I Quit My Day Job To Blog

by: Sean McGoldrick

October 19 was my last day at work. I quit the job because the levels of noise and stress were far too much at times, to the extent that I felt it just wasn’t worth the money anymore. At other times, when it was quiet it was almost at if I had this arrangement where they would let me come in and use the Internet and then pay me at the end of the week. It was like the best internet café ever! Overall though, I remember it for the noise and the stress and the bad tempers. I have been working in call-centres and in taxi bases for about five years now. This place was definitely the loudest, but it was also the smallest. It was largely down to the lay-out of the room, where the base controller was sitting directly behind me shouting into a radio. The couriers would come into the room and stand directly in front of me to talk to the controller, who would be giving them jobs to do and directions to get there while I would be answering a phone call to someone sitting in a nice, quiet office who was whispering into the phone. For the first time in my life I started to get headaches on a regular basis. I have lined up some part-time work so that I will not be totally living off my savings but my intention over the next three or four months before I run out of money is to spend more time on blogging than I have been able to up until now. I believe it is possible to earn a living from blogging. It may take some time to do it and three months may not be enough, but it will be enough time for me to begin seeing some results. I will then be able to conclude whether there is a future for me as a professional blogger. My blogging to date hasn’t exactly been prolific. I started my personal diary in June this year. It is my oldest blog and currently has 30 posts. I have a bonsai tree blog which I started in July after I bought some seeds and started to grow them, which has 42 posts and I have a blog about blogging which I started in September and which has 15 posts. I have also been publishing some of my posts on helium.com. PayPerPost is one of the means I intend using to earn a living from blogging. My personal diary blog is almost eligible; it was recently turned down because it only had 17 posts in the last 90 days which didn’t satisfy their criteria of having 20 posts. I am considering submitting my bonsai blog. The reason I haven’t is that I would have to write 10 paid reviews before I would be able to submit another blog and it might take me a while to find 10 posts that would suit that particular niche! My blog about blogging has another couple of months to go before it’s old enough. I am also signing up with other pay per post sites. The other obvious means of monetizing my web-site is advertising, such as Adsense. I have been using this on my blogs and I have found that the bonsai one is the the only one to get any regular clicks from it at the moment. My income from it at the moment is usually $2-$3 per week; hardly enough to encourage me to give up my day job but nevertheless that is what I have done. My reasoning is that if I am able to achieve that kind of income with very little traffic and with the small amount of time I've had to give to them, then I feel that by building up my sites I will be able to achieve something much more worthwhile. During my first week I earned $7. So far, half-way through my second week, I have earned $30. That is progress at least! If you've ever considered doing the same yourself, you may want to keep an eye on me and see how I'm getting on!

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