Gave up a day job! Now what? – Report number 0

I have promised my readers in my last post (I gave up a day job to make a living from online income!) a report number 0 about my situation after giving up my day job. My previous post got a lot of attention and comments from you. Most of them were very motivating and helpful. You have given me a lot of valuable tips about running my own one person company. Big Thanks to all of you! As I have told you in my last post here is my report number ZERO (at least part 1). It is being written before official launch of my online business. So I won't write anything about any income (yeah... I know most of you are disappointed but I have warned about it in my previous post). Fortunately it won't be just a few boring thoughts of mine as it will lead to some numbers (in part 2) and some interesting facts.  So here it is, my report number 0.

Before the numbers will be given...

Before I will tell you any numbers, screens or whatever might be really interesting. I would like to tell you about my strategy. I need to write about it as some of your comments showed me that most of you see only very straightforward way of making business. I will surprise you a little about my way of "doing business".

Clients... who cares...?

Most of you have been commenting that firstly you must get clients. Then you can think about your own business. It sound very logical... But it is very hard way to make business online! It is not my innovative idea. But if you read some of entrepreneur blogs (I recommend ProBlogger, copyblogger, SmartBloggerz) you probably know there is something more that you should have before clients will come! You must have a product to sell!

But freelancers do not need their product...

Freelancers offer their services and they don't need their own products. I used to do freelancing but now I am rather hiring them (usually right here). They are doing great job for very competitive price according to any company. You may make some nice money as a freelancer but believe me it is one of the hardest ways of making money online...

My income is in...

As I have been writing you before, my main sources of online income are website flipping (buying or building complete websites and then selling it for profit) and stock photography (you may want to check my portfolio). So I need two kinds of products.

Website flipping product

Of course in website flipping industry the products are ready to flip websites. There are at least two kinds of websites that may sell well. Some that are getting nice profit because of big traffic and good SEO (but who want to get rid of these???) and second kind are these ready to make money if someone would bring enough traffic to it (via PPC or SEO). I know from my personal experience that both sell pretty well.

Stock photography product

In stock photography you need as many photos in your portfolio as possible. Best part in it is that you may sell one photo unlimited number of times for micro payments - so when your portfolio is getting bigger you earn more. It is really great way of making money as you build totally passive income. In theory with big portfolio you can make no any new photos and still get steady income. In practice when you don't expand your portfolio you would loose a few % of income every month.

But you still need clients!

Ops! I have almost forgotten to add this paragraph. Yeah... I need clients. So you were right... but... have all of you forgotten it is online business??? Sorry for being rude right now... But you need to think globally! I am not going to sell vegetables on a stall! When I want to sell photos I go to big websites that have thousands of "clients" that are just waiting for more photos (for example iStockPhoto, but there is much more) and when I want to sell a website I got to sitepoint or flippa (where you can sell/buy websites like on eBay). It is nice to have some regular customers but mostly I can live without them! It is online business!

But where are the facts? Give me some numbers!

I know I have promised you to give some numbers (no any income until end of first month of my online business - you may expect it on the begging of april). But it looks that this post is getting too long for good readability standards. My favorite articles are up to 800 words. If article is too long I just "scan" it and do not read most of it. Unfortunately I have just passed this number... So more details will be given in second part of my report 0. It will be posted on Wednesday. You may want to subscribe to my blog via RSS or follow me on twitter to not miss the second part of this report. Hope to see you soon!