Check Our Recommended Resources to Grow & Monetize Your Website

⤴️ We verify & approve but do not endorse any products advertised.🔥 Place your 728 x 90 banner here.🔥

Interview with Pat Flynn
Interview with Pat Flynn

Interview with Pat Flynn from SmartPassiveIncome

Pat Flynn from Smartpassiveincome.com has had a tremendous amount of success online and has inspired thousands of people with his work. Not only has Pat proven that creating quality content and using non-aggressive promotion techniques are useful, he shares with us how he did it. Besides Smartpassiveincome, Pat also runs Green Exam Academy (LEED eBook) and a iPhone company LOLer apps

1. Do you mind telling the readers a little bit about you and what you do?

I work from home and I live of a passive income and that means that I don’t have to trade in hours for dollars. And the kind of a long story on how all that started, but I’ll start when I graduated college, I’ll try to keep it short for you so we can get to some hard core material and actionable items.

After I graduated college with a degree in architecture I got a nice 9 to 5 job. I loved it, I worked with some really high-end clients. Life was good, and then all of a sudden I lost my job because of the economy and, you know, I kinda had, I kinda came to a fork in the road where I could choose whether to go back into the workforce and look for another job as an architect, striving architect, or I could work online.

I knew how successful some people could be online, ‘cause I kept up with some RSS feeds and blogs, I read like Yaro Starak and Darren from Problogger and internetbusinessmastery and them. They were all pretty inspiring but, you know, I never really had the chance to implement any of those things but now I had all the time in the world and I said to myself: “Ok, I’m just gonna go with this, I’m gonna go with internet business full force and see what happens”.

Kind of, my back was against the wall so I had to succeed, and I think that was part of the reason why I became so successful. I mean, I’m not a millionaire but, you know, I’m supporting a family and I have a wife and a son so I’m supporting them through my passive income streams online in various businesses.

But, anyways, the way that all started was, you know, I decided to do business online and I had a blog at the time which was just for me to study for an exam that I took in the architecture industry called the LEED Exam.It was about leadership, energy and environmental design. It’s all about green buildings, sustainable architecture and stuff. So, I had this knowledge, I had this blog that I had just my notes on it, but then. I started implementing some tips to try and get it out there. And, I noticed that people have actually been checking out my website for a long time, I didn’t even know it.

So, when I checked my stats I was getting few hundred visitors a day from all around the world and it was kinda unbelievable. I was actually really scared because these people were on my website and I didn’t know exactly what they’re thinking.

So, I allowed people to write comments and stuff. I figured out that they really needed help just like I did, so I turned my blog into a full study guide website. You know, just giving away content for free and trying to make money with AdSense or something like that.

Now, I’ve pulled in my first bucks online with AdSense and that was a great feeling. You know, I made like 20 bucks at first month. It was a good feeling, but definitely not enough to keep my head above the water for a long time. So, after that I looked into private advertising on my site, so selling 125×125 pixels advertisements on the site. And that went actually pretty well, I contacted some companies that are also involved in LEED examining to pay me a certain amount. So, many months of advertising on the site, because I had enough traffic to support that.

So, that went pretty well, but it was still just a few hundred dollars a month, definitely better than 20 dollars from AdSense, but, you know, I learned from a lot of people online that the way to make money online is to actually create your own products, sell something that you have created.

Because you get more of a profit from it and it’s more fulfilling. So, what I ended up doing was spending a month and a half writing an eBook, studying course for my website.

And the first month after I launched that, it made 8,000 dollars. Which was ridiculous to me! Because, that was more money than I had made in 3 months working a 9-5 job. After I wrote the eBook it was just, kinda, set in and go, see what happens. You know, I’d wake up in the morning and there would be an extra 200 bucks in my account and I would be like: “this is nuts!”

You know, this really works and what these people are saying, it’s not false. I mean, I know there’s a lot of hype and scams out there, but, there are people (like myself) making decent money trying to help other people out online. So, I took that to the next level, I took my eBook and I turned it into an audio guide. Then I sold an eBook and an audio package together at a discount rate. The first month after I launched that (which was 2 months later) I generated, I think, like 20,000 dollars in a month. And then it just, kinda, took off from there.

