Many people are happy working as an employee, reporting to a boss or manager. For some, this is considered a simpler life because their workday completely ends when they leave the building. For others, quitting their day job would be a dream come true, beyond compare. These are the individuals who long for their freedom and a chance to spend their days working on their own dreams and goals, as compared to spending 40 hours a week making someone else rich.
The problem is, most people don’t know how to make this happen? How can they make money on their own, to the point where they can finally quit their job? With that in mind, let’s look at a quick summary of this question:
How can I make enough money to quit my job? You can create enough steady income to leave your job by earning money through affiliate marketing, obtain clients through freelancing platforms, submitting images to stock photography companies, or becoming a real estate investor.
Benefits of Quitting Your Job to Work for Yourself
I left the 9 to 5 schedule years ago, and have enjoyed all the advantages of my new lifestyle, to the point where I know I will never hold an office job again. With that said, before we dive into our ideas of making money so you can quit your day job, I’d like to share some of the benefits of working for yourself:
1. You Make Your Own Schedule: This benefit of leaving your day job to work for yourself is priceless. What could be more valuable than having the chance to live a lifestyle that allows for you to be out in the sunshine during the hours of 9 to 5, spend more time with your family and friends, not have to ask for permission to go on vacation, or have more time to exercise. When you work from home, you don’t have to report to a boss, and you make your own working schedule based on your needs and preferences, all while, in most cases, earning much more than you did at your day job.
2. Stable During Economic Downfalls: An economic disaster can close businesses down and occur unexpectedly, leaving you jobless with no income stream to fall back on. Working for yourself eliminates this scenario.
3. Financially Secure: When you work for yourself, if you lose a client, you only lose some of your income streams. If you’re an employee, if you are let go, you lose 100 percent of your income.
4. Total Control Over Your Rate: Long gone are the days of begging for that extra dollar during your yearly review, and then settling for 50 cents. When you work from home, you can set your rate to $10, $20, $30, or more, higher than what you are making at your day job, if you have the skills to justify it.
5. Grow Your Net Worth: Quitting your day job and working for yourself gives you the opportunity to work on projects that will build up your portfolio. Once you have a good portfolio base that shows your value, you can increase your rates even more, and in turn, increase your net worth, as opposed to being capped as an employee.
6. Earn Extra Money When Needed: If an emergency arises, or even if you just want extra money for something fun, and you are living paycheck to paycheck as an employee, there is no chance of bringing in the extra funds needed at that time. Your hours are set, and so is your rate, so if you are not able to work overtime, you might just have to borrow money from a relative. On the other hand, working as a freelancer gives you the opportunity to take on an extra project for the month to reel in some extra spending money.
Although there are many benefits of working for yourself, it’s understandable to wonder if it’s a financially stable move if you are not familiar with the concept. Because of this, I recommend that you read through this article that I put together – 5 Reasons Why Self-Employment is More Financially Secure than a Day Job.
4 Ways to Make Enough Money to Leave Your Job
If you’re one of those people who feel you are stuck in the rat race, feel you work really hard, and work many hours, but you’re not really getting ahead of the game, and you’re burnt out – let’s talk! It doesn’t have to be this way. We were all raised to believe that going to college and getting a job is the standard, but this became a standard back in the days when working outside of an office was not common – things have changed for the better since then. Long gone are the days where we are stuck slaving away for a boss, making them money, when in some cases, we are, in a sense, paid pennies. So for the question – How can I make enough money to quit my job? We have come up with this list of our favorite ideas for making money:
1. Start Blogging to Generate Income Through Affiliate Marketing
If you love to write, you may be interested in earning money blogging from the comfort of your own home, and earning money in the process. This can be accomplished by creating a website, writing blog posts, and placing affiliate links in the article that can earn you a commission.
