Do you run your own business?

[Henry]

Do you run your own business for a living?

[Dave Kaminski]

Hmm. how can we all benefit from this thread?

[coollikeme]

run. Roseanns Treasures, Inc.

[Mike]

I run several websites, which I am not sure if I can call a "business". It does make me a bit of money every month. It something which I enjoy immensley so it never feels like work. I am hoping I can earn enough one day to quit my regular 9-5 job.

[Henry]

Originally Posted by Dave Kaminski

Hmm. how can we all benefit from this thread?

I'm curious, that's all. Since the forums are full of self-starters, I was wondering how many of them have jobs vs. how many are running their own show.

You can bury the post if you want. I don't mind.

[Alarin]

Yup I'm a freelance illustrator - Treelight Studios

[songwriter]

Well, I try to be a pro musician.

[SamBeaven]

Sorta exclusively.

None of my stuff has started earning money yet, but I'm not doing much traditional blogging - I have a flash fiction site, which is kinda like a blook. Once I've got 300 or so entries up I'll see about posting a book out of them, then hopefully the money will start rolling in.

That's mainly because traditional monetization (like adsense) doesn't really work that well on a flash fiction site (Google picks up lines from the fiction in the adsense, so I get all kinds of crazy adverts), and I don't have much traffic right now so I'm not sure how useful it'd be for affiliates.. I'm more interested in a donation/merchandising strategy.

The site's at http://www.dailyflashfiction.com/
if anyone's interested.

Incidentally, the reason I'm able to do this is I'm a student living with my parents who are very generously not charing me keep while I'm in college. Yay!

[mattinglot]

My website development business is my main income and can support me fully. Technically I started it last year, but I leveraged several years of resources that I had developed for previous ventures and carried over my web hosting client base, so it would be unfair to say that I started from scratch. I'm looking at expanding it quite a bit in the summer so it should be very interesting and busy times.

[Dave Kaminski]

Originally Posted by Henry

I'm curious, that's all. Since the forums are full of self-starters, I was wondering how many of them have jobs vs. how many are running their own show.

You can bury the post if you want. I don't mind.

No that wasn't a criticism, it was a question! I'm curious as to what info we can pull from this and how we can actually obtain a positive influence from it xD

[Henry]

Originally Posted by Dave Kaminski

No that wasn't a criticism, it was a question! I'm curious as to what info we can pull from this and how we can actually obtain a positive influence from it xD

Rockin. I thought you were trying to lay the moderator smack down. Heh.

[Brutha]

You should add an option for people who are at college/school.

[Henry]

I do

"Job? What is that?"

[KarlN]

I started my first business when I was 18 and in the 12th grade. We started printing t-shirts and sweatshirts for those going out of school, and a bit of money. Three months later we got the opportunity to make the clothes with the school logo for our school, and we made a profit of about $1000.

That marked the start of my second business, exclusively producing clothes for schools. The first three months our turnover was about $100 000. I had by then moved to germany and started my mechanical engineering degree, so I was running everything from abroad. I had three people working for me, and more than 1000 customers.

I just turned 20 now, and hired a new director of the company now. Our expected turnover for this season is about $300 000, but it might be lots more.

To everyone thinking about starting up on their own while still in school: Do it, but be careful. I made sure never to spend money I didn't have, and made sure I always had customers before we made any orders. Having your own business while still in school takes away your focus on the money you'll make when you finish, and teaches you to enjoy the life you're living now.

[mattinglot]

Originally Posted by KarlN

Having your own business while still in school takes away your focus on the money you'll make when you finish, and teaches you to enjoy the life you're living now.

That's a very interesting point that rings very true with me too. It was an unexpected side benefit. In fact right now I don't even care if I ever get the piece of paper telling me I have a couple degrees, the learning experience counts for a lot and certainly has been very worthwhile, but the earning power represented by them feels entirely meaningless.

[TheBull]

I have started up a couple of online businesses focusing on blogging and plan on starting a couple more in the coming months. Right now my wife and I have pretty good day jobs but we plan on our other businesses supporting us in about 2 years or so.

One of the things that we do is sit outside on a nice night (we live in Vegas so it is almost always nice out) and think of new ideas, what it would take for each idea, etc. I even plan on starting another blog to document what we do and how we do everything.

[andrew]

Yes.

Earlier this year when I was 18 (oh so long ago), I started a business. Got all the legal work done etc around begining of April. This business is to sell a product I'm making for Flash. I started work on it Feb and am just now finishing it up. I still have to make logos and the site and everything, there's a lot more to do. So there's been no profit so far, but I've learned a lot in the proccess and made quite a few connections.

If all goes well, I plan on going live before the end of the year. I still have a lot of work to do though. The most important thing for me is to get my name out there and to own a real business with assets. The money will just be a bonus. I'm doing something I mostly enjoy and creating something totaly new. It doesn't get any better (unless Google buys me out for a cool $1.62 billion ). It's great to be able to say to myself "yeah, I started a profitable business at 18".

[cudjoe]

I have my own business too. I had a pizzeria that I sold (too much work when I got married...). I travelled from France to Dubai with my family.

From there I did some jobs first, because I didn't want to risk a business in a country I didn't know.

Finally, one day while I was in front of my computer, I thought: Million of users... I am sure I can make money from this scree.

I enabled my dial up connection (yes Dial Up..) and taped make money online in december 2005. Now I am an affiliate marketer and I live from my affiliate revenues.

Every one now is asking me how I do that. It's fun. I am running my business from my bed!

I really enjoy online bisiness. It's more funny than offline.

[MamaDuck]

Well, I said that I do exclusively, but I also stay home with my little guy anyway, my husband does have a "regular job" so to speak. So I don't use it to support my family exclusively .