How To Quit Your Job And Be Your Own Boss [Like a Boss]

As 9-5 jobs become increasingly worse in all their aspects, for many people, including me, earning your living while working for nobody else but yourself feels like one of those dreams that you wouldn’t want to wake up from.

Since you are here, I can only guess that you are one of those people…

Can you guess why am I here?

To let you know how to make that dream of being the boss of yourself come true of course!

Truth is, there are a lot of ways to becoming your own boss, some easier than others…

However, in this article, I am going to show you what I consider one of the simplest, cheapest, and most sustainable ways to actually become your own boss and be able to quit not just your current job but all jobs forever and work for yourself for the rest of your life.

The way I am talking about is the exact same way that is currently taking me towards my financial freedom which is running your very own online affiliate marketing business…

Yeah, I am 100% sure that once you read the words “creating”, “online”, “affiliate marketing”, and “business” sweat started dripping out your ears as a bazillion negative thoughts such as “I don’t know how to do it” or “Earning money online is not a thing”, or “I don’t have the time” started bombarding your consciousness harder than the Japanese bombarded Pearl Harbor…

However, before you fall victim of some random negative thoughts and pass an opportunity that could possibly change your life and financial state for the better forever, just like it has changed mine and thousands of others’, try to silence all that crap and just hear me out for a while with an open mind okay?

Earning Your Living Online is a Thing!

I don’t know if you are aware of that, but every single website, YouTube channel, blog, forum, etc on the face of the Earth exists for just one purpose…

To bring in money to its owner, one way or another…

Maybe it’s through displaying ads, recommending products, publishing sponsored content, promoting services, selling courses, or whatever…

Either it’s obvious to you (like a huge red “Buy Now or Die” button) or not, every time you are watching the “Top 10 Faceplants of the Week” on YouTube, every time you are trying to figure out what to cook for your children on a rainy Friday night, every time you are reading about quitting your job and becoming your own boss, someone is after making money off of you.

Hundreds of thousands of people have managed to leverage that process in order to quit their job and become the bosses of themselves.

And it’s not even that complicated.

The majority of those who are currently earning their living online, including me, were once utterly clueless about how to actually achieve it just like you are right now!

But somehow, they managed to do it… And if they could do it, you can do it too!

It always seems impossible, until someone actually does it! – Nelson Mandela

Don’t get me wrong though…

Not being complicated doesn’t mean that it will come easy and effortlessly.

Running an online business is exactly like running a normal, offline one. It requires time and busting your ass off to make it work and there’s no way around that.

If you don’t treat your online business as a business, it will never, EVER actually become one.

However, in this article, I am not going to be talking about any online business but about building a successful online affiliate marketing business.

What is an Online Affiliate Marketing Business?

There are a lot of types of online business models.

Some of them are

Advertisement based
Affiliate marketing
Amazon FBA
Dropshipping
Online Retail Stores
Offering Various Services such as SEO, writing, editing, translation, image editing, voice over, etc
Coaching (business, life, etc)
Digital Product Stores
and more

For any of those business models to become truly profitable not just in the short-term but for the years to come, you’ll need a website and an audience.

Always remember that despite the business model you’ll employ, either that is affiliate marketing or displaying ads if you don’t have an audience, you won’t be making any money.

The basis of any business, online or offline is the customer. Without customers, there can be no business.

Anyway, let’s assume that you have a website and an audience and you are going to monetize your website with affiliate marketing.

What does that mean exactly?

Online Affiliate Marketing in a Nutshell

Online affiliate marketing refers to earning commissions by getting people who visit your website to buy already existing products online.

Let’s assume that you run a blog on a specific topic, let’s say, making smoothies. On this website, you recommend already existing products relevant to making smoothies such as blenders, glasses, jars, recipe books, etc. When a person visits your website and purchases one of the products you recommend, you are earning a commission.

This is it! This is affiliate marketing! Making money by recommending other people’s products.

It’s as simple as that.

Another example:

Right now you are reading an article on how to quit your job and be your own boss by creating an online affiliate marketing business… Later on, I am going to recommend some platforms that can teach you everything about creating a successful online affiliate marketing business and if you go ahead and join them, I am going to earn a percentage of what you’ll pay to join those platforms, at no extra cost to you of course.

So, why affiliate marketing of all the other online business models?

Reasons Why Affiliate Marketing Rules!

The main reason why affiliate marketing is the best choice to get started with online marketing is that it requires you to develop no product to start earning money.

This means that you won’t have to spend a lot of time and money on developing a product of your own which you can’t know if it will even sell.

With affiliate marketing, your only concern is to find products which already sell and through your website, promote them to people who would buy them anyway sooner or later.

Another benefit is that once you have your website up and running, which nowadays takes less than half an hour even for a complete newbie, you can technically start earning money (although it will probably won’t happen that fast because first, you’ll have to build up some traffic).

In addition, you won’t need to worry about inventory, shipping, and distribution, returns, customer service, handling complaints, maintaining and improving your product, etc.

All you do is just make a recommendation, earn the commission, and let the merchant handle the rest.

Pretty neat huh?

Lastly, affiliate marketing the cheapest model to get started with while at the same time offering amazing potential for earnings.

For instance according to Oberlo, compared to affiliate marketing, the minimum amount of overhead to start a dropshipping business is $120. If you are serious about earning a full-time living online, you’ll also probably need to start running Facebook ads to attract people to your dropshipping store. This adds up to at least a couple hundred dollars per month. With affiliate marketing, all you have to pay for is a domain name ($15 per year max), hosting ($10 per month max) and possibly some training and you are ready to go!