My best month was in March of 2009 where I cracked a 30,000 dollar mark in just one month. Which was half of my salary, you know, before. It’s just incredible, things slow down a bit, you know, I’m still cranking out over 10k a month. I think the industry has matured a little bit and I’m still looking for ways to increase my on that particular website. So, you can find that website on greenexamacademy.com. You know, you can see a picture of me in the front. It’s very… it’s very personal website, I like to get personal and, you know, not try to look like a corporate company, which many people try to do.

I try to be 1 on 1 with people and show them, you know, I’m the person behind the website. And, I think, that adds the value to the content that I put on the website. So, from there I created smartpassiveincome.com from which, you know, a lot of people know me now. There I talk about how I got to this point and I talk about entrepreneurship and blogging, online business strategies and what not.

It’s a lot of fun, you know, I love helping people out. I think that’s why greenexamacademy was so successful, because the primary intention was to help people out. You know, if you help people out and you give them exactly the content that they need and they want and they desire, you’re gonna make money from it. You know, the money shouldn’t be the primary intention.

And now, I’m in other businesses, my friend and I started an iPhone app company and that’s doing pretty well, we’re actually about to have a record month of earnings. We had a record month of earnings in May and we’re coming out with more and more apps. It’s all; again, it’s more passive income things. We can create an app, put it out there in app store and just let it sit and marinate a while, hopefully, that would bring us some income.

I also have a foot in number of content writing websites. You know, revenue sharing websites like eHow, InfoBarrel and stuff like that. So, I’m all over the place, I’m kinda experimenting and trying to go a 100% on each of those different passive income potential streams and see what hits and what misses.

2. Great, so, just to clarify some things. Your first month of launching your eBook, you went from 0 to 8000 dollars in your first month from launching it?

Yeah, I mean, I was making some money from private advertising. But, you know, I had no products or anything, so first month I cracked 8 thousand dollars. I didn’t spend any money on advertising, I still haven’t and it’s because, you know, I’ve built that authority and I was seen as an expert to all my website visitors.

And when I came out with a product they were like: “Hey, this guy gives away amazing free content, now he has a paid course, or paid eBook, that must be incredible!”

So, you know, they were really fast to get in on that. You know, honestly, when I launched it, I had no idea what was happening, I didn’t really know what I was doing, I was just following tips and advice from people that I’ve… you know, I hounded a lot of people, I’ve asked a lot of questions, but, you know, you gotta do what it takes you to get there.

3. Do you mind telling the readers here more why it’s important to have multiple income streams?

It’s just like when you invest in the stock market, you don’t want to put all your money into 1 stock, you don’t wanna put all your eggs into 1 basket. Because, if that stock goes down, that’s all your money. So, it’s all about diversification and, you know, putting your foot out there and creating different income streams in different markets. This is my principle, you know, I try to be in as many places at once so that if one of them, you know, if the LEED exam no longer exists, I still have an income coming from other places.

Or, if Apple, for whatever reason, shuts down their appstore, which I really doubt is gonna happen…But, if that happens, I’ll still be ok, so that’s what it’s all about. And, I know there’s some people who say: “Well, you’re spreading yourself thin and you could be making more money in 1 particular area if you just put all your energy into that and not worry about anything else”.

I somewhat agree with that, but, you know, again if that 1 thing that you’ve been working at, just fails, or shuts down, or the company that you know, are writing an exam guide for just doesn’t allow you to do that anymore, then you’re screwed.

So, I’d rather take the safe route and try different multiple income streams. And it’s fun too, I get to be creative with the iPhone apps and I get to be helpful and provide, you know, good mentorship for the LEED exam and stuff like that, so…

4.  You were really determined to make a living online, but besides determination was there anything that you… any problems that you ran into while starting off online? Any challenges that you faced that really, kinda, slowed you down or anything like that?

Yeah, absolutely. The technical aspect of working online was a big hurdle for me. As I’m sure it is for a lot of people, and if I could go back and if I knew how much money I would have made, I would have outsourced everything and everything would have happened so much faster and I probably would have made more money too.

