A reflection into being self employed for 6 months

It had always been my goal to give up my day job in order to focus full time on earning money online and blogging, and six months ago today I had my last day at work. I thought it would be the perfect time to sit down, think about being self employed and take stock of where the last 6 months have taken me.

I can summarise this whole post in one sentence: life is good, money is good and I am extremely blessed. That's what it all boils down to. However, if you want to get into the nitty gritty, let's do just that! Just a month after going self employed we took the decision for my husband to give up his job and come on board. It wasn't a decision we took lightly, but an injury meant that he had been signed off work for months and it wasn't something that we wanted him to continue to do, so we took this leap of faith together. It has definitely been a challenge – working with your husband can be both extremely rewarding and extremely difficult. Even now we are perfecting our techniques and our systems so that we can work well alongside each other.

Money

From Aldi To Harrods was set up to tell people how to make extra money online, so it seems only right to start off this reflection with the money side of things. Leaving a steady income behind was a challenge, but last month we made a massive £3,579.34 – lots more than we were both earning from our full time jobs.

The money we have earned comes from a variety of places, including:

• Freelance clients
• Surveys
• Matched betting
• Mystery shopping
• Affiliate marketing
• Sponsored posts
• Advertising
• Owning a rental property
• eBay sales
• Sales of my e-book, 50 iPhone Apps To Earn Cash

Plus many more!

You can see a breakdown of the income reports and get a more detailed view by checking out the following income reports:

December 2015 – £2,676.46 (on holiday for a week)

January 2016 – £2,888.17

February 2016 – £2,520.43 (on holiday for 2 weeks)

March 2016 – £3,194.82

April 2016 – £3,579.34

As you can see, we are on target to reach our goal of earning £5,000 a month by December 2016. Sometimes this goal scares me, and other times it really excites me.

Passive income is one of the biggest areas where we have been increasing our income is looking at our passive income – that is money we make in the background automatically. I have been tracking it since the start of this year and it has risen dramatically from £1,339.87 to £2,782.86 in just 4 months. This has allowed us to spend some time away from working – we don't feel guilty about taking time out to enjoy a meal out, or go to the gym or even go away on holiday. Hard work that we have put in for the past 5 years or so is now rewarding us – and being completely honest here, it beats what we were both taking home from working full time. We are so blessed to be in this position.

If you are interested in working on your passive income then be sure to check out my guide to passive income. It includes everything from owning a property, investing and even starting your own website.

Mental health, positivity and attitudes

The money that we are earning is great, but the best thing to come out of being self employed is definitely the change in my mental health. I am much more positive – my mindset has completely changed and I have little space for negativity in my life any more. I had realised that I was giving off negative vibes to those who I came into contact with, which wasn't something I had been aware of. I thought of myself as quite an upbeat person, so it took a lot of self evaluation to come to this realisation and to work on it. I have left behind people who I felt were bringing me down – I have no time for that. I have built up a fantastic support network of people who love and encourage each other and I cannot believe the world of difference this has made to my positivity and my income!

Watching and reading The Secret has completely resonated with me, and I now have a hearty cheque written to myself, as well as December's payslip with £5,000 on it. The more I read about the Law of Attraction, the more excited I get! I strongly recommend giving it a watch (on Netflix) or buying the book.

The time being self employed has given me

Since being self employed I have enjoyed some great experiences that I have been able to say yes to, instead of having to turn them down due to working. Some of these have been with Tony, and some just by myself. We have enjoyed two lovely holidays, I have been filmed for tv (appearing on BBC One in July!), I have appeared in the Mail Online and I also have my first speaking event, this weekend! Being able to say yes to more things has been wonderful – I have seen more, experienced more and met more wonderful people. I have had time to cook more, time to coupon and time to work on bigger projects. Now, instead of working opposite hours to each other and getting to see each other for maybe an hour a day, we are able to work together and have recreational time together.

My plans moving forward

As always, I have my eye on the £5,000 per month goal. However, we are already earning a lot more than we did from working full time and our quality of life is much better – things are good. As we continue to build our business we are looking to diversify our income even more, get round to those projects we keep meaning to do and grow our team so that we can start to enjoy more time away from working and more time as a couple, experiencing new things.

Join us!

We absolutely love having you on board for this journey! So much has changed in 6 months and we wonder where the next 6 months will take us. The biggest news is that our Money Making Bootcamp kicks off next month – so far we have hundreds of you registered to take part, so if you haven't yet registered then now is a great time to. I can also be found on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram where you will find plenty of cat photos. I am a self confessed Pinterest addict and I also post videos to YouTube, so come and join me over there.

Pin it for later