It’s been around six months since I monetized my travel blog. Since December 2010 when I earned my first dollar I have quietly earned a steady, consistent income with little effort. I’m a travel writer now, woo!

Show me the money

• Sales (January 1 – May 10, 2011): US$5,625.02
• Expenses (January 1 – May 10, 2011): US$676.00

• Total Profit (January 1 – May 10, 2011): US$4,949.02
• Daily Income: US$38
• Monthly Income: US$1,142.08

The “Work Hours”

According to a time tracking software I work an average of 22 hours per week. But most of that is spent on my other business which accounts for more than 80-85% of my income. If I were to estimate I probably work an average of 3 hours per week on my travel blog. This accounts for communication with advertisers, obtaining advertising leads, bookkeeping, assigning sponsored articles to my writers, and writing my own non-sponsored articles.

Last month I don’t recall writing any non-sponsored articles and the advertising dollars still came. I’d say this blog can run on autopilot with only sponsored content. I don’t want to do that of course.

While advertising alienates readers, from a business standpoint it should not effect the blog’s income. My blog does earn money not because its attracts readers but instead from an SEO perspective,  for most advertisers. Sadly this probably means I won’t be getting any press trips in the near future. Still, SEO is better on many competing travel blogs but I am certain I outearn many of them because of my strategy for selling advertising. This is still a secret.

The Future

I could quit my real job and live in a developing country working 2 hours per week. Beat that, Tim Ferris! But that would be a silly thing to do. Rather, i’ll continue to think about my short term earning potential and monetize the crap out of this blog. You want to buy a text link from me? Sure Mr. Advertiser.

My sponsored articles, though written well and entertaining, are a nuisance to many readers who visit this blog for my perspective on travel and business. In the future-future i’d like to make money from not from my blog’s SEO, but my audience. That means thinking about writing more seriously and more often. I am starting to think more seriously about that because I can clearly see the money will keep coming and to be honest this could be a really fun and rewarding job.

But before this i’ll want to change up the blog with a new website design and better writing standards. In the meantime i’m going to begin posting articles on other blogs for greater exposure. But does any of that really matter when what I am doing is not unique. I can name dozens of travel bloggers living a very similar life as mine. It’s an interesting lifestyle and readers who appreciate what I do is nice. I will and have always published the same number of non-sponsored articles each month. But now with sponsored articles they may be a little more difficult to find.  But I do this because while followers are nice, money is preferred.

I wanted to share some new content many of you probably haven’t seen. A few weeks ago I was interviewed by John Bardos over at www.JetsetCitizen.com about life as a ‘Digital Nomad’.

I answered questions about my travels, favorite country, the least expensive country I have visited, if I had a lot of savings to begin with, how I earn an income now,  how I get customers, are retail internet sites a good business, what my travel budget is like, am I getting tired of traveling, how I deal with banking, bills, health care, and other administrative things,  and my advice for people considering long term travel.

You can read the interview here.

After that interview, Rolf Pott’s blog picked it up also. I think that’s pretty cool that he noticed the interview as he’s pretty much the guy who popularized Round The World Travel.  The blogger wrote,

“He outlines his methods and gives good advice.  While Jason certainly believes you can fund your travels from working on the Internet, he avoids making outrageous claims of fast and easy riches. For a techno-age entrepreneur, his principles are decidedly old-school: finding a need, providing a solution, and offering good customer service.  Good rules to do business by, online and offline.”

Besides Rolf Potts, the interview was also highlighed at ProjectHitchhiker and LastStanding.

Recently more people have taken notice of this site and I think that’s a pretty great thing. People care enough about what I am doing to read what I write. For instance, in the past 31 days 85 people have come to this website after searching for my full name on a search engine. My full name is the only one in existence so I am sure they aren’t really looking for someone else.

Then someone posted a link to one of my articles on Reddit. The original poster commented that,

“This guy’s entrepreneur timeline is unbelievable. I’m beginning to doubt the authenticity.”

I don’t think there is anything greater than this. People actually think I am lying about what I do. That’s a pretty big compliment I think.

Moving on, the same article I wrote was discussed by 18 members on another internet forum. Some posters called me a “criminal and “con man” while others had more positive things to day.

