Transitioning to Entrepreneurship

I’m an entrepreneur all the way through- the idea of having a career working for somebody else makes me sick. I don’t know how people do it. There are those people who like it- my friend Simone is going into video editing and shooting, and she knows shell love it- but that’s an awesome job. Who wouldn’t want to be in that field if they had the skills? But then there is the other end of the spectrum- the people who get stuck sitting behind an old computer in an office for 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, 170 hours a month, every month and every year until they are 60 years old. To those people, it is time to break free and become an entrepreneur.

Now I know one of the main reasons that most people get stuck in these jobs even if they’d like to work for themselves is fear. If you are one of those people, I am here to tell you: don’t be afraid. It isn’t scary, and to me personally, nothing is scarier then spending your life in an office. Id rather try to survive in the wild. But wait, I don’t have to! Because I, just like you, can start my own business!

Ok, maybe you are still scared. But you can take baby steps, so that you can keep your job while you build up a business and slowly phase out of your job when your business starts to take off. Here are some of the steps you can take today to start earning an income outside of work:

1- Find your own clients

So you are a real estate agent? An interior designer? A video editor? A lawyer? You already have the skills and technical know-how to do your job, and yet your employer is taking most of the money. Outrageous. Though there is a reason for it- finding clients is not an easy task for beginners. The best thing to do is talk to everyone you know. That’s how most people make their first sale. Tell your parents, your friends, your significant other, and everyone in your family that you want to start finding clients, and find out if they know anyone who might want your services. Tell them to tell everyone they know. You may have to get creative with the marketing you do to make that first sale, but once that comes, it will get progressively easier. Freelance businesses grow through word of mouth, so your old clients will help you bring in new ones.

2- Sell on Ebay

So many people rave about this so I finally gave it a try a few weeks ago. I’ve only put up one product, and it sold, so now that I have more free time I will be working with this a lot more in the months to come and hopefully I can develop a good money-making strategy. You can easily start selling on Ebay today, just find some stuff in your house that you’d like to get rid of and post it up online. Or, if you are an artist, you can even sell things you’ve made. The success stories from this site are astounding. Its great for beginner entrepreneurs because there is almost nothing you need to do to draw traffic and market- people go to this site specifically to shop. So, for example, if you were to make your own website, it would take you much longer to make a sale because you would need to spend a lot of time promoting your website first.

If you are new to Ebay like me, eBay For Dummies will cover everything you need to know.

3- Two words: passive income

The absolute best thing you can do is to understand passive income. This means that you put in the work once and get paid indefinitely. This is how royalties work, like when you buy a song 10 years after it came out and the artist still gets paid. You can make this work for yourself.

A simple way to start your passive income journey is by creating a blog. These are a lot of work in the early days- passive income does not mean you dont need to put in the effort. It can take years for a really good blog to start making an income large enough to live off of, but if you have 20 years left before you retire, and the time to write a few posts a week about a topic you love, then why not try? If you can draw enough traffic, amazing opportunities open to you- you start with simple income from ads and affiliate selling (selling products on other peoples sites), then move on to writing an e-book and selling it, charging membership for your site, creating software (you can outsource this), and hundreds of other things.

Start blogging now! If you are serious about blogging and earning an income to live on, ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income is THE book you’ll want to read.

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Check out the category Monthly Traffic and Income Reports to see my progress in earning a passive income.