If I launched my eBook two months earlier, you know, if I made 8,000 dollars in those first two months, that’s an extra 16 grand and it just kept growing exponentially, so it’s probably more than that I’ve lost from not getting in it as fast as possible.

But, the technical aspect is difficult, and, it was tough for me because I’m a “do everything myself” type of person, so I couldn’t even imagine giving someone else, you know, password to my WordPress blog to work on a website for me and make it look better.

So, I would buy books and programming guides, trying to figure out how to do it myself. And, although I’m glad I did that, because now I know how to easily fix something if something goes wrong or if I wanna tweak something, that’s not that complicated, I can do it myself. Although, that’s the case, I wish I got to it a lot faster, and I probably would if I outsourced a lot of things earlier.

That’s why, now in my iPhone app business, we outsource everything. We come up with the ideas, my business partner and I, and we just outsource it. We don’t even deal with programming.

My business parther, he’s a programmer, but he knows that there are people out there that specialize in programming iPhone apps, who can do the job a lot faster and create more quality products. And, we can create more apps at the same time using several developers instead of just turning out one at a time.

5. I’m looking at your blog right now; and right now you’ve got 6816 RSS readers for your smartpassiveincome.com blog and over 44 thousand twitter followers. Do you mind some of the ways which you have done to really build such a strong audience? I’ve seen some of the response rate and the comments and the interaction. What are some of the things you did to really build up such a good audience, such an interactive audience and really keep them coming back?

Well, honestly what it really comes down to is unique, good content. That’s really what it really is all about. I mean, there’s a lot of other things involved but, if you write good content, you’re gonna get a lot of readers, a lot of subscribers. And, if you continually do that, if you perpetually create good content, you know, people are gonna take notice and subscribe and want more.

So, my RSS subscribers, you know, I’ve noticed that whenever I write, you know a pillar article or an article that I’ve spent maybe a day or two writing, that It’s gonna be good (for instance I wrote a whole post about how bloggers can utilize facebook to drive traffic and how can they setup their own landing page so it’ll help people to convert to fans a lot more), that post, (which is one of my most popular ones), when I put that out there just jumped like crazy. And I noticed it was tweeted out so many more times so I’m sure I got a lot more twitter followers from that too, and I connected with a lot of people who, you know, commented on the blog on that actual post and said: “Hey, I found you on Twitter” or “I found you on Youtube” (because I also posted Youtube videos to go along with it) and “I really love your blog and I’m gonna subscribe”.

You know, they just went straight up and said that. That’s exactly what it’s all about. So, putting yourself out there in as many places as possible through the content that you write on your blog is good. So, you gotta make sure you have ways that people can share your content. So, like Twitter, the Facebook liking and StumbleUpon or Del.icio.us and all that stuff. That’s all really important.

Another thing that I did was, you probably heard a lot of people say that you should write guest posts? That’s probably the number one thing that you could do outside your blog to help promote your own blog. I mean, I didn’t write guest posts per say, but I was featured on another blogs because of my success story. So, I was featured on Yaro Starak’s entrepreneurs-journey and I was interviewed by Darren Rowse from Problogger.net, and it works the same way as a guest post. I’m on their blog, I’m being endorsed by the super, awesome blogger who has a network of, you know, hundreds of thousands of people and that totally feeds traffic over to your blog.

So, even if it’s a smaller blog, you know, I’ve done interviews for smaller blogs to, you’ll see influxes of traffic, spikes in my Google Analytics, just based off guest posts, and spikes on my subscriber feed too.

6. Interviews, guest posts and, you know, a lot of stuff like that… So, what about using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to drive traffic to your site, what are your thoughts about that? Because I know you emphasize using Facebook a lot and I think you’re the person who got me to make my own Facebook page to really drive traffic to my site. So, do you mind sharing your insight on that?

Oh sure, I like Facebook for a number of reasons. 1, It’s taking over the world pretty much, Everybody’s on it now. There’s almost 400 million people, 400 million active users which is like, I think, more than 1 for every person in the United States, which is ridiculous.

Also, people spend all friggen day on Facebook. I mean, the average time someone spends on a normal website is 7 seconds and you’ve probably done that too, you know, when you just to a website and it’s not really what you’re looking for and you exit it right away. Which also highlights the importance of first impressions, but we can get on that later. Facebook, people on average spend 20 minutes on Facebook a day, which is a lot more than 7 seconds.

