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If you’re making 200k per year, of course dropping the day job is obvious.
But very few affiliates make that much after expenses. The best tradeoff is to work part time and build your websites on the side. Personally I’m doing a master’s degree as my “main” thing and affiliation is a great source of income/future business.
So try to get another job that is less demanding but secure and work on your websites more.
I left my day job late last year. I do have one regret — I wish I had done it sooner!! :roflmao:
Seriously, though, here is how it went for me.
I set 2 goals, which I told myself I had to meet before I could consider quitting my job.
1. Earn at least XXX online each month, for at least 6 months in a row. XXX in my case was something like 175% of my monthly day-job salary, pre-tax.
2. Save up at least 6 months worth of living expenses, so that if something catastrophic happened, I would have time to rebuild and/or find a new day job.
I met my goals in 2006, and I was considering leaving my job when the UIGEA mess happened. I didn’t know what was going to happen to my monthly earnings at the time, and I wasn’t sure if I would be able to receive any commission payments after NETeller went down — so I kept my day job.
In late 2007, things seemed relatively stable again. My online income was steady, I had enough money saved to survive for at least 6 months if the industry took another dive, and my fiancee and I were able to sign a document that allowed me to be covered under her health insurance.
So, at the end of November (right after Thanksgiving), I left, and I haven’t looked back. :wavey:
This is what i went by .
Once you have 1 year expenses set aside .
Make as much affiliating as you do your regular job .Listen if your making as much affiliating as you do your regular job and it is enough to support you , no need to kill yourself working 2 jobs . Be sure you have a year expenses set aside just incase .
Also if there is no room for advancement in your current job . If you know you have a chance to move up and in few years be making a huge salary and job security it would be dumb to quit .
For the extra ss taxes . Register as an llc and file as a scorp . In this you pay yourself a small weekly salary and that is your paycheck . Everything else earned is claimed as a dividen and theres no ss takes on that .
Thanks again, also Eng I had about the exact same goals and issues you layed out, I keep moving the % higher though as I think its just a case of not wanting to pull the trigger.. My wife set the bar at 500% right now but im not quite that far yet lol.. but Id say im doing about 240% over my salary currently. Hope to make that jump and of this year on the whole trigger thing.
When you CONSISTENTLY earn at least 1.5 x your present income then it makes sense to make that transition. At that point you have enough income to maintain yourself and by going full time you can really ratchet up your growth and revenues.
It’s great to hear different answers to this excellent question. Everyone’s circumstances are different, and each one of us has a different attitude to risk, so the point at which to give up the day job is terms of affiliate income is always going to vary.
A key question would be to consider the ‘worst case’ scenario, and central to this would be to consider how quickly and easily it would be to return to the day job at an equal status and remuneration.
Given the threat of the credit crunch, its difficult to predict the future job market which makes any decision a little more difficult in todays current climate.
Ideally, I think that key to any decision to go ‘full time’ would be to ensure that your affiliate business is :
– diversified in terms of multiple sites (reduce the risk of changes in SERPS & increased competition)
– has multiple sources of income across a range of affiliate programs (to reduce the risk of becoming over reliant on one program which could potentially dissapear overnight)
– is diversified across industry sectors (gambling and say one other non-gambling sector)
These would be all ‘nice to haves’ but ultimately its a risk versus reward scenario, and as they say, ‘fortune favours the brave’.
:wink-wink:wink-wink
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Or you can start out as a housewife like I did and set goals and be determined to make a go at being an entrepreneur. I would never change anything that I have done in the past 4 yrs, I made the best choices by following my own gut instinct and I think that is the key, only you know what is best according to your own personal lifestyle. I can say that there is no way I would have the success or friends I have today without the CAP community.
I :inlove: CAP what can I say!!
I say find a real job lol like I work 3 days a week and get paid for 40+Overtime if I want it.and do what you do in your spare time.
This way you make more.
The main thing is you have to love what your doing.and if you work at Kmart for $11.00 an hour quit.If I don’t make $35+ an hour it’s not worth my time.I think my biggest goal is to remove the stress od deadlines, paperwork, politics and general office stuff.. Last thing I want to replace that with is financial stress of course. Had a sitdown meeting with my CPA yesterday and he said theres really no reason not to chase my “cash cow” as he calls it and focus on expansion.
I also want to own my own physical business loacally, somthing I will enjoy doing day after day and of course be able to work on this without the worry of the overloards.
The more I research and talk about this the better I fell about making the change. Thanks again to all of you.
I did mine somewhat differently. I quit my job with no savings at all and just thought “bugger it, let’s see how it goes”. Fortunately, it all worked out well and I’ve never looked back but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend my approach
I have quit my day job after 18 years , got my last paycheck in september 2007 .I do have pension fund from work but i can honestly say I dont need it and havent touched it one time in all these months. I made the decision to quit when i reach $xx,xxx a month commission which was 5x what i was earning per month .On my 6th month of that level I gave my notice .Now that i have had 8 months FULL TIME to work on my gambling sites ,acquire new websites and expand we are earning much more than my dayjob pay -part of it is that month after month the player numbers increase on the rev share but also because of the increase in traffic since I am doing more than just paying people who were making all the decisions on the content ,new partners etc.I had others running the sites ,making choices and overseeing the content.I had no time to do much after spending full days working for employer.Now i spend my day looking at my own webmaster tools ,studying everything ,sometimes i change a page 5 times in one day lol.
I started int his business in aug 2006 ,back then everyone was whining that online gambling and affiliates were doomed .As a NEW affiliate ,my earnings are comfortable .Once you give up that ball and chain called a ‘boss’ you will not look back .I think you get what you put into this business , long hours ,hardwork will definitely pay off.If you feel your day job is holding you back from expanding your business and improving it and you earn more as affiliate than day job i think its no brainer.
If health insurance is factor and you have high expenses ,maybe work just enough to keep your benefits.Or maybe CAP willg et that insurance goingIf you’re in good full-time employment, it will always be difficult to give up that stability for what initially is a risky undertaking.
Being self-employed my situation is a little easier. If and when the affiliate business consistenly replaces my ‘day job’ income, I’ll start to switch attention towards it, one day at a time.
I’ll never completely give up my real job (I like it too much!) so if things go drastically wrong in the gambling world I can always expand it again. But a balance of 80% (affiliate) to 20% would suit me just fine!
Can’t remember if it was here or on PAP and can’t even remember who it was….Think it was Ridge, anyway – He made a post that made me wanna go full time immediately – It was all about how he got up, went fishing, caught some trout, went home, cooked it, sat back in the sunshine and ate it, etc etc. and during all that time his sites were running earning him money and the rest of the world went to work and sat in smelly offices
The problem with what you said Alex is that most of the people on this forum do not follow in those footsteps. Wasn’t there a poll recently asking people how many hours they put in?
And virtually everyone here works on week-ends?
There really is no point in quitting a safe and secure job to join the online affiliation industry if you’re going to be a slave to it. Many people here work 70 hours a week or more, which leaves little time for fishing. I don’t think they “get it”.
Just my 2 cents.
working online is just like any other job.. however you get to say, screw this im going fishing today. but once you are back it is back to the regular affiliate stuff again.
More flexibility, laptop can be your office and you can take your office wherever you travel.
