Forum Moderators: martinibuster
The other day I was surprised that a friend of mine was not only getting Adsense income for quite a while, but he has been in the UPS club for 12 months. He said the site started as a hobby and so he never really told anyone, then it became wildly successful and then he didn't want anyone to know in case they copied it etc.
Now his 9-5 job is less than 25% of total income and he is thinking of becoming fully reliant on Adsense, which only takes up a few hours a week. He likes his job, but wouldn't be too upset about giving it up to live off Adsense.
Ok, it is a nice dilemma to be in, but he asked me for advice and I thought the best course of action was to find someone who had already done it. So has anyone given up their day-jobs for Adsense? If so, how is it working out?
This is one of those benefits you don't think about until you are doing it, so I thought I'd share. Of course, this works for anybody but it becomes more obvious to someone going it alone :)
Its not that big of a deal .Volunteer few hours a week to some good cause or get into a parttime college (an MBA!) and you can get the same social interraction you had in the dayjob!
I work on the principle that allows my income to go down to 25% of what it is currently I would still survive and allow myself time to find causes / problems or new opportunities
You have highlighted one of your most important attributes ( that is design for visitor ) not for adsense or SE , this will allow your sites to have longevvity and to survive the ups and downs of serps
One further thing apply the same principles to any new ventures that you did originally and do not go for quick instant results let it grow at its own pace .
One of the problems with having the web as your full time income is worrying more about making it happen quicker although you can sometimes force the pace by using certain tequniques they may come back to haunt you at a later date
best of luck to you
steve
I would second an earlier poster who said to invest the AdSense income and keep the day job. One change in SERPs, or policy changes at Google, could drastically affect his AdSense income.
Fortunately, a few minutes later all the ads showed up again. Evidently there was some sort of problem with Google's ad server, not with my pages.
I have a day job, with AdSense bringing in fun money. If my total income stream had come from AdSense I would have worried a lot more than I did.
I would second an earlier poster who said to invest the AdSense income and keep the day job. One change in SERPs, or policy changes at Google, could drastically affect his AdSense income.
Fortunately, a few minutes later all the ads showed up again. Evidently there was some sort of problem with Google's ad server, not with my pages.
I have a day job, with AdSense bringing in fun money. If my total income stream had come from AdSense I would have worried a lot more than I did.
After about 6 months I started to realize I was earning more money from my 1 web site than I was from my day job. So me being the spure of the moment, impulise, no strings attachted guy I am I made up my mind that night to give my 2 weeks notice the next morning.
It was a risk, but a calculated risk. Honestly, if you see a future in the business you are doing and earning more from your business than your "day job" it is usually the smartest business decision to focus on your business, provided you enjoy it and it has a future.
In the last 20 months my business has grown probably tenfold. I now employee 1 full-time web designer, 2 part-time employees and hoping to hire a second full-time programmer.
No matter where your income comes from there is going to be much more stress doing this than a normal day job on average. You are fully responsible for your own success and I LOVE that. Others it may freak them out.
I try to build my businesses on a 3 pillar approach. I always try to have 3 different sources of income from my web sites. Right now I have an ecommerce product website, ecommerce service website and a few adsense sites.
While although I see what people are saying about having 3,6,12 months etc of income saved, that really isn't that needed. Instead, use that same money and invest in another unrelated business. So instead of your income diving on your adsense and you needing to go dipping into your savings until your adsense increase, you have another business to fall back onto and your are not losing money every month.
This comes from experience. About 1 year ago Google decided to drop my domain names ranking when I did a 301. Instead of simply moving the rankings over to my new domain name, they simply fizzled into thin air. I was losing money every month. I did have some money to fall back onto, but still I am depleting my reserves every month. Finially a few months ago they returned and during the entire time I diversified, so if that was to happen again, it would not be the end of the world.
Working online is still very unpredictable especially if you rely on adsense or search engine rankings for income/traffic. Not putting all your eggs in one basket is the key, not simply hiding the eggs in a bank account.