So, when you’re posting stuff to your Facebook business page or your personal profile, wherever you’re, you know, connecting with your fans, or friends, or people following your blog, it gets shown on their walls and people look at their walls and it gets shown too. It just has this nice viral effect which can easily drive traffic to a website and create more of a fan base for you, and it’s good for branding too.

You know, a lot of corporate brands are using Facebook, so why not bloggers too. I’ve found great success with Facebook. Another thing that I like about Facebook (especially more than Twitter), is the fact that you can have multiple conversations going at the same time and easily see the thread for each of them.

On Twitter it’s hard because you just have 140 characters, and you have to @ reply, and you really don’t really see the conversation in a one whole block like you do on Facebook, so that’s nice.

You know, I like to use Facebook, I like to, you know, drive people to my website but I, more so, use it to connect with my followers and give them another side of me, another way to connect with me. Another way for people who enjoy Facebook more than Twitter to connect with me.

And, I also use Twitter a lot. Twitter is great for, you know, it’s another way to connect with people, just short little snippets of whatever you’re doing during the day, I throw that in there every once in a while. But also it’s good to link to other people’s posts and your own posts as well and just give people advice and response. Again, it’s similar to Facebook, just another way to connect with people.

But, one thing I like Twitter for more so than Facebook, is the ability to use affiliate links in your tweets. I’ve found that Twitter is excellent for tweeting out affiliate links and getting conversions that way. Obviously, you don’t wanna just only tweet affiliate links, you wanna tweet affiliate links that are relevant to what you’re talking about, your niche and whatever conversations you’ve been having; or else people aren’t gonna follow you anymore.

But, it’s been really successful, I have, that’s how I got most of my affiliates for Internet Business Mastery. ‘Cause I made sure I track everything using like bit.ly and stuff like that. It’s just amazing and social networking is really important, if you’re not in it you should definitely look into it, because you’re missing out on great opportunities to, not only just drive more traffic but, you know, connect with your audience and followers.

7. So, just to clarify everything really quick, it’s good for connecting with your audience, building a more personal relationship, driving traffic and also monetizing if you want to?

If you want to, yeah. I try to stay away from monetizing totally on social networks because… There’s this famous internet marketer Perry Belcher, he made a great analogy. He said: “Social networking is like a party”, you know, when you go to a party you go there to socialize with people… you know, hopefully, you don’t go in there to stand in the corner… you got there to socialize with people, and if you go to a social event, like a party, you wouldn’t go up to someone you’ve just met, you know, and go like: “Hi, I’m Pat, would you like to buy this Tupperware set?” You know, they would not be your friend.

So, what you do, just like at a party, when you meet people, you get to know them, become their friend, you don’t even necessarily talk about business or what you do, then you invite them to your home, and your home is the equivalent of your blog. You make sure they have a nice first impression, so that people are excited to be there and willing to stay and come back if you ask them to come back again.

And then, you could, kind of, guide them into, you know, what you do and lead up to those squeeze pages, or sales pages, or anything like that. And then, they would be more inclined to actually listen to what you have to say and read what you have to write; as opposed to if you’re just up front, you know, be a salesman.

8. The average visitor usually spends like 7 seconds on a site, and even myself, I’ve found myself spending 1 or 2 seconds on a site… So, what would you say, especially to a lot of people who have just first started off and are not well known, what would you really say to people that, you know, want a good first impression?

There’s a number of things you can do, and it always makes me sad when I come across a blog that has great content but it’s just lacking these things we’re talking about. Because, there’s so much potential, and I know a lot of you out there, listening, have so much potential and you have great content already, there are just a few little things you could do to make sure to keep people on your site, and keep people happy when they get there.

First thing is your logo and a tag line. Those are really important. Because that’s a first thing usually people are gonna look for when they come to your site, they’re gonna see a logo and they’re gonna see a tagline.

