Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I see the potential out there and I have so many new ideas of websites and can't wait to start them but I just dont have time to do it since i work mon-fri 9-6. You come home and you always have something to do and we all know that once you sit down and start programming it takes time and some alone time.
I have medical benefits at work so i know i will lose all that but knowing that I could be making $6,000 - $10,000 a month just from adsense is driving me nuts.
When do you guys think is the right time for me to quit my day job and me a webmaster for a living. I've always had a job and i'm just affraid to leave a place where i have steady income every 2 weeks that i can count on.
IMO, I wouldn't shelf the 9-to-5 until you're certain your Adsense income will be steady.
Of course, the only way it will remain steady is if you continue to command those 15 million pageviews every month.
leaving the job is easy, but getting it back is harder should something happen with Google. What if you get booted from adsense, or you get hit by Google's algo? Have 6 months of living cash in the bank and then make the move IMO. Also, add the equation the medical benfits and extra taxes you will be paying
as search engines may stop loving you one day, get some money for bad days too.
and make sure you understand that putting new site high in the SERPs takes a long time.
Sept. - $159
Nov. - $1,675
Dec. - $4,250
Jan. - $1,600 (as of today)
I might just stay around for couple more months and make sure that Adsense income is steady every month.
I bet you would work 10 times harder if you were fired.
If you really want to quit, maybe you should get yourself fired, then you would have motivation to make it work.
:-)
I was fired from my job right when I started working online so I was forced to make it happen.
I bet you would work 10 times harder if you were fired.
If you really want to quit, maybe you should get yourself fired, then you would have motivation to make it work.
:-)
...haha I dont want to get fired! I am actually taking a week off vacation in 2 weeks and see how much stuff i can do in a week and get my new sites up.
WisdomSeeker
Once you have that sum of money, pack your job in and go for it. If it all went pear shaped in month 1 at least you don't have to stress out immediately as you have a long time to work out your next move.
You might also think about hiring somebody to help out, such as a college student, to help add to your site, or to help setup another site.
If you are bringing that kind of money in, you could afford to pay a college student to put in a lot of work on your current site(s) or a new one or two, and having them do the "boring" work and getting it out of the way, could help you focus on the more interesting/profitable stuff.
I've seen a number of people move into your AS bracket hire other people, and it's paid off in several ways - it's freed up their time to concentrate on things they find interesting, and it's also helped maintain a constant stream of content/information for their sites, for those times when they take a break, or when they are working on their normal 9-to-5 jobs.
Based on your December earnings and the 15M pageviews number you only have a $0.25 CPM. That's very low.
I'll tell you a true story,
I have a friend, much older than I. We'll call him Bob. Bob came to this country 30 years ago with absolutly nothing. He worked in a widget manafacturing factory for 10 years and saved. Perhaps due to being an immigrant, he was treated harshly by his employer, sweat shop type conditions, no bathroom breaks, etc.
20 years ago he decided he had enough and wanted to start his own widget manafacturing out of his garage. People, including family, told him he was crazy. "How are you going to compete against a fortune 500 company out of your garage".
He asked his good friend, lets call him Sam, who also worked at this factory to jion him in starting a widget manafacturing company. My friend Bob offered to put up all the money, Sam's input would be only his time and hard work.
Sam decided that he didn't want to take the risk and was worried that if things didn't work out he would be unable to get his job back. He declined the offer.
My friend started that company in that garage. Two days making the widgets, two days delivering the widgets, and two days selling the widgets. Sundays was church and spending time with a tutor learning english.
Today my friend Bob, owns the biggest manafacturing company of these widgets in the Country. He has the type of wealth which enables him to own a private lear jet, several homes, and anything else he would ever desire. Amazingly he is still the type of guy that will do the dirtiest job in his company, from cleaning tiolets to mopping the floor.
Several months ago we were chatting on one of his loading docks when a delivery truck pulled in. The truck driver, who's lucky if he makes $600 a week, was Sam.
It was a strange experience to view. Here are two guys later in life, with the same backgrounds, both uneducated blue collar type guys.
One gave up a future for a sense of security, the other, gave up his security for a chance at a future.
.
Also, I'm not sure how much the extra time devoted to the site would add to income - there is only so many new features and SEO optimizations you could add (although I think I tried pretty hard this weekend to bring myself to the $10/day level and stay there for good). But it must level off somewhere.
its too risky .
StuntasticAudi, your earnings are really low for so many visitors. Do most of your visitors generate a huge amount of pageviews or are most of those 17 million pageviews generated by unique visitors?
