Adventures in Lifestyle Design from a Path Less Traveled
(updated May 2011)
My name is Clayton and in 2009, I graduated from college with a masters degree into a particularly bad economy (“the worst since the Great Depression!”).
And despite my best efforts, it is virtually impossible for me to get a job or anything vaguely resembling employment.
I’ve sent out over 200 (probably closer to 300) resumes in cities across the west coast from San Diego to Seattle.
And from all that I got exactly zero interviews.
And of course I’m too “over educated” to get a job flipping burgers or selling T-shirts at the mall.
Thanks a lot grad school…
I had always had the thought of starting my own little online business. I guess this was as good a time as any, right?
I found a good course on affiliate marketing and I did it non-stop for one whole year. That sounds like a lot (and it is!), but when you literally can’t get a job (and you have some bills to pay), it can really motivate you to make things work.
A lot of people say that I have an unnatural sense of persistence. But I guess that just comes from grad school where you are trained to handle being inundated with disappointments, tedious labor, and soul crushing environments.
Well, through some stroke of luck, I somehow actually started to make a livable income online! (Hey, it was either that or sell a kidney to make rent!)
In September 2010, my girlfriend quit her job and the two of us left the United States to travel around Thailand and live off of my passive online income for ten weeks.
It was a real life-changing trip. I got to see another part of the world, meet some amazing people, and do a whole bunch of things I had only dreamed of doing.
We came back to the US in December 2010 and now we’ve got our work cut out for us. It’s back into the fray on our renewed quest for online domination.
I originally just started this blog to keep myself from getting too isolated while I was working on websites. I’ve met some great people through this and I’m grateful to know you all.
This blog is where I write about lifestyle design, internet marketing, and personal development. I hope you enjoy!
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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.
@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.”
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
@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).
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,
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
@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.
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.
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.
@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.
Hi Clayton,
one of your achieved goal is
# Make more money than I spend (about $1000 / month)
Do you intend that you spend 1000$/month for IM? And if yes, could I know in wich way?
@Corrado, I spend about $300 – $350 on IM. I spend about $1000 / month on rent, bills and groceries :)
$47 – AMA
$67 – UAW
$200 +/- Outsourcing
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