You are going to regret that choice. 9/10 small business fail, and the failure rate is higher for dotcoms.
You will need to learn to spot the prophets of doom, and those profoundly negative souls who lack the courage to follow their dreams, and survive by trying to suck the life out of other people's.
Jusy wanted to post this as my claim to fame as a webmaster and what im doing.
After, 1 year of saving my affiliate site checks and ( oh , yes Google AdSense ). I have quit my job after 15 years that I actually hate with a passion ( correctonal officer )
I am going to get my associate degree in computer science and hopefully land a job in something that I enjoy. The schooling is free in Illinois since I am a veteran and my savings is a years salary and the hopefully the checks will roll in for another year till I get my degree.
This is more than I ever expected from being a webmaster for over 7 years and I certainly deserve it.
There is certainly money to be made but I will always consider this a part -time job or a better yet..a retirement fund for my future.
God Bless
Jeff
Just wanted to post this as my claim to fame as a webmaster and what im doing.
After, 1 year of saving my affiliate site checks and ( oh , yes Google AdSense ). I have quit my job after 15 years that I actually hate with a passion ( correctonal officer )
I am going to get my associate degree in computer science and hopefully land a job in something that I enjoy. The schooling is free in Illinois since I am a veteran and my savings is a years salary and the hopefully the checks will roll in for another year till I get my degree.
This is more than I ever expected from being a webmaster for over 7 years and I certainly deserve it.
There is certainly money to be made but I will always consider this a part -time job or a better yet..a retirement fund for my future.
God Bless
Jeff
Quit my 9-5 for Adsense.
Stupid? Maybe. Thing is, I like working on my site. Far, far less enjoyable than by official job.
I don't make much from adsense - but I am in India, and here, I probably need 1-10th or even lesser than what you need in the US or abroad to mke a decentt living.
I have tried affiliates, but I don't have enough users / or my site is too general to make anything serious out of that. Also, my 50-60 % Indian audience generaly do not like buying stuff online. So Amazon and ebooks do not sell at al. The Indian affiliate programs I can get into do not pay much. So basicaly its just adsense.
My guess is that if I work full time on my site (which does not feel like work!) I can probably take my adsense revenue up 5-10 times unless Google seriously changes something. Which they may do, but then thats a risk I am taking.
God help me :)
I'm a web developer, and about a year ago I was hating the stress and the long hours of my job. Back then I thought - I'm gonna create a textbook comparison engine - how naive I was. Then I found this forum, read all about the different products, and started diversifying.
In May my adsense check was $10. In august, I gave notice to my boss, and I quit in September, with my adsense check totally around $400. I took the risk because I believed that the revenues from adsense/affiliates could reach WAY more than I'd be able to get from a day job alone. Nuff said, this January I reached 90% of my paycheck had I stayed with the company, and Feb I should break even with it. At this rate I should be part of the UPS club in 6 months to a year.
I too felt unsure about the whole quitting and the lack of a social environment - these days I'm bored the hell out of my mind during the day since everyone is working their 9-5's , but I guess as far as complaints go it's not so bad.
As others pointed out as well - the extra time (whenever I actually use it to work on the sites) allows me to create new projects where otherwise I would't - back when I Was working I'd come home tired, and who wants to program yet some more after being in front of the computer for 10 hours?..
All in all, and then some, I don't regret the decision, even though when I first made it I was making just a few hundred bucks a month on revenue from sites. I'm a young guy with no strings, and in a few months I've decided to move to europe and live there for a few months to a year - maybe even get a job (yikes!) as a bartender or something like that I'd never would have considered had it been my main income.
To the original poster - if he likes the job, then perhaps he can switch over to part time?
Good work i did in Jan? Maybe. Maybe the new ongoing update. Maybe a google boon or a tantalising glimpse of whats possible. Maybe destiny... who knows!
