Today I randomly stumbled onto a blog called My Wife Quit Her Job. It is written by a guy named Steve. He happens to be a fellow startup engineer in the Silicon Valley who started an online store with his wife. On his site he writes about how he and his wife worked on replacing her considerable income while she was pregnant so that she could quit her job for good to be a stay at home mom.
What this couple did was to start an online store that sells wedding linens with optional personalized embroidery, and they are now having revenues in the six figures. The blog covers many topics including driving traffic to their store, their motivation for starting the store, and how they learned from their mistakes. They also have a collection of funny customer stories.
I sat here and read this site for hours, and it kind of made me want to resurrect my retail “businesses” again. In the past I have sold used books and jewelry to varying degrees of success. I could definitely identify with some of the things Steve wrote. Basically, you cannot just sit on your butt and hope for money to roll in with a business with actual inventory. Also, customers can be quite demanding and and unreasonable sometimes.
I could easily start selling used books again, but it takes quite a bit of time, and the income is not passive because I have to list each individual book and ship them when they sell. The profit margins were quite decent, but I gave it up because it just took too much time. Right now, I am seriously pursuing writing as a side business
I would definitely quit my job if I could replace my income. I am taking it slow and I am nowhere as successful as some bloggers who have expanded their blogs very quickly in a short amount of time, but I consider myself a plodder and I am happy with the progress I have achieved.
A little over a year ago I wrote this post detailing how much I am earning by blogging, and the grand total for January 2008 was $161. I am happy to report that for February 2009 I have a grand total of $1016 for the month from all of my blogs and this is about 6.3 times my earning last year. This is nowhere near my job income, but I am hoping that I could get there eventually. I have added new streams of income including eHow and affiliate links and every little bit adds up.
I highly doubt that next February I would be earning 6.3 times of $1016 a month from writing alone, but maybe one day I will also be a wife that quit her job.
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4 comments ↓
Hi Secret Baglady,
Just wanted to thank you for the props! I hope you stop on back sometime!
You are earning a decent amount of money this year! That is more than car payment money. Oh how I wish I earned anything at all from my blog but I guess you are working on multiple blogs at a time.
I closed a brick and mortar store last year. It was the most heart breaking thing to do but I know that it was the best for me since it was sucking money like a vampire.
Awesome link, I love the story. As for making money, it sounds silly but I’m able to double my profits year after year so there’s no reason you can’t do it! The sky is the limit
I’ve seen that blog several times and like it too. There’s a lot of great practical advice- not so much “theory” but good, solid practical advice. Love it.
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