How Blogging Has Changed My Life

The last four months have changed my life. Those who knew me four months ago would say that these changes have resulted from taking my fate into my own hands. However, it’s actually more complicated than that.

I have always been an “all-or-nothing” kind of guy. I have to put 110% effort into what I am doing or I find no use in doing it. When I first moved to Arizona 10 months ago, I took a job as a Mac Specialist at the Apple Store. Even though I was only working part-time, I was also going to school full-time, and between those activities, I had no time for my true passion – developing businesses, especially infinFX, my web development company.

Needless to say, I had to make changes and to do that, I had to quit Apple. Luckily, I have no family responsibilites and I had some money saved up, so that justified my taking a chance. However, quitting Apple was still a big risk for me at the time; I had no other source of income besides the occasional web project. I decided, however, that if I was going to put my “all” into infinFX and our other businesses, I had to do it now.

Quitting Apple gave me extra time to focus on building my businesses and networking myself in the local community. This extra time also gave me an opportunity to focus on my blog – something that I had been wanting to do for several months. After I started reading John Chow’s blog last summer, I knew that blogging had enormous potential, but I never realized how much or what kind of potential it had for me, until recently.

My Original Reasons for Blogging

My initial reason for blogging was to showcase my professional work – including my client projects and professional interests, such as web development, SEO, and business development. I knew that if I could create something worth reading, eventually the right people would seek me out and I would either find more client work or future business partners.

I was certainly aware that John Chow had made $3,500 from his blog in January (which is small potatoes compared to now). However, the real reason I wanted to blog was to meet and surround myself with like-minded people.

Looking Back: A Profound Inspiration From an Unlikely Source

About a week after I started blogging last January, I met 12-year-old problogger, David Wilkinson. At this point, David was quite the experienced blogger at 12 – he had been interviewed by the BBC several times, and he knew a lot of the industry gurus personally. David came across my blog about a week after I started it.

At the time, David was enjoying great success with his blog, TechZi, a tech-news site which was then hosted on Blogspot. Eventually, David and I got to chatting and he had a profound impact on me. Here he was – a 12-year old kid — who could write better and was more motivated to achieve great things than most people thrice his age.

I was so impressed with David’s motivation I offered to help him get off Blogspot and onto a fully-customized WordPress blog. He was so thrilled that I did this pro-bono, he proceeded to send web-dev business my way.

At that point, I had been persistently networking myself within the local Scottsdale community and soon enough I started getting more and more client work. This was a great start to supplementing my infinFX income and has led to the point I am at now, where I am receiving 1-2 new referrals per day. Back in January, that number was 1-2 per month! Now, I am busier than I have ever been, and for that, I am very thankful. I am now able to comfortably live off my income from infinFX and my other businesses. That being said, recently, another business opportunity has arisen prompting me to step aside from infinFX and focus on this new venture full-time.

Moving On To New Ventures

I never would have thought that I would have to step aside from infinFX at its busiest time ever. Luckily, I have a very trusted and excellent designer ready to take on work as I begin this new venture.

Coincidentally, this new venture is a direct result of my blogging efforts – the individual with whom I am working found me through my blog and proceeded to contact me out of the blue.

I will not go into detail just yet, but I will say that this venture involves the international market, and I will be blogging about it in the days and weeks ahead.

At this point it goes without saying that my blog has changed my life. The people I have met have had a profound impact on me and my businesses, including the opportunity to work in a new market that I would not ever have thought of independently.

So, what is the moral to this story? Perhaps it is that every decision you choose to make, no matter how big or small it may seem at the moment, could have quite the serious impact on your life. Even though I took a big risk by quitting Apple and have managed to do well since then, I know good timing had a lot to do with my success. I am also very thankful for the blogging community who has been so supportive of me in this time of trying new things. I’ve learned the more I give, the more I receive.

Nothing comes easy, and if it seems like it will be hard work, it is probably worth doing. As I explained in my previous post about why most blogs don’t last, starting a blog is a relatively easy task these days. However, following through and putting your all into it requires consistent effort, but can lead to endless possibilities. You can never predict the kinds of people or places that it will lead you to. The real “gold” in blogging is not in the money, but what happens beyond the blog.