The logo doesn’t have to be fancy, it just has to be something memorable, or something that, kind of, explains what you’re about. And the tagline, the tagline especially is important, it’s far more important than a logo actually. It’s a little sentence or a few words that say exactly what your site is about, because, you have to tell these people exactly what the site is about. Because, if they’re confused for 1 second, they’re gonna leave.

So that goes along to the next thing, which is your, kind of, about me area, you know, on the right side of the sidebar I have a little, like name tag that just says a few more sentences about what I do and that’s kind of a hook that tells people exactly what this site is all about. And then, they can click to learn more about me and read a little bit more about my story if they want to get to know me more.

Those are all really important things.

Another thing, is advertisements, now, advertisements are great way to monetize on your website, but, too many can, you know, detour visitors and give them uneasy feeling that you’re just trying to make a buck off of them, so you know, I have a few block adds on the right side of my sidebar, but it’s below the fold.

The reason I do that is because I don’t want to give people the first impression that I’m just trying to make a buck off of them, you know, that I’m just trying to monetize the website. And actually, even though I don’t aggressively monetize the website, I don’t have any pop-ups, no ads besides of those four ads on the right hand side, I make 2-3 thousand dollars off this blog each month.

Most of it comes from the resource page, and a few affiliate links that I’ve put in blog posts. But it’s all relevant stuff, and none of it is, you know, aggressive marketing or anything like that.

So, there is a way that it is possible to make money online while being a nice guy, not being pushy, getting people to decide for themselves if they wanna work with you and purchase whatever you have to offer. Whether it’s something from one of your affiliates, or one of your own products, or an ad on your website…

9. So, do you just wanna share some ways about monetizing your site in the non-aggressive way? ‘Cause, I know, you talked about your resources page which earned you a lot of money and you also do some other techniques on your site that earn you some money, so, monetizing your blog the non-aggressive way and making a decent income from that.

Well, you know people are getting smarter and smarter. These days more and more people are online and notice those types of things and they don’t like it.

I don’t know if you remember when the web first came out there were those pop-up ads that would come up on every website and it would say: “Oh, you’re the millionth visitor click here to win a prize”. Those were highly converting ads when the internet first came out, but now, you don’t even see them anymore, because everyone knows that they don’t work, because people are smarter and they know better than that.

So, I think people are getting smarter now days too, and, kinda, leaning towards to not liking those types of sales pages or those hype sales pitches or anything like that anymore.

They’re looking for a genuine authenticity online, I think. That’s all I provide online and it’s working for me. I mean, I’m sure there’s a lot of you out there that know people who are still doing the aggressive marketing thing, and it does work, but then, if you do it too much, you’re going to lose your customers. You’re just going to have one time sales.

And, I’m more about building long term relationships with customers or my readers who can follow me and purchase from me one time and then, you know, when I come out with something else, purchase it from me again later. Because the first thing was to pitch to them in a way that they felt like they needed it because it wasn’t an aggressive pitch…

Anyways, one thing I do is, I have a resources page on my blog; and that’s basically a page on my blog that’s linked to the homepage, that kinda just has tools of the trade, you know, for doing internet business and stuff like that.

So, whatever niche you’re in to, I’m sure there’s a number of websites or products on Amazon or books that you can read that are involved with your niche, that can help people out. This site is intended to help people out, to give shortcut to the tools and books that they should read and whatnot. Everything they can use to start whatever you’re talking about.

Must Read Books For Every eCommerce Entrepreneur [+ Video Summaries]
Must-Read Books For Every eCommerce Entrepreneur [+ Video Summaries]

For me, for instance, I have, people who want to get started with internet business, I have webhosting companies I also have some affiliate links to internet market courses, some books… and keyword search engine tools and a whole number of other things you can check it out if you want.

But, with each of those, again, the intention of that is to give people a shortcut to get, to succeed faster. But, with some of them there are actually affiliate links so it’s like a win-win situation.

You know, I have this page which is like a 1 stop shop for everything they need. So, it’s convenient for the visitor, but it’s also good for me because, you know, I earn commission of some of those things. Which is awesome and why it shouldn’t be like that.

It’s really simple, it’s not aggressive because you’re not pitching your resources page, you’re getting people to click there because they want those types of things. They want that information, they wanna know what they’re supposed to read, what they’re supposed to do, or how they’re supposed to succeed. You know, again, whatever your niche is about. How to do what it is that you’re talking about on the blog.

