When did you jump ship to full time self employment?

For me, there's no 'measure' for this
It's more about the vision you have

IF you saw FREE gold and diamonds in a box ahead of you..... would you wait around for a while to see who else might want it? OR would you go grab it now.
 
In 2010 I had a job at subway summer after high school. It sucked.

Didn’t really drink my freshmen year of college and instead read lots of web Dev guides and tried to build an mmo. Was a decent decision exp wise terrible financially. Also started an eBay collectibles business and moved into niche research kinda by accident as a consequence of attempting to escape price competition. Never really had a job since other than putting up with the occasional crazy person or nutty business situation.
Been paying myself and pretty decent group of other people ever since term explorer blew up around 2012.
 
I went full-time back in 2008. Was working for Comcast at that time and got laid off. Wife was pregnant with our first child, so I was under the gun. It was do or die. Had about $20K saved up and a credit card with about the same amount to float some of my advertising spend. That gave me about 6 months to get by (barely). It was rough the first year, but I ended up making enough to push through and here I am.

As I'm sure a lot of you guy/gals know, this business can be feast or famine. I've had many many month's where I make more than a lot of my friends make in a year, but also a few times where I've seriously considered getting a job. Luckily I haven't been there in a while, but it's made me appreciate where I am now. Either way, I couldn't imagine doing anything else. This gig affords me the type of freedom many dream about. I'm very blessed.
 
I have been toying with the idea of leaving my stable, well-paying 9-5 office job for a couple of years now.

I always told myself once my sites were earning $X,XXX, I would leave. Well, $X,XXX was hit but I stayed.

I then said I would leave once I sold a site for $XXX,XXX. Well, I sold a site for that amount, and stayed.

I then said I would leave once I get my affiliate earnings up to $XX,XXX per month. That happened and I stayed.

I then promised myself one more exit of $XXX,XXX and I'll leave. That happened earlier this year and I stayed.

I've decided that I'm going to put in my notice at the beginning of the new year and leave at the end of January.

(Side note - I highly recommend people read LivingAFi's career journey. It's extremely relatable. If you've already left the rat race, it may trigger your PTSD).

The math works out where Affiliate Earnings - Link Building - Taxes = Cost of Living. At current holiday-adjusted earnings levels, I'll be pretty much net $ zero every month.

And that's fine. I have ample cash savings and can flip a few low $XXX earning affiliate sites for high $X,XXX very quickly. Additionally, I can always take some part-time finance contracting gig.

There are two downsides to this.

One downside is I'm going to have to write more of my content. It's been a while since I've written posts, so it'll take a minute to get back into the hang of that. But once I'm in the zone, I can bang them out very quickly.

The other downside is that I love to shovel money into the stock market. It's going to be painful not having the extra cash flow to do that. But it's fine because my stock market investments are at a point where I never need to invest another cent again and I'll have an extremely comfortable retirement in 10 years.

It's nice to see the fruits of my labor paying off. All those long nights after work and the gym. All the weekends, sometimes missing out on some hangouts with my friends, restless nights of sleep.

I'm finally at a point where I can control my day. I'll still have those sleepless nights, but soon I'll be able to take a mid-day nap to counter that :smile:

I only expect to take a few months off before I get stir crazy and need more social interaction. Not sure if that's going to be finance contract work, pivot to a full-time in-house SEO job at a startup, or something else.
 
JamaicanMoose said:
I always told myself once my sites were earning $X,XXX, I would leave. Well, $X,XXX was hit but I stayed.
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How long has it been since you hit that first milestone? Respect for achieving so much while working fulltime. I would go crazy if I had to do the same thing, although having a well-paid job helps with the outsourcing/link buying fees.
 
Poplanu said:
How long has it been since you hit that first milestone? Respect for achieving so much while working fulltime. I would go crazy if I had to do the same thing, although having a well-paid job helps with the outsourcing/link buying fees.
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I want to say that was 9 months into my SEO career. Maybe 12 months until the $X,XXX would have been enough to cover all my expenses.

