When I first made the leap from traditional employment to self-employment, I had no idea what I was doing. In fact, I’m glad that I was ignorant of all of the future mistakes that I would make because I’m 100% certain that I would have stayed at my job. The risks would have scared me shitless. There were a number of things that excited me about the idea of working for myself. And, the idea of working online. What I didn’t factor into my journey was that, like with everything, there would be some things that I would be drawn to in my new working life. It also took longer than I expected to navigate through what I liked, disliked and why. Finally, I was really drawn to the idea of building passive income into my business and found myself getting distracted from that goal as I transitioned from self-employment to entrepreneurship.
*In order for me to support my blogging activities, I may receive monetary compensation or other types of remuneration for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial and/or link to any products or services from this blog. Please read my disclosure here.*
Thinking about starting a blog?
It’s pretty simple to do and cheap! Start with Siteground and WordPress.org. With this winning combination you’ll own your own website by the end of the day. And, Siteground has easy to follow tutorials to help you with setting up your site. Also, don’t forget to grab 120 Awesome Blog Ideas from Ruth Soukup’s Elite Blog Academy today.
Show Resource
Are you wondering if it’s possible to make money online with your blog/vlog/podcast/or online community? Do you keep getting stuck on getting started and aren’t sure where to begin? Grab the free tool kit “Do It Ugly” today. I’ve made thousands launching my projects “ugly” and refined them as I went. You can do this too! The “Do It Ugly” toolkit shares how to get started with your new digital project and how to get started making money online.
Perfect doesn’t get paid, done does.
Text the following phrase: moneyhungry to extension 66866 and get ongoing access to all the free resources that I share with the Money Hungry community.
Listen to the Show
Show Notes
- Let’s talk about the journey between self-employment vs. entrepreneurship. For many people in the online creation space that means you’ll eventually land in one of the following spaces:
- Virtual Assistant Work
- Freelance Writing (content creation)
- You can listen to my interview with Kayla Sloan, creator of the $10KVA who shares her lucrative journey as a Virtual Assistant. I’ve included a link in the show notes.
- I quickly discovered that I had some issues:
- Virtual Assistant work drove me crazy.
- Freelance writing was great when I had good clients, but drove me crazy when I didn’t. I also was concerned about building a huge number of clients that I was accountable to for income.
- So, I kept trying to figure things out.
- As time went on I started experiencing small wins:
- I made affiliate income which I loved! Not tons, but enough for me to get excited about it
- I got paid to work on cool projects
- I took an 8 month break from freelance writing and when I started writing again I was attracting fantastic clients who paid well and had fun projects for me to work on.
- Then, I randomly decided to write a second ebook. The thing is, I’d written one ebook about Colorado and it sold from time to time. But, I didn’t focus on writing ebooks as a major part of my business. Then, I wrote the second book and made $540 the first month it was published. Then, I made even more the following months. That income was so exciting that it changed me on a profound level.
- I created a course and promptly sold $3,000 worth of the course the first 6 weeks it was available.
- That $540 for some reason made me truly feel like I was an entrepreneur, I had stuff to sell that people would buy and I’d finally found projects that were a good fit energetically for me.
- What also happened during this time was that I began to reimagine my business and what I was capable of as an entrepreneur.
- For the next year or so, I had the joy of nurturing new authors from stuck to done.
Lessons Learned from My Book Experiment
- Try new ideas
- Avoid investing tons of cash on unproven ideas. I spent $15 bucks on my book cover for that book.
- But, my first book made money too and I was excited about it, but this experience excited me more because I was really needing a win at that time.
- The product that excites you and lights a fire in your business may surprise you.
- As a result of this win, I was comfortable taking additional risks such as:
- Launching my first ever Money on the Mountain Retreat which will return Fall 2021-That was a huge gamble that needs its own podcast episode.
- I felt a lot more comfortable asserting that I was an expert-what Imposter Syndrome?
- My mindset shifted
- Bringing in passive income (regardless of the lower months) helped eliminate the fear that I had that I would get trapped only freelance writing. I enjoy it now because I have great clients, but I’m also able to say “no” to projects because I’m building up income outside of client based work.
- Creating new products became easier
- I learned how to sell both online and offline
- I’ve made money with ebooks every single month since I started. Sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands. But, always something.
Make Money with Ebooks Academy
For the past couple of years I’ve focused on helping entrepreneurs sell what they already know. It is one of my favorite things to do to help encourage, inspire, and engage with entrepreneurs who are nervous about putting their products/goods/and services that they would like to share with the world.
One of my favorite ways to support content creators is to help them write and sell their first ebook in order to elevate their brand, make passive income, and assert their expertise.
In fact, you could say that I’m obsessed with ebooks and self-publishing in general.
However, the longer I ran my self-publishing course, the more I discovered that there were certain issues that kept coming up over and over again.
- Perfectionism-Some of the students just were afraid to start and needed more coaxing from me and the course community.
- Self-Doubt-Some writers had people in their lives who put down their book idea and they needed more time to work through how that made them feel. That negative feedback affected their ability to start.
- Time-Many of these would be authors had limited time but needed ongoing support and accountability in order to get their books done. They also needed more time to engage with the content that I was sharing with them.
- Fear-The closer they got to completing their books, the more the next steps in their self-publishing journey
So, I started brainstorming and working on what it would look like to have a space where:
- Future authors are supported through their writing fears
- Future authors can work at a pace that works with their current life and still moves them towards getting their books finally done.
- Future authors were a part of a community that uplifted them every time they engaged with other writers. No negativity allowed.
- Future authors are connected with experts throughout the year who help breakdown:
- The craft of writing
- How to market their books
- SEO
- Email marketing and more
Here’s the thing, the community I’m dreaming of doesn’t exist yet. So, I’ve decided to start it and I need your help as I put it together.
And, one other thing, I plan on launching this community starting next week.
For more information you can email me at: michelleismoneyhungry@gmail.com or DM me on Instagram at michelleismoneyhungry. Or, DM me on Twitter @MichLovesMoney
Latest posts by Michelle (see all)
- How Work Policies Against Black Women Birthed a Love of the Soft Life - 20 March, 2024
- How Taylor Swift’s IP Victory Could Change the Business of Music - 28 February, 2024
- Why Don’t More Personal Finance Content Creators Talk About Policy - 16 January, 2024
I’m serious thinking about to write a book and your postcast and post a rich of tips
You should write one!I’m opening the doors to writing community and am looking for founding members. Let me know if you’re interested. You can email me aat: michelleismoneyhungry@gmail.com