“The dude is a hustler, because he kept on going and didn’t give up on making a living online. He knew it was possible so he tried different things until he found out what worked for him. That is a true hustler indeed.”

Besides the internet chatter, the traffic to this blog is up 156% in the past 31 days and RSS subscribers have nearly doubled. And likely because of this I get an email or two from a stranger at least once a week complimenting the writing or asking for advice. It means a lot to me when people do this. I am thankful to everyone reading the blog. Thanks.

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But most importantly has been the success in turning this hobby into a business. During my first month in business I earned 4 figures and am set to double that income in its second month. This means you guys will be reading more advertisement articles than is probably fair, but hey, money is money.

On September 20, 2007, I received an order for Helmut Lang – Cuiron cologne from my eCommerce store. The cologne was out of stock but I didn’t want his $226.67 to go to waste.

Instead I called the customer to see whether a different sized cologne bottle might be an acceptable substitute.

Hello Jeffrey, this is Jason from (Company Name). I am calling about your recent order for…….blah blah.

As always I tried to represent my company formally but after settling the order a minute later he could sense that my company was probably a little more informal than I was trying to represent. It was at that point that he asked me about my company.

Are you the only one running it?

Yes.

He was interested so I gave him a little background that I was 19, a freshman in university. I ran this and a few other businesses on the side. Once school was out I continued to work but used the money to go travel.

He interrupted me and said that I had given him a great idea for a new TV show. He thought it would be cool to profile a few young entrepreneurs. That’s when he told me he was a Hollywood producer having played a big role in producing Ally McBeal, The Practice, and a few more. He also acted as the Hendricks character in Jaws.

Jeffrey told me that he would seriously think about this idea but in the meantime to send him some more detailed information about myself. I emailed him right away and he thanked me by email a few days  later.

I followed-up on the TV show idea a few weeks later but never heard from him again.

I began writing this post last February during the first week of my full-time travels and living abroad. At the time I had recently graduated university and was just enjoying the beginning of what I had set out to do for many years. Pretty much non-stop travel was the goal and all of my efforts were finally realized. I was hesitant to publish the content right away. Although extremely excited with what I had accomplished a lot of my thoughts were based on assumptions of what I anticipated would happen. As a reminder you can read about how I earn my income here.

Earning a Living:

It was an easy choice to work for myself straight out of university. I had already been doing it successfully since high school and after six or so years developing multiple businesses I had finally hit my stride come January. In 2009 I had my first really successful year while taking 21 credit semesters, a part time internship, and running three businesses. This meant I earned a very livable, though quite average income, for living in a first world country.  But 2010 started at an insane level as I furiously worked on expanding my career consulting business. Even a few months into 2010 it looked like I would earn over six figures for 2010. I felt like a hot shot but this extreme success meant it was time to relax and enjoy my surroundings.

Business Failure:

Of course the career consulting business didn’t maintain that pace.  It didn’t decrease much either. But what really kept me away from six figures was the forced closure of a retail clothing business I had started in high school. With access to a wholesale account I had been undercutting the name brand clothing company for six years by reselling individual items on a private forum. I sold to individuals at a price well above wholesale but well below retail. The brand eventually caught on to the hundreds of others doing this and shut us all down. They also threatened to sue me. Eight months later I haven’t been sued so I think I am in the clear! But this passive income is gone forever.

Coasting on Autopilot:

Down to just two businesses I pretty much ran on autopilot for months. My online retail store provided a small but consistent stream of real, passive income. I forwarded each order to some American guy I hired to ship the few goods I actually stocked – cologne and t-shirts. The rest of the orders for other products were processed in minutes and shipped individually by the wholesale companies. I didn’t actively market the business and like the past few years most products moved slowly. There’s not much effort I am willing to put in when the business doesn’t excite me. It’s also just a business that I know has very little potential. Why bother?

But the career consulting business continued to do exceptionally well. It’s not passive by any means. I rewrite documents and exchange emails with clients every day. It’s actual work that challenges me. But at times I kind of like doing it. And then in return I am rewarded with positive feedback from clients who landed many interviews and jobs. In the end it’s worth doing and has become something which helps make me feel good about myself because I truly believe I am helping others. It’s rewarding.