It's definitely draining. While the amount of time I physically spend doing SEO isn't that much, it's a huge mental drain / stressor to have. Combined with the 9-5 that I loathe and it's very exhausting :smile:
 
I left my job as a RIA on Feb 8th, 2017.

I had been there for 8 years. As you can imagine, working in financial services can be quite lucrative. I needed a really solid reason to leave a career like that.

And, to be honest, it was a no-brainer.

I think I actually waited way too long to make the move. WordAgents was a 5 year old company by that point and I had a steady stream of reliable income from SEO affiliate sites. I just always had a fear of the "house of cards crashing," which always kept me from pulling the trigger.

Fortunately, it was just a matter of limiting beliefs about myself. Business increased / improved almost immediately after I went off on my own.
 
Ryuzaki said:
When I was 15 or 16 I toyed with Geocities and Angelfire sites.
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Sorry to get off topic but I saw you mention angelfire and it brought back memories. I made a few websites on angelfire and they are all gone EXCEPT my very first one. I made it around 1998-1999 and I was in 5th/6th grade and for some reason it's still online lol. It's extremely embarrassing but it's cool to look back on with the guest books and site counter lol.
 
I made the leap quite early on. I was fortunate and frugal enough that my living expenses were low and I just went for it. If it didn't work out, I would be back where I started at some job I didn't like, but I wouldn't have been completely ruined which was a nice luxury that allowed me to give my full effort sooner rather than having to wait and punch clocks. Taking more time to save up and having a bigger warchest could have gotten me ahead sooner, but the freedom was priceless.

I can't imagine anything else now. The idea of having to get up when somebody else decides I should get up, scrape the ice off my car, spend 50 minutes getting downtown when it should take 10, just to get belittled by some goober manager... It's not even real anymore, self-employment is all I know. There are still ups and downs but I always feel like I'm living on my own terms and that's everything to me.

I would do some things differently, but there are times where I take a step back and look at old cue cards I'd made years ago with monthly goals on them and think "hell yeah man, you did it."
 
JamaicanMoose said:
I have been toying with the idea of leaving my stable, well-paying 9-5 office job for a couple of years now.

I always told myself once my sites were earning $X,XXX, I would leave. Well, $X,XXX was hit but I stayed.

I then said I would leave once I sold a site for $XXX,XXX. Well, I sold a site for that amount, and stayed.

I then said I would leave once I get my affiliate earnings up to $XX,XXX per month. That happened and I stayed.

I then promised myself one more exit of $XXX,XXX and I'll leave. That happened earlier this year and I stayed.

I've decided that I'm going to put in my notice at the beginning of the new year and leave at the end of January.

(Side note - I highly recommend people read LivingAFi's career journey. It's extremely relatable. If you've already left the rat race, it may trigger your PTSD).

The math works out where Affiliate Earnings - Link Building - Taxes = Cost of Living. At current holiday-adjusted earnings levels, I'll be pretty much net $ zero every month.

And that's fine. I have ample cash savings and can flip a few low $XXX earning affiliate sites for high $X,XXX very quickly. Additionally, I can always take some part-time finance contracting gig.

There are two downsides to this.

One downside is I'm going to have to write more of my content. It's been a while since I've written posts, so it'll take a minute to get back into the hang of that. But once I'm in the zone, I can bang them out very quickly.

The other downside is that I love to shovel money into the stock market. It's going to be painful not having the extra cash flow to do that. But it's fine because my stock market investments are at a point where I never need to invest another cent again and I'll have an extremely comfortable retirement in 10 years.

It's nice to see the fruits of my labor paying off. All those long nights after work and the gym. All the weekends, sometimes missing out on some hangouts with my friends, restless nights of sleep.

I'm finally at a point where I can control my day. I'll still have those sleepless nights, but soon I'll be able to take a mid-day nap to counter that :smile:

I only expect to take a few months off before I get stir crazy and need more social interaction. Not sure if that's going to be finance contract work, pivot to a full-time in-house SEO job at a startup, or something else.
Click to expand...

Well, an SEO consulting gig for 10 hours a week just fell into my lap. Makes leaving the job at the end of January much easier. It also means I won't have to write my own content (thank God).
 
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