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Life in Canada, 4 Months On

return to Canada

The Return to Canada!

Full-Time Online Stuff = Hard

I’m going to get real in this post and talk about what it’s actually like doing the online thing full-time and why I don’t think it’s for me. Let me go a bit back in the past and explain how this whole thing came to be. I lived in South Korea for 10 years, teaching English at two different universities. For the last year or so, I wasn’t really happy and knew it was time to leave Korea, and also to take a break from teaching. I wavered back and forth about what to do back in Canada, but the thing I kept settling on was working for myself, online.

Why I Thought it was a Good Idea

It wasn’t like I was starting from nothing. I’d been self-publishing books for a year or two, and had some decent sales. Not enough to make a full-time living on, but not bad. I’d also been doing the blogging/website thing and was making some money doing that. Again, not enough to make a full-time living, but better and better results each month. Finally, I had a good amount of money invested in dividend paying stocks and was making around $500 USD each month. These three income streams combined, along with the fact that I’d only been doing this stuff part-time while I had a day-job made me think that working online was a good plan. Imagine the possibilities if I could have way more hours in the day to do my stuff? I was pumped-up about it!

Change of Plans!

Except the reality of it is that it’s hard to sit in front of your computer, alone, all the time. The reason I think I liked it so much when I was living in South Korea is because I was around people, all the time with teaching and some alone time was exactly what I needed to stay sane. These days though? It’s a struggle. Like a real struggle.

So, I’ve changed paths and done three things:

New Thing #1: Hired a Virtual Assistant

I hired a full-time virtual assistant from the Philippines. She writes articles and does some promotion. I do keyword research and give her topics to write about. She writes. I check over her work and publish. She does the bulk of the heavy lifting for the content writing portion of my websites. Product reviews like the ones on Kitchen Gadget Reviews are tedious and I was weary of doing them all the time.

I used Virtual Staff Finder to do this and was really happy with them!

New Thing #2: Selling Websites

I’m trying to increase sales on my websites, with an eye to start selling them for some serious money. For example, I started this website about menstrual cups from scratch, and since I did most of the writing myself, did it quite cheaply. I spent some money on link building, and paying for my virtual assistant to write a few of the articles, but probably not more than $500. You can sell a website for around 27x monthly earnings, and this website currently earns about $300/month. This means that it’s an $8100 website. Traffic and sales are increasing each month too, so I hope to be able to sell it for around $10,000 USD. Not bad for a bit of sweat equity.

New Thing #3: Back to the Day-Job!

Now, the most unexpected thing!

The third thing I’m doing is going back to the day-job. I got a full-time gig working in Vancouver’s movie industry starting next week (season 2 of CBC’s The Romeo Section). The hours are long, but the pay is great and it’s for 4 months. My VA is going to keep working away on the online stuff, but I’m excited that the online thing won’t be my full-time gig any more. I was bored and need a job where I get out in the world and meet people!

Not what I thought I’d be doing, but it seems like it’s all going to work out well in the end. I most certainly like the idea of a big infusion of cash earned in Canada (enough to live on for the entire year?), instead of just relying on my online stuff and savings from Korea. Nice!

One Comment

  1. Wow, sounds like you’ve a lot on your plate and you’re on to a great start Jackie! I also have a base dividend stock portfolio as well.

    Though the only difference for now is that I have a full time job, a 17 month girl which takes almost all of my time =D

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