Meanwhile, for a good portion of the year, about ten months, I coasted along business-wise. When people asked if I planned on expanding my current businesses or start a new one I laughed and said no. I actively avoided trying to develop anything. I continued making great money on pace to double my 2009 income. Only $1,500US away from literally doubling last year’s income with 11 days left in 2010 it’s pretty much a sure thing.

New Business Out of Nowhere:

The only reason I am going to end up reaching the meaningless goal of doubling my 2009 income is because of my latest business I created by monetizing travel blog. I saw an easy and mostly effortless way to turn this into a significant side business which has since overtaken my retail store as my second most profitable business. The income milestone is meaningless but what’s nice is that once again I am truly excited about working on this new business. It really feels great with each new advertising sale I earn and the even the less exciting administrative duties I look forward to…coordinating new articles with my writer, negotiating deals, etc.

Savings

Just as my earnings have increased so have my savings. Just the other day with less than half a month left in the year I hit another big milestone – a significant figure. Living the way I do means easily saving a good amount each month without even trying. Without a car and rent between $250-$1,000 a month my expenses are pretty low. I don’t buy the latest HDTV or more than a couple nice shirts because I have nowhere to put these things. Though that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to have them. I probably would if things were different.

Though I keep stashing all of this money in savings account I have no plans to use it for anything. I’m not going to invest it in anything risky like stocks or gold because i’m really conservative that way. I can’t stand the thought of losing money I earned. Buying a house or car is pretty much a joke at this point. One way or another when the time comes I will find a way to use it; whether towards my family or a new business.

But for now it’s buying my freedom. It gives me the peace of mind. I don’t worry about what would happen if my insurance found a loophole and dropped my policy. Or if my income stopped completely I could still continue traveling for say the next five years.

In the past twenty or so days I have transformed this travel blog from a hobby into a serious business in the black to the tune of over $1,000 US. I sold out! But the potential earnings from this new business is well worth it. At least I am not trying to sell a dumb travel or money making ebook. Right?

How the business works:

I am earning money from advertisers.

The key to this business is that I figured out a surprisingly simple method of finding quality sales leads. I am not cold emailing these leads but how I find these leads will remain a secret. Just know it takes very minimal effort. At the end I am dealing with online marketing companies who have clients in the travel business. Clients include airfare search engines, hotel chains, and others.

At this point each company has paid for sponsored travel articles or reviews with a few links to their companies. It is this reason you may have noticed some out of character articles published on this blog. Some companies provide me with an article while others have me write them.

That’s when I outsource the writing to an NYU English major graduate for a small but fair sum. He logs into my website to write, format, and ultimately publish each article. Outsourcing the writing means I get to continue spending my time writing as a hobby rather burning out while writing about places I have never been nor care about. This particular copywriter is also a way better writer than I am which means these articles are actually pretty interesting, even if its just a long advertisement.

I can easily see myself outsourcing the entire business in the near future to either the copywriter or another person. They would negotiate with leads and manage the other processes.

Results

Since I began every single lead has responded to me within three days. I believe around 3/4 of all leads contacted have agreed to advertise on this website. The amount of leads I receive now is quite small but there is no limit to how many I will receive in the future. I have a proven process for finding leads which is very easily scalable to hundreds of times larger than it is now.

What I find incredible is that this travel blog is pretty tiny with relatively few regular visitors. What I am getting at is that there are tons of travel blogs with a lot more visitors that I receive. They should obviously be earning more. But somehow my blog will earn more money than those blogs 100-500 times larger than mine, even though they are also actively seeking income.

I never in my wildest imagination thought i’d earn more than a few cents from this hobby. I started my travel blog around five years ago. I never really enjoyed writing but kept at it for years because I felt good sharing my travels. It’s kind of funny to me because in the past year reached a level of satisfaction with my other businesses. I completely gave up on developing them more and went along for the ride with no intention to work anymore than I needed. If someone asked me a month ago what new business idea was in the works I would have laughed. And a few weeks later I now have another thriving side business.