Based on your December earnings and the 15M pageviews number you only have a $0.25 CPM. That's very low.
It was 17 million unique page views. My visitors average 7-10 page views a visit. My CPM for this month has been $.30 average.
Well i'm taking a week off soon so hopefully i can do everything i need in a week and then all i'll need is couple hours a week just to update things.
I personally think you cannot be afraid to be banned from adsense it just makes you paranoid. If you don't give them a reason there is no reason to be scared.
If you are a victom of a click attack they should reinstate you because it wasn't you breaking the rules it was someone else.
I dunno just me personally. I would wait it out a few more months making sure that money is gonna be steady throw in a 2 week notice so you can be hired back later if you absolutly had to. and work on the sites
If I were you, I would be happy to earn that kind of income. So, don't quit your job. You might regret it later if Google is taken over by another big company and decided to stop paying publishers based on pay per click basis. You will never know what would happen. That happened to me when Overture taken over by Yahoo! Overture was my only source of income back then.
Work extra hard with your web site. Wouldn't it be nice to have two sources of income? If you are following my footsteps you will be worried every day that one day you might be banned by Google.
Anyway, it is up to you to decide. You can ask others opinion but you will be the one making the decision for your own self. The safest way is - if in doubt, please don't. If you are sure then go for it enthusiastically. Enthusiasm can make a difference.
1. Would you qualify to get health and disability insurance on your own? If so, how much will it cost? Sometimes people get rejected for health insurance for some conditions they thought were realtively minor health issues.
2. How easy is it to get another job in your line of work? How long would it take? What is your current financial situation? How much in savings do you have in case you were unemployed for awhile and your sites were not making much money? Do you have a spouse or significant other with a job with benefits? Do you have kids to feed? A mortgage?
3. Are your sites the kind that are unlikely to get banned or are they living on the edge? Do you get all your traffic from the search engines? If so, is it all three or just one? Do you get traffic from other sources than free search?
4. Is all of your income from one site or do you have multiple sites? How long have they been online?
5. Could you make money from other sources besides Adsense with your sites? What would you do if you got kicked out of Adsense for invalid clicks or got hit by "smart pricing"?
6. In your current job how much are your benefits (vacation pay, sick days, 401K matching etc.) worth? If you live in the U.S. and you are self employed, one negative is that you have to pay the employer portion of social security. The upside is that there are lots of great tax deductions for small business people.
7. Are you a "people person"? Some people just don't do well working alone at home. Do you have the right motivational skills? Some people have a hard time working 40 hours a week without a set schedule.
I don't think anyone else here can tell you what to do because the right answer for you depends on a lot on different variables in your particular situation. But these questions may provide you with some things to consider.
A $10k check from AdSense each month doesn't translate to $120k income for the year. Maybe you've done the math already, but all too often, many people compare their website's gross to their 9-5 take-home and see a glaring difference, when in all reality, the difference isn't all that great.
Taxes, hosting, promotion, medical, retirement/savings, are all things that will need to taken care of after you recieve your website check, versus the majority of that stuff being taken out before you recieve your 9-5 check.
I would caution one from quitting their job w/ $10k AdSense/month if that was their sole source of income. Putting all your eggs into one basket is extremely risky. My personal suggestion is to secure a minimum of 4-5 income sources for each website, and to reach a point where you could still get by if half of those income sources disappeared.
Considering that you are still very green to montarizing your site/s. My recomendation would be to make 2006 a year to explore what's possible, with a self-employment goal of 2007.
Sit down an write out all your expenses for your website (hosting, promotion, etc) & yourself (taxes, medical, etc) that would accompany self-employment, and find a realistic number that would warrant quitting your job, and make 2006 a year to reach that goal. Even if you reach that goal early, treat '06 as an exploratory year and don't quit until 2007.
On the flip side of things, if I'm correct and what you posted is accurate, you hinted at making $25k/yr from your job. I could very well be reaching here, but it sounds like you are somewhat young. If you don't have a family, mortgage, etc... things are much more simplified imho, and makes the risk a easier one to make. If things didn't work out, you wouldn't have starving children, you wouldn't have to foreclose/sell your house, and you could jump back into the work-force at the same level you left it.
It was 17 million unique page views. My visitors average 7-10 page views a visit. My CPM for this month has been $.30 average.Well i'm taking a week off soon so hopefully i can do everything i need in a week and then all i'll need is couple hours a week just to update things.
And have you already tried CPM advertising? Maybe a CPM program like TribalFusion, FastClick or Casale Media will be able to complement your income.
you are the only one who can make the decision!
