dailypress - 7:29 pm on Feb 2, 2010 (gmt 0)

Dear all WebmasterWorld members and friends:

It had been a while that I was thinking of leaving my day job to do the website thing full time. The past year, things got worse regarding my website traffic and its revenue. On the other hand my job security as well as pay increased at my full time job.

What did I very recently do? I quit my daytime job and now want to work for myself.

I saved enough to survive for a while and would like to finally do something Im really passionate about. And that's online business and websites :)

I have an Electrical Engineering degree and an MBA but worked for a Fortune 500 company in the Aerospace field. Traveling almost 100% for the company I made excellent connections at other smaller aerospace companies. And quite frankly, not to sound cocky, I think I was good at what I did so if I ever need to go back, I am sure I can find a job. The problem is, im not interested to go back. I'm more interested in websites than Aerospace, and I never gave myself the chance to pursue what I was really passionate about. But nows the time to research, learn and do it full time.

So as you can see I dont have much computer programming skills however, started installing scripts and building websites with DreamWeaver a while back (in college). Through trial and error and reading WebmasterWorld as well as other forum posts I learned quite a bit and am ready to move forward full force! :)

Now I know a little more on CMS specifically speaking on Drupal and in addition to my websites I have a few new website ideas that I would like to pursue.

I wanted to get some advice from the ones who took a similar path. Any advice would be appreciated.

So here are a few questions that I had in mind:

1. What steps I should take and what path I should avoid?
2. What do you think are the main challenges ahead? financial, emotional, ... And solutions or recommendations if any?
3. What mistakes did you do or simply just recommend avoiding?
4. How satisfying was your decision of quitting your day time job and finally working for yourself?
5. Once you quit, did you ever go back to becoming an employee again? How was it? Was it depressing /different/ or simply satisfying to be able to pay the bills again? How long did you give yourself and when did you finally decide that you had to go back? Before you were running out of all your savings or after you spent the last dollar? ;)

Any comments, suggestions and feedback would be much appreciated.

Regards,
DP

I'm young and single. It was now or never! So I'm taking the risk and will do my best!

You can obviously have your own opinion but comments like: What the hell were you thinking of quitting a decent job during this recession are not welcomed. Cause its not gonna help. I already made my decision and already quit! And honestly it took me about a year to finally find the balls to do it and make this critical decision in my life. And I obviously thought it through thoroughly. :)

p.s.> BTW, loving the new WW options such as the Editor. It was about time. Thanks "WebmasterWorld Webmasters" & Admins :)