My name is Jason, and pursuing my interests in travel has resulted in being self-employed with the ability to live, work, and travel anywhere in the world. I did not quit my career after 30 years, or 15 years, or 1 year in order to go travel. I have actually never had any traditional job since I have pursued my interest in business since age 16. Now I am 22 years old and have been traveling full-time since January, 2010. I have also traveled or lived abroad at least four months each year since 2007. The following information is also on my “About Me” page but in this post I have recently updated the page with more detail. A few readers have requested I post more information about my businesses and this post is my response.

Where are you now?

Check the right hand side of this webpage below the photo to view my current location and future destinations.

But the general story is that since graduating university in December, 2009, I left the United States to revisit some places from my previous travels in  South America. I returned to the United States for a quick three weeks in May to attend a wedding and visit family. I then jetted away to explore more of the world and visit friends from past travels in many countries starting in Europe and ending in Asia the middle of September, 2010.

How are you able to work and travel full-time?

I earn 100% of my income on the internet with two businesses that only require contact through email.

Well, then what online businesses do you run?

I own a career consulting company and an online retail store. Click here to learn more about my seven years of entrepreneurial history.  If you are to lazy to click the link I can explain both businesses briefly.

The career services company specializes in writing resumes, curriculum vitae, cover letters, and coaching clients on interviews to an average of 60 new clients each month, The company has created and revised over 1,000 resumes and curriculum vitae since 2007 for everyone from recent college graduates looking for their first job or professionals ready to take the next step in their career.

The second business, an online gift store, provides 15 categories of over 400 products including printed t-shirts, cologne, watches, sunglasses, tactical gear, lighters, and many more categories. Since 2005, the store has completed more than 2,990 orders and counting. I am able to manage this business online because I have arranged for manufacturers and wholesale distributors to ship products directly to each of my customers’.

How many hours do you work?

I really don’t know exactly. If I were to guess I would say I usually find myself working anywhere between 2-9 hours each day, seven days a week. I am never good at tracking monthly hours but I would estimate that I work around 35 hours per week. One major difference is that I always work at a past pace. While at a typical job someone might socialize with coworkers, grab some lunch, etc. my 2-9 workdays don’t involve any of that. I probably take off 1-2 unplanned days per month. But if I miss a day it usually means working twice as long the next day.

How much money do you earn?

Is this even an appropriate question to answer? If I do answer it with specifics I feel like it will come across like I am bragging. But it is a question people always ask me in person. If you really want to know you can comment on this post and I will send you an email with the amount. In general, I earn a really comfortable income. I choose to live well below my means and instead save a lot of money each month, even while incurring all of the expenses of full-time travel without a budget.

What is your typical day like?

I don’t have just one typical day but a few different types depending on where I am. No matter what I go to sleep whenever I feel exhausted which is usually between 1AM-4 AM and wake up whenever usually between 9AM-1PM.

If I am in an unfamiliar city for the first time I will typically go do an activity or walk around an area for a few hours, followed by work, and a night out at a bar or club.

In a familiar city that I have previously visited I usually start work after waking up. After working I might chill in a hammock, read, watch TV, or meet new people at the hostel. I almost always go out with some friends to a bar or disco afterward.

What is your favorite country you have visited?

Colombia. There is a good reason I have been to Colombia five times in the past four years.

What do you bring with you when you travel?

This is pretty easy to answer.  Click here to check out my packing list.

Through no direct action on my part I was approached with a nice business opportunity. Another career consulting company specializing in helping legal professionals is looking to outsource some of their excess clients in the coming months as its their busy season. The company’s owner explained that since the legal job market is declining rapidly in this economy it has driven demand beyond what they could handle.

The business owner has attempted to work with other consulting companies in the past but because of bad results the owner has emailed my company along with a few others. He heard about my company through a referral from one of my past clients. But when he emailed me today I responded to his inquiry within minutes and we had a few back and forth emails since.

Is it pure luck or coincidence that I have been “handed” such a great opportunity?

I see it this way, that because I provide a quality service and have done so for more than three years its only natural that I will be awarded with a nice opportunity every once in a while. The right circumstances were there to begin with: country I was born, schools I attended, declining economy, etc.). I can’t deny that. But I believe this is true for any person who has achieved some success. If I were born in a developing country I might find business opportunities I never could growing up in the U.S.

