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At The Crossroad: The Choice Is Made

I once asked myself about 4 weeks ago in “Crossroad Ahead: Which way now?” whether to go fulltime blogging or find another job and remain blogging part time. I have elaborated previously about the income I earned presently as a part time blogger. I have also made some projections as to the possible income I’d earn as a full time blogger.

crossroad

A few friendly fellow bloggers pitched in with their comments about my situation. Glen of happyandblue2.ca put emphasis on the need to try things out. That there’s no shame should I fail as it is how we all learn. Ark of hakuna matata offered a few words of wisdom but cautioned about taking the plunge without making sure of how my skills would fare in the real cyberworld. Even Pattaya dropped a couple of lines about which area of blogging is a pain. James R. Lee of jrlee.me pitched in with a very wise advise of building a big cushion first before taking the plunge. r4 sdhc piped in with a reference to dedication to work. Last but not least I got some input from 2 of my favorite bloggers in the world: The Extreme John and The Sire. John implied on the need for perseverance and got me to thinking that I may not be ready yet indeed. Sire echoed the wise counsel of James Lee in his own way.

Blog Full Time or Part Time?

So which choice did I make? Well, as it turns out, I found that it is not only I who have the right to make that decision. When I opened this up with my wife, she kind of woke me up to the fact that I am no longer one person but half of one entity, husband in the husband-wife entity. It is not only I whose patience and perseverance gets tested if it takes 3 or 4 months before I get to see real income pouring in. There’s the wife and the kids. Besides, a week after a mild argument about the matter, I found myself in an interview for a vacant position she found at City Hall. If I can somehow harness my wife’s quick wit and ability to arrange such lightning fast transactions and apply it in the blogging business, I just might succeed in it really quickly too.

Needless to say, I went for the road more travelled. The road that looks safest. Sometimes I felt some sort of guilt for what feels like cowardice on my part. But what the heck, I’m not letting go of my blogging dream anyway. I’ll take James Lee’s advise of building a comfortable cushion first before taking the plunge. Perhaps it’ll take me months, even years to do so. Then when the time comes, I’ll take a dramatic sigh as I let go and take the plunge (to the sound of majestic drum roll). Then again, when that time comes, I think it won’t be a plunge but rather just a small leap because by then I’d be very sure where I’m going.

Full Time Dreamer

The Paradox of Choice

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Crossroad Ahead: Which Way Now?

I’ve heard about bloggers who do full time blogging – reporting to no one, researching and publishing posts and churning out sites all day, while the regular working class folks do the 9 to 5 grind trying to make their bosses richer. I’ve heard that not all bloggers succeed into superblogger status (sorry, that may not be the right word but I meant the kind of blogger whose efforts pay off in terms of income far beyond any regular working guy’s salary). In a similar manner, not all office bound working guys get promoted to managerial positions and thus remain below the enviable class of office workers.

I started out blogging firstly as a personal outlet of some perceived desire to express myself to the world sans the stagefright. Then I noticed, after a lot of exposure to other bloggers’ output, that a blogger could earn, in several ways, with his blog or site. And after a little experimentation, I found this to be true. I put up my blog (and thereafter, a few more sites) several months ago while maintaining my day time job. I was able to publish a whooping average of 8 posts per month. Yes, you read it right. Per MONTH (check out the archives bar [The M Files] on the right). Compare this to full time bloggers who churn out 8 to 10 or even more posts per day. If I take the plunge and go full time, I’m sure I can publish at least a post or two a day, and do other blog-productive activities.

crossroad
A crossroad is coming up ahead for me. I am about to go jobless by the end of this month. When I received the memo, I didn’t quite know what to feel. Maybe it just coincided with my ‘high spirit‘ days (in my regular cycle of highs and lows), but I surprised even myself by feeling somewhat exultant. Then I realized it was the blogger in me who is ecstatic at seeing the possibility of going full time in the field I have grown to be passionate about. Crossroads? Yes, because by month’s end, I see two options.

  1. To go seek another job and thus continue being a part-time blogger (and make 8 posts a month);
  2. To take the plunge and go full time blogging.

A regular day time job assures me of a regular income, and having been doing this for several years, helps keep me in my comfort zone. To go full time blogging, on the other hand, is like sailing on uncharted waters, and thus totally out of my comfort zone. The few sites I put up have generated, around 4 months after their publications, an aggregate monthly earning equivalent to two-thirds of my present day time job monthly salary. Additional efforts in this direction will certainly increase this amount further, but I am not very confident about its stability inasmuch as it is too dependent on google. A little change in the big G’s algorithms could send it all crashing into a pathetic heap. As far as I know, there are a lot of other methods that allow bloggers to break free of google’s hold and control, e.g. list building, luring repeat visitors traffic, cpa/affiliate, etc. If given a chance, I may be able to try them out. And this I could only do if I go full time. Maybe, it’s not really totally ‘uncharted’, but being a born pessimist, my confidence level in pushing through with this option is low.

Which direction should I take?