So, that’s the number 1 non-aggressive way to make money on your blog. Have a resources page, you know, make it nice because you want people go to there and continue to go there when they need more things.

So, don’t just put links to those products, books or whatever; put descriptions, and you know, little snippets of your thoughts about them, like a little review, maybe put a picture, just make it nicely organized and something people enjoy going to while looking for things that can help them out.

10.I wanted to get your thoughts on email marketing and about building a list. I know we talked about RSS vs. email marketing before, but I don’t know what you would recommend.

I think that was probably with someone else, but I would have to say that I somewhat agree with that statement. You know, an email list is important for a number of reasons: 1, it’s the easiest way to get in contact with people, if you have their email address. You know, people check their emails all the time.

You know, people read their emails, they don’t like to see unread emails, so if you have an email list and you send emails out, chances are you’re gonna easily contact people and whatever you have in your email, whether it’s content or call to an action of some kind, people are gonna take action with that.

Another reason is because, you know, if your blog shuts down, or, you know, if Feed Burner, or whatever RSS subscriber tool you’re using just dies out, you still have a way to contact people. You know, people’s email addresses, for the most part aren’t gonna change very much.

So, you can start up again and then you’ll have already a way to contact people and tell them where you’re at and what you’re doing. And that’s really important. So, it’s kind of a failsafe, just in case if things don’t go alright with your RSS feeds.

But, I think RSS is important too. 1, it’s a great way to keep track of the growth of your blog. You know, it’s kinda weird because RSS numbers fluctuate quite a bit, but you can tell the different trends, you know, if your blog is growing or not.

You know, it’s a great way for people to read your content on the road or, you know, easily take in your content on their own RSS feeders which is very convenient for some people, so that’s important too, you know.

Even though you can’t email all those people directly, you’re still giving them your blog content which is obviously important. And then you can have maybe calls to actions on your blog posts that these people can take action on.

As far as which one is more important, I’d say they’re both equally important, but, I’ve been lately really working out on my email list and just a couple of months ago I finally got an email opt-in form on my page. And I have an eBook that goes along with it to get people to subscribe.

It’s just been a couple of months, but already I have over 3,000 newsletter subscribers and it’s awesome.

I might be one of the only ones doing this, but I don’t sell anything on my news letter. I don’t pitch any of the affiliate links; I don’t do anything but provide good content.

Ant the reason I do that is because, 1, it reinforces kinda the feel of my blog not being aggressive and just providing good content and it’s kinda setting me up so that when I do come out with a product… You know, I don’t have a product on smartpassiveincome, or anything like that, I don’t even wanna think about that yet, I’m not at that point yet with the site, but when I do eventually reach that moment when I can create a product, I’m sure I could go to my email list, however big it is and get a really, really good response rate, you know, or conversion rate off of the list.

Because, I’ve been doing nothing but providing content, so when I finally do come out with something, hopefully they’ll think to themselves: “Well, this must be good”.

Just like with my LEED website where I was providing free content on the blog and I finally came out with a product, they just jumped on it.

So, hopefully, the same thing will happen, and again it’s a great way just to make sure that I have people with me wherever I go. If, you know smartpassiveincome dies, or something like that, or I don’t know, but you know what I mean?

11.  People just don’t give up their emails as easily as they used to in the past. So, what would you recommend to someone who wants to build a newsletter, wants to build a healthy list… what would you recommend to them or tell them to do to get people to opt-in?

Well, you gotta have some kind of a lead magnet. And a lead magnet is something, whether it’s an eBook or a course or just some type of a report or something, you know, maybe a video even that get’s people to subscribe in order to get access to it.

You know and guarantee you that If I didn’t offer my eBook (it’s called eBooks: The Smart Way), which is all about how to write a killer and profitable eBook, I guarantee you, if I didn’t have that gift (I guess you could say) or a lead magnet for my newsletter, I wouldn’t have 3,000 subscribers.

You said, if you just put it up there and say: “hey, subscribe to my newsletter”, you’re gonna get a really, really terrible conversion rate.