Due to a combination of circumstances and my own initiative and persistence I will confidently say that I had a more direct impact on receiving this opportunity.  For example, he sent the same email to other companies but I responded before any other one. That last detail is not a coincidence in that I happened to be online and have free time. But it’s because I work so many hours that the likelihood is that I am online and ready to answer any emails at a moments notice. This partnership is only in the beginning stages and nothing is guaranteed. But it’s not the first time I have had such opportunities.

Last year I was contacted by another startup job search engine company who wanted to refer potential clients for a commission. The company has grown considerably with an U.S. Alexa rank under 8,000 which means a considerable amount of traffic.  We discussed the partnership for months and eventually I started receiving over 60 daily leads of people who had signed up to receive information about the resume writing service. But in the end it could not work as the potential workload would be too much for my one man company. Again you might call that luck but I would argue that since I have completed nearly 1,000 resumes and CVs in the past three years it’s only a matter of time that I did one for the right person that could help me.

I can refer to other examples where I was 100% directly responsible for receiving some cool opportunities such as proposing some article pitch’s to different newspapers and finally finding one that bit and wrote a story on my business. That story was read by another journalist who then approached me to write another article  about my life and business in another more prominent publication.

But I am pretty certain both types of examples are a result of initiative. The people who achieve their goals are typically those who performed tangible actions rather than planning. Even if its likely to take ages before you reach your goal if you don’t start working towards it now you just might never. Even more important than that is that taking the initiative will lead you in new directions you may have never thought of.

Before I found out that I love to travel I already knew that the process of creating a business excited me. So I started some businesses, continuing with the ones that were successful and giving up on the ones that were not. As a result I have run one business since age 16 and another since age 19. If I wasn’t making much money at the time I continued with it regardless because I enjoyed the process of learning internet marketing, responding to customers, finding new products, and everything else that goes along with it. Even if I never made money I considered that it might help me develop new skills to start another one that could.  It was always satisfying to know that whatever business I was working on at the time might lead to some new path I had never considered. After 5 – 7 years old various businesses one huge benefit I never considered at the time was that creating a business might someday lead to me be able to travel consistently, which later became a huge interest of mine.

Whatever it is you find exciting I urge you to go do it.  If you stop doing it after a few months you probably were never all that passionate about it anyways. It was just a fleeting interest. That’s because you were expecting to receive something rather than just enjoying the process. If you really enjoy what you are doing you will continue to do it because its your passion. I don’t think a passion has to be fun at all but it should bring you long term satisfaction. If you work hard and continue working hard on your project indefinitely, I think the opportunity you were never looking for will appear. And that opportunity will be so worth it.

As I began browsing solutions to manage my interactions with clients all I found were complicated and expensive CRM related solutions. I needed a way to automate my communication with clients. When I first began my career consulting business a few years ago I averaged no more than 20 new clients per month. Responding to each client in complete and detailed sentences was painless. For instance, I needed to confirm that I received the necessary information and payment with an email to each client. As the career consulting process began I needed to let them know that attached in an email was the first draft of their resume or CV. Or that I received their response to my comments and that I would have a next draft ready in a few days.

But as the average amount of clients per month grew from 20 to 50-70 new clients it started getting out of hand. My default response became “see attached” and of course my customer service declined. There was no other way to maintain the detailed and professional communications as just one person.

Enough became enough and tonight as I was browsing my options I found the most simple solution, Gmail Canned Responses.

“If you’re sick of typing out the same reply every time someone emails you with a common question, now you can compose your reply once and save the message text with the “Canned responses” button. Later, you can open that same message and send it again and again.” -Google

Problem solved! In an instant I have reduced the time and effort needed to maintain professional communication with all of my clients. I can also combine this feature with Google’s email filter to automatically match received emails with my list of canned responses. Google will then automatically send my response. I have since written five different canned responses to manage each phase of my career consulting process. Not only are my responses far more professional but they will help me earn more revenue, easily. Through these canned emails I can now more easily up-sell add-on services and encourage satisfied customers to refer their friends and family in just a simple click.