An example of affiliate marketing would be as follows – someone is reading a blog post about how to proofread articles, emails, and other written content so that they are error-free. The post may give tips and tricks for doing this. Worked into this post would be a few sentences about Grammarly – an online writing assistant that automatically checks your grammar and overall writing. There would also be a special link to the Grammarly website where the reader can sign up to use this service. If the reader signs up, then you get a commission on that sale. It’s that easy.
With enough posts and affiliate links, you can make a substantial amount of money. This all sounds good, right? But how do you make it happen? The easiest and most popular way is to start blogging utilizing Bluehost (a web hosting company) and WordPress (a content management system or platform for creating websites).
Setting Up Your Website with Bluehost and WordPress – Quick Guide
The first step is getting a website up and running. If you know nothing about this, you can easily find a web developer on a freelance portal such as Upwork.com. They can take care of all the steps for you. But, for those who are comfortable diving in and making it happen themselves, you can reference my quick guide notes below.
Follow these basic instructions to get your website started with Bluehost so you can be that much closer to your goal of creating passive income working for yourself:
Step 1 – Click the Bluehost Get Started Button
Step 2 – Choose Your Preferred Plan: Since you are just starting out, if it fits your needs, you can easily start with the basic, least expensive plan, and then upgrade at a later date. Here is a snapshot to give you an idea of how much this typically runs:
Step 3 – Choose Your Domain Name: Figure out what your domain name will be (www.yourwebsite.com), and type it into the “Create a New Domain” box to check its availability. Or, for those who already have a domain, use the 2nd box they provide. (You also have the option of creating your domain later and skipping this step).
Step 4 – Domain Privacy – Protection: When the option to add Domain Privacy – Protection appears, I highly recommend that you add this. If it’s not added, then your personal information that you used to sign up for your domain will be available on the internet for anyone researching it. This includes your name, address, phone number, and email. When Domain Privacy is added, this information is private and hidden from public view. It’s inexpensive and even comes with select hosting packages.
Step 5 – Your Info: Enter Your Name, Address, and Payment Information
Step 6 – Password: Create a password for your new account
Step 7 -Install WordPress: Once you log in, Bluehost will walk you through all the steps for installing WordPress. It’s pretty simple to do.
Step 8 – Select & Customize Your Theme: Once WordPress is up and running, in your WordPress Dashboard, you would click on Appearance> Themes. You may then use one of the free WordPress themes that you see on this page. Or, select another free theme elsewhere. You can also search for paid themes that have more to offer. Most themes have instructions on how to get it up and running when it comes to installation and customization.
Step 9 – Write Your First Blog Post: When your website theme is fully customized and you are ready to present it to the world, it’s time to start writing your blog posts. You can learn more about how to create a post by reading this article titled WordPress Editor by WordPress.org.
Once you have a few posts under your belt, you can start applying to affiliate programs that are related to your website niche. You can then start adding links to your posts using the affiliate urls they provide to you. Do your research on which affiliate programs pay out the most money, keep a posting schedule, and you will start to see results.
How long will it take? It all depends on how much effort you put into it in regards to researching and posting. How much will you make? That also depends on your efforts – Some people make under $100 a month, while other’s make $100,000 per month, and that’s not an exaggeration. For those just getting started, you can read more details on this topic in our post titled – How to Start a Blog with WordPress and Bluehost. And for a little motivation, check out our article How I Earned Over $1,800,000 with My Blog and You Can Too.
Now that you know all the details, if you want to get the ball rolling, just visit the Bluehost Get Started page.
2. Get Clients Through a Freelancing Platform Instead of Working for a Boss
Most people think it’s impossible for them to drum up business to keep a steady cash flow rolling in. They don’t know anything about marketing, advertising, or the like. So what do they do? Well, these days, you can attract many good paying clients by simply getting set up on a freelancing platform. These websites do all the marketing for you, take care of payment processing, display your portfolio, and more. In some cases, you may only have to pay a small fee each month to use their platform. For instance, Upwork.com is one of the best freelance platforms out there and they charge less than 15 dollars per month.