12. The next thing I wanted to talk about, this is kind of a conversation we had yesterday, but I wanted to bring it to light. It’s about internet lifestyle and there’s a couple of things that I wanted to talk about in this topic.

Oh, well, that’s a great question! There’s a lot of differences which I’m sure a lot of you know already. I mean, 1, you work for yourself, you’re working for yourself, you know, you can make your own decisions with your business and you can create your own luck, you can create your own success. You’re not backing, you know, your boss or anything like that…

So, you know, what I like about the internet lifestyle and working for yourself at home is that you can control, you can literally control how much you make. You know, if you’re working harder you’re gonna see more returns, hopefully.

If you are working a 9-5 job, you can work… you can be the hardest worker in the world and someone with the same position as you, who is just like the laziest person in the world, they’re gonna make the same as you.

I mean, obviously, in the long run you’ll probably get promoted and that other person wont. But, the truth is you’re getting paid no matter how hard you work, and that to me is just weird. It doesn’t feel that it should be that way, you know what I mean?

So, that’s 1 difference, another difference is, you know, just the schedule. 9-5, you know, people say they work 9 to 5 because it is from 9 to 5 every single day… it’s tough, it’s really tough. I did it myself and although I loved my job and I was fortunate to have a job, you know, that I enjoyed waking up (actually it was like 8 to 6). But, you know, you can’t take a day off when you want to, you know, you have to have sick hours, relief time and… you know, you can’t just get up and leave and do something, you know…

What’s nice about the internet lifestyle is I can make my own schedule; I can work when I want and when I want to. You know’ I can work in my PJs if I want to although I wouldn’t recommend that. When my son grows up and he goes to school, I can just stop working at 2 o’clock, pick him up from school, spend a couple of hours with him and get back to work later.

I have a freedom to do whatever I want. I could take 2 weeks off. Especially with passive income generation, you know, where you don’t have to be there to earn money. I could just take 2 weeks off, go to Hawaii or whatever and just continue to make money which is awesome.

I don’t have to trade my working hours for dollars. And the moment I stop working is the moment I stop earning money… That’s not what I think it should be. You know, I’ve put in the hard work for my businesses and now I’m seeing returns over and over again. Continued returns and hopefully they will continue to return.

Now, you’ve mentioned that working from home, and maybe the internet lifestyle isn’t for everybody and I honestly think it isn’t.

Because it’s very, very difficult. Some people, you know, like I said before, you become your own boss, some people, can’t handle that. They can’t handle it because they’re not disciplined enough and that’s ok, some people just aren’t like that and they prefer working a 9-5 job where people are telling them exactly what to do and they’re good at it. That’s fine.

Other times, people just can’t make the decisions that someone who’s in control of the business has to make. You know, like financial decisions or legal decisions, and stuff like that.

You know, when you’re working from 9-5, you have a specialized job that you’re good at and there’s other people involved in that company as well that handle the finances, handle the legalities for everything. They handle the things you don’t have to do, but when you’re your own boss, you have to do everything.

You know, you can outsource and do certain things like that but then you have to be in control of those people and … It gets very difficult and I honestly can say that this wasn’t an easy ride for me and sometimes it still isn’t.

Because, new issues come up and I have to make decisions that I never made before and it’s fun and I’m learning so much about business and the internet and who I am as a person. But sometimes, I just wanna be like: “OK, I wish I could just sit back and worry about this other thing I was working on” and this thing pops up.

Another thing, you know, it’s tough to work from home because it’s just you and one of the things I loved about my 9-5 job (or 8-6 like I said) was the people I worked with. You know, I made a lot of friends and, you know, we’d have a lot of ‘water cooler talk’. We’d take breaks, you know, in the morning and the afternoon and just chat about whatever… sports and whatnot…

I don’t have that anymore and that’s difficult because I’m a very social person and I really like to converse with people. So I’ve tried to make sure I go to lunch with, you know, friends every once in a while or I take breaks and go downstairs to talk to my family.

About Daniel S.

Daniel is the founder of Digital Media Intelligence digital agency and digital marketing manager here at Monetize.info. For over 14 years he has helped hundreds of customers to establish a presence online and win the digital race.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

English