By this point you must be thinking of how this can benefit your own business, job, or personal life. At least I hope so. Are you in a management role at your job? Create some canned responses to send to your employees each time you need them to complete a common task. Do you want to let someone know you received their email and will respond to them soon? Use a canned response.

It’s so simple and has probably been around forever on the internet but I still feel like I just discovered the wheel.

I know that most people think they want to run a business. The biggest obstacle is always the question, “how do I get started?” What is the first step? In this article I provide a time line briefly explaining each of my business ventures in chronological order starting at around age 10 up to the present, at age 23. This information can be viewed as a complement to an article I wrote summarizing my business strategy.

The Timeline

• Age 9-13: Paid staff at an overnight camp to buy me 24 packs of soda cans which I resold to fellow campers at 3/4 cost of the camp vending machines. I built a makeshift cooler out of Styrofoam to keep them cold at all times and earned around $50 profit each summer. The other other campers soon became upset that I was making money off them and demanded free sodas.

• Age 14: Borrowed $50 from my dad to sign up for the Microsoft Xbox Live Beta program and received the service and memorabilia. I sold the memorabilia earning $50 after paying back my Dad. I used this $50 as “capital” for other opportunities.

• Age 15: Sold a brand new TV on Ebay through a free drop shipping program for my first sale of an actual product, earning a little of $30 profit with no start up cost of course. This was a fake sort of drop shipping program where the products offered were typically above retail costs but I somehow sold the TV. This inspired me to put in further research to find better drop shipping opportunities once realizing earning money this was was possible.

• Age 15: Sold high priced bootleg software such Photoshop on Ebay earning $50-$200 in profit per sale. The software was also drop shipped. This only lasted a few months until Ebay and Paypal banned me from their services. The quick and easy money excited me too much that I didn’t realize losing the use of these accounts would hurt me far more in the long run. Of course I registered more accounts in my name  each time I was banned a for a good few months until I gave up on selling these items.

• Age 16-Present: Began selling personal items such as my old clothing on a large internet forum earning extra cash here and there. Then in turn I began selling dropshipped items such as novelty gifts, airsoft guns, and other products with decent success.

• Age 16-17: Sold throwback sports jerseys on Ebay (again using different accounts) earning $10-100 in profit per sale. I  Found a few individual sellers in New York and Florida who drop shipped the jerseys to my customer. They were all pretty shady. I registered www.MainStreetJerseys.com and set up an E-Commerce website selling the throwback jerseys without much success through the website/ But Ebay sales continued. My suppliers became unreliable and throwback jerseys lost their popularity and selling power so I stopped a year later.

• Age 16-Present: Sold screenprinted t-shirts via the large internet forum earning $6-$12 profit per sale. I Identified interesting designs posted throughout the forum and contacted the designer offering commission for each t-shirt sold ($.50 usually). I took pre-orders (color/size/payment) from customers on the internet forum and then gave my order to an inexpensive screenprinter in California to print the t-shirts and mail them to me. After receiving a box with the shirts I packaged each individual order and sent them out from the post office. Throughout the years I have sold 2,000 or more shirts, including some wholesale orders to small book stores and museums.

• Age 17-19: Sold strange products bought overseas to customers on the internet forum and Ebay. Traveled on a group program to Bolivia for six weeks and bought a few llama fetuses, pipes, decorated knives, and even custom printed t-shirts. It was tough to unload some of this but when I finally did I earned big profits (i.e. paid $1 for the llama fetus and sold it for $50). A few years later I tried this in Ecuador and ended up selling fake shrunken heads, vintage books from WWII, etc. on the small scale. This was fun but I realized doing this consistently for a decent income would be pretty difficult.

• Age 17-19: Sold various products including airsoft guns, lighters, neon signs, etc. through the internet forum earning anywhere from $1-$100 profit per sale. All products were drop shipped from new suppliers.

• Age 19-21: Wrote a somewhat detailed business plan to someday open up my own youth hostel. It is pretty rough but covers a lot.

• Age 20: Wrote a business plan to start my own daily product website similar to woot.com. I bought the domain MidnightPosters.com with the idea to sell one new poster every couple days. I had sold posters in the past which cost me $1 to produce and would sell them for $5 each. I already had around 20 cool poster designs. Designers would be paid a percentage of each sale I made. In the end I chose not to go further with idea because I didn’t really see it working well.