Examples of industry projects that are sourced out on independent contractor websites such as these are graphic design projects, writing, illustration, book editing, virtual assistant projects, sales, accounting, and much more. When you get set up on one of these websites, you can pick and choose who you want as a client, how much you would like to charge, what your hours are, and you can even mark yourself as not available and take a vacation (without asking anyone for permission). You’re in control, and the sky is the limit as to how much you want to work, and make. As mentioned, Upwork.com is one of the most reputable sites out there to find the best paying clients.
So many people who wanted to make the rate they feel they are worth, and who wanted the ability to make their own schedule, and have more time with their family, have been able to make that transition from a 9-5 day job to working for themselves through freelance websites. These sites make it possible for you to make a living without having to drive in traffic early in the morning, as well as in the afternoon. Companies such as Upwork put you in the driver’s seat, while still at home.
3. Become a Professional Stock Photographer and Make Money While You Sleep
If you are more of a creative type, and enjoy photography, you might want to look into shooting for stock photography companies. How it works is that you take pictures of anything you think someone might be in need of for things such as marketing materials, advertising, greeting cards, website imagery, and the like. Then, you upload your images to a stock photography site you are signed up with, build up your image bank, and you make money whenever your image is downloaded.
Let’s go over an example to give you a better idea. You will want to think of your images as concepts. For example, the image below is a concept for “savings”, “protecting your retirement funds”, and the like. So instead of taking pictures of random items just because they look nice, you would want to shoot with the end result in mind – creating shots that are in demand for certain topics or industries. The image below would be a hot seller because the financial industry is always in need of images such as this.
If photography is not your thing, read through this post on our website that goes over 20 Home-Based Businesses that are Easy to Start. You are bound to find something of interest in this article! You can also check out this other article on the topic – How to Make $2,500 Per Month in Passive Income Working From Home.
4. Make Steady Income Through Rental Real Estate
This idea for making money so you can quit your day job may seem like a complicated one that’s out of reach, but in reality, it’s the easiest one to accomplish. First of all, how do you generate money through rental real estate? If you have ever rented a house in the past, you paid money to the owner of the house, each month, thousands of dollars a year, right? Well, that person who is receiving the money each month could be you!
No Real Estate Experience Needed: You are probably thinking about how you don’t know anything about real estate. It’s ok if you have no experience because this is what a full-service real estate company is for. They do EVERYTHING for you, and when you are all set up with your property, the property manager that is assigned to your rental will take care of everything moving forward. All you have to do is sit back and wait for your rent checks to roll in. When everything is taken care of for you like this, it’s called a turnkey investment property, you can read about what this is in detail and all its advantages in this article on MorrisInvest.com that we recommend diving into – 5 Things to Know About Turnkey Real Estate.
Easily Obtain the Funds for Your Purchase: When it comes to financing a rental property purchase, there are many options. In a lot of cases, real estate investors don’t even have to use their own money. They utilize non-recourse financing, which is when you take a loan out in the name of the property – the loan company bases the loan off the value of the rental property, not your credit. You can also use your retirement funds to invest in a rental property – you can learn more about this by checking out this article on investing in real estate utilizing a self-directed IRA. There are also companies out there that help you find funding, like Fund & Grow. Read more about this on the Morris Invest Fund & Grow page. They have assisted thousands of investors in coming up with the money to fund their rental property purchases.
Take a few moments to watch this video that goes over in detail ways to fund a rental property purchase, including options where you won’t even have to use your own money:
Investing in real estate is one of the most lucrative ways to build wealth, and it can certainly keep you out of an office between the hours of 9 to 5. If you feel that you might want to look into this idea a little more, feel free to
Stop Making Money for Someone Else and Start Building Your Own Wealth
Now that you are armed with motivation and ideas for making money so you can leave your 9 to 5 job, it’s time to take action! The sooner you start, the sooner you can say goodbye to setting your alarm super early, and say hello to the lifestyle you have been hoping for. No matter how you decide to make money with the goal of quitting your job, keep moving forward and working towards your goal, and make it happen!