About
October 12th, 2009 by Clayton
Well, this isn’t really how I planned on starting my online business. I graduated with a nice, shiny new masters degree in 2009. I was hoping to get a cushy desk job while I outsourced most of the work.
Instead, thanks to the recession (depression?) there are no jobs for me. My industry got hit particularly hard by the downturn (companies laying off 50% of their staff) so I can’t really get a job doing what I went to school for. And of course I’m far too “over educated” to get any other sort of job. So, I had to take things into m own hands and just start making money online anyway.
In 2009 I:
- Finished grad school and got a masters degree
- Moved out of Arizona (thank God!) and returned to my hometown of Seattle with my girlfriend
- Decided to try my hand at starting my own business
- Got LEED acredited
- Gave up coffee for lent (I’m not particularly religious, I just like personal challenges)
- Did the Tim Ferriss diet and lost 12 pounds
- Started a blog
- Built several websites
For 2010, I’m working toward:
- Building several affiliate sales websites to earn money. The first goal is to pay rent with them!
- Make more money than I spend (about $1000 / month)
- Travel for about one or two months to Thailand
- Do NaNoWriMo in November
- Try to outsource and automate my business once it starts becoming profitable
- Pay off my debt.
- I also want to meet other people on a similar path
Basically, I’ve noticed that there seem to be two kinds of people you see on the internet in the “make money online” world. Those that are just getting started and trying to make their first handful of sales, and those that are making $10k / month (and trying to sell you something). There doesn’t seem to be a middle ground where someone is doing okay or having a moderate amount of success. I know that back when I was first starting, my head was filled with all sorts of questions like “how long with this take?” “when will I make $x / month?” or “is this for real?”
This blog is not about me trying to sell you anything. I’m no “guru.” In fact, I am a self-proclaimed “moron.” Honestly, I just don’t feel that I’m doing anything that unique or getting results that are all that spectacular to really even try to be a “guru.”
My goal for this blog is to document my journey so that others may use it to encourage them on their own quest to freedom (assuming I can enjoy any success myself). I also want to use it to meet others on the path as well. This blog is an experiment to see what I can achieve starting with almost nothing.
October 19th, 2009 at 8:02 am
Hi Clayton
Found your site via your fabulous “rejection letter” post on the Tim Ferriss blog.
Just wanted to give you a cheer for giving this a go…I meetlots of people who are finding it much harder to leave corporate hell than they would have found it simply to follow their own path in the first place. Good luck, and have fun-freedom is worth it.
October 19th, 2009 at 10:04 am
@Clare,
Thank you for your comment. I’ll agree that doing your own thing can be a little frightening. Especially when contrasted with the feelings of (perceived) safety and security of living in “corporate day care.”
June 6th, 2010 at 9:45 pm
man o man….this is carbon copy of my story..I am in Australia…and I did “double masters” in IT. The industry took a hit and now it has far and few jobs. Though the only twist is that I was doing IM on and off while studying and now I have taken to it full-time because of similar situation as yours.
You inspire me bud!
cheers
June 7th, 2010 at 8:24 am
@AP, Actually, I did that too. I used to do PPC direct linking while I was finishing up grad school. It was pretty easy and didn’t take too much time. Granted, I didn’t make very much money from it, but at least it gave me the impression that I was doing something productive.
Good luck with IM. I don’t know what the IT world is like, but if it’s anything like the architecture world, it’s going to be a long time before all the laid off people get jobs and the competition starts going down again (last job I applied for received several HUNDRED resumes for ONE position).
June 8th, 2010 at 5:42 am
I have been going thru the same thing…few jobs, several hundred applicants. Preference to citizens which I am not at the moment so its harder.
If you wish to make a mastermind group to overcome procrastination issues (if any) or just anything please do email me.
Cheers,
June 30th, 2010 at 5:10 am
just found this blog via affilora, looks like things are picking up for me, great inspiration, i will book mark this and come back from time to time,i have been doing affiliate marketing for over 2 years with little success until i discovered affilorama then all hell broke lose and i started to finally make money online,i quit my job back in march 2010 because it got in the way of my im efforts even though i wasnt making as much for my im efforts i decided to fire my boss and take the path very very very rarely travelled by us im’ers, who get sick of working to make other people rich when we have the potential to make a huge differance to all around us, friends ,family , charity,…. any way bit of ranting there… but its important that we stay focused forget about the media BS and just do it.. your blog is amazing, i might just start my owh one and inspire others to follow …
all the best
June 30th, 2010 at 12:55 pm
@David, Thanks for stopping by my blog. Yeah, it can definitely be challenging to “go it alone” without a job, but if you’ve got a proven system that works, you just need to scale it up and you’ll be making good money.
July 11th, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Great website and awesome story. I’m also somewhat similar and I’m in the 1.5-2.5k per month level. I’d enjoy talking to others too. Contact me if you want to chat.
July 12th, 2010 at 5:28 pm
Nice meeting you Clayton. It’s great to see you succeed in Affiliate Marketing and Blogging. Keep up your good work. Thanks for your sharing and inspiration to new IM myself.
July 13th, 2010 at 8:13 pm
@Paul, Good to see there are people out there doing better than me
I’d love to make $1.5 – $2.5k / month!
@Kent, Thanks for visiting my blog. I actually started this blog because I had a lot of nagging questions when I was first starting out like “will this work?” or “How long with this take?” I wanted my blog to answer as many of these questions as possible for others.