• Age 17-22: Registered wholesale accounts with popular clothing brands (American Apparel, Alternative Apparel, etc.) to resell clothing through the internet forums earning $10-200 profit per sale. I received orders and had the companies drop ship to my customers even though they did not advertise this.  A few years later I even made one sale for $3,500+ to an individual purchasing uniforms for a company, earning $700+ in profit which prompted me to quit an internship and travel to the Galapagos Islands and then Colombia. I was eventually forced to order in larger quantities which meant shipping the clothing to customers myself. I continued this and other ventures while traveling overseas 4 months per year by hiring a different person each summer to ship the goods. During the school year I packaged and shipped the goods to my customers. While I was away I hired a person to package and ship orders for me.

• Age 17-present: Created BuySomethingAwesome.com to sell my collection of drop shipped items, t-shirt lines, strange items personally imported from overseas. I found a volunteer to build the e-commerce website for free and advertised the website through the internet forums. Over the years I upgraded the website actually paying for quality and advertised more heavily with banner ads, Search Engine Product Search program, and a few successful PR activities. At one point this was my most profitable business.

• Age 17-21: Used my resources to take advantage of easy opportunities to earn money. For instance I acted as a screen printer when I found someone wanting to order a bunch of custom sweatshirts to celebrate Christmas with his friends. This is one of many examples.

• Age 19-20: Offered a resume/CV writing service for $20 per customer through an internet forum after seeing someone else do the same. The business developed as I received positive testimonials directly from clients in the forum.

• Age 19-present: Started my first travel blog, JasonsinSouthAmerica, which has now turned into www.locationlessliving.com. For over four years I wrote about my travels and businesses with no intention of ever earning money. I figured earning pennies from sources like Google Adsense or the occassional affiliate marketing sales would never be worth it. Four years later I stumbled into a very simple process to attract actual advertisers for $50-$300 sponsored post sales and text link ads. In just one month this business surpassed my online retail store as my number two earner. As of June, 2011 it accounts for an average of 15%-20% of my monthly income.

• Age 20-present: Started an official Career Consulting Service based on the internet forum successes. I advertised heavily and  of course I built an eCommerce website shortly after the business took off and turned this into by far my most profitable business ever. As a result this accounts for around 90% of my income. I offer resumes, CV’s, cover letters, mock interviews, and a few more services. I also recieved other writing opportunities such as a freelance copywriting job for a big company here and there. I don’t want this blog associated with this business so I won’t mention the name of it.

• Age 20: Nearly started an exotic jerkey business importing kangaroo and crocodile jerkey from Australia but decided against it. Thank god because who in their right mind would ever buy it. There’s a reason nobody else sells it.

Today:

I Currently run the career consulting business as my primary income, this blog as my second income, BuySomethingAwesome as a smaller side-income, and recently stopped selling the American Apparel clothing early 2010. The businesses have come a long way since I started with much higher revenue, complicated advertising methods, website designs, etc. As of three years ago I began paying taxes and doubled my income each year. To put things in perspective I am 100% financially independent, debt-free, and have enough savings to last me more than four years should I not work at all. I don’t think it’s appropriate to share my earnings publicly but anyone curious about it can send me an email.

Now as you see with the right set of circumstances, hustle, and talent it is very possible to start a business with little funds. Because of these last 5 – 7 years of full-time work I am living the locationless lifestyle: working anywhere at anytime. Five years is a long time to get there. It’s not easy but it’s a pretty sweet way of living.

For more information about my businesses you can read some of the articles mentioned below.

• http://locationlessliving.com/index.php/quietly-earning-a-living-as-a-travel-blogger/
• http://locationlessliving.com/index.php/location-independent-lifestyle-interview/
• http://locationlessliving.com/index.php/my-failed-tv-pilot-kidding-sort-of/
• http://locationlessliving.com/index.php/2010-online-income-in-review/
• http://locationlessliving.com/index.php/sold-out-my-travel-blog/
• http://locationlessliving.com/index.php/myth-or-reality-business-luck/
• http://locationlessliving.com/index.php/im-in-the-newspaper/