company but no salary increase to prove it. Just goes to show that corporate slavery is not the way to go if you want financial freedom.