On the other hand, while earning money through displaying ads on your website requires the exact same overhead as affiliate marketing, it has way lower earning potential than both drop shipping and affiliate marketing.

For instance, there were months when I was earning $200 a month through affiliate marketing with just 10 visitors a day on my website. With ads, this amount of traffic would bring in less than $10 a month. Also, the majority of ad networks won’t accept you if you aren’t getting a few thousand visits per month on your website (Mediavine, one of the most well-paying ad networks requires somewhere around 30k visits per month just to accept you into their program).

So, if you asked me, affiliate marketing is the cheapest way to get started which at the same time offers the greatest earning potential.

So, how can you get started?

How to Get Started with Affiliate Marketing

As stated earlier, in order to ensure that you’ll end with a highly profitable online affiliate marketing business, you’ll need to build a website, or even better, a blog (the difference between a website and a blog is that a website has static content while a blog is constantly updated with new, fresh content).

Despite being able to make money as an affiliate marketer without a blog, it’s not really recommended as a long-term business model but rather if you are only after earning some money here and there.

Furthermore, without a blog, it will be nearly impossible to create a passive income for yourself.

So, ending up with a successful, long-term online affiliate marketing business is a 4-step process.

Step 1 -> Choose your blog’s niche

The niche of your blog is basically its main subject and it can be literally anything in the world such as

dogs
travel
food
rubber bands
gardening
bicycles
etc

For instance, the niche of dearboss-iquit.com is mainly people who are after quitting their job.

There exist 600.000.000+ products you can instantly start recommending, on any kind of subject you might desire so your options are literally unlimited.

Step 2 -> Build Your Blog

Once you figure out your desired niche for your online business, it’s time to get your blog up and running.

Nowadays, with all this advanced technology, you can build your first blog in just a matter of a few minutes even if you have no prior knowledge on how to actually do that whatsoever.

To find out how to easily build your blog in a jiffy, go ahead and check out my guide 7 Steps to Build YOUR Affiliate Marketing Website, 100% Free.

Step 3 -> Attract Visitors to Your Blog

As stated earlier, there can be no successful business without customers.

So, the third, most important as well as the most difficult step of the whole process of earning your living through your affiliate marketing business, is attracting visitors to your blog.

If you don’t get visitors to your blog, then you have no one to promote products to and thus you can’t earn commissions. And to be able to earn a stable full-time living through your blog, you need to have consistent traffic.

Consistent traffic = consistent sales = consistent profit

There are a lot of ways to grow a consistent amount of traffic for your blog.

Some of the most prominent ones are

free, organic traffic from search engines (Google, Bing, Youtube, Pinterest, Forums, etc)
paid search engine traffic
free social media traffic (Facebook, Instagram, etc)
paid social media traffic

Most affiliate marketers employ strategies to grow their free, organic, search engine traffic as first of all, it’s free, and secondly, it’s much more passive and long-lasting than paying for traffic or posting on social media.

However, cultivating a healthy amount of free, organic traffic which will result in consistent commissions takes a lot more time and effort than paying for ads which take less time and effort but requires you to invest more money.

Some of the strategies towards cultivating search engine traffic include

blogging regularly
using keywords with little competition
creating content which will be beneficial to those who read it
internally linking your articles
optimizing your blog’s images
decreasing the loading speed of your website
etc

Step 4 -> Monetizing Traffic With Affiliate Marketing

This is the fun part!

Once you start getting visitors to your blog, you can start recommending products to them which if they buy, you’ll earn commissions.

To do that, you’ll need to find out which companies sell products which your readers might find useful and beneficial, join their affiliate programs, get your hands on your unique affiliate links, and start including them throughout your blog.

When your readers click on your unique affiliate link, they will be redirected to the merchant’s website, buy the product you recommended and you’ll earn a commission which will be usually a percentage of the total amount your reader paid to the merchant.

Always make sure that you promote products relevant to your niche and not just anything you can get your hands on because your readers will find you spammy and downright stupid to tell you the truth.

For instance, if you were running a blog on motorcycles, promoting dog food to your readers would be counter-productive (except if your blog was about motorcycles AND dogs).

So, Where Are You Going to Learn How to Do All That Stuff?

This is the part I mentioned earlier that I am going to recommend a couple of programs to you which will teach you all about the 4 steps I mentioned right above in order to end up owning a successful online affiliate marketing business!

If you pay for any of those programs I will earn a commission at no extra cost to you!

This is affiliate marketing at its finest and this is exactly what you’ll be doing as well!

You’ll be creating articles like this one which will help people solve a problem they have, just like this one is helping you solve your problem of wanting to quit your job and become your own boss, and within them you are going to be recommending products which are going to help your readers solve their problem better and faster just as I am about to do now.

Anyway, in my 3 years as an affiliate marketer, I’ve come across and tested dozens of affiliate marketing courses but out of all those dozens, only 2 are those which I truly consider worthy of someone’s time and money.

The first one is called Wealthy Affiliate and the other one Project 24 and I am currently a member of both of them!

A Few Words About Wealthy Affiliate

Its training takes you by the hand and is very simple to follow even for those who have no previous experience with online marketing or building and scaling an online business whatsoever
It has a website builder which allows you to create websites in just a few minutes
300+ hours of exquisite affiliate marketing training
24/7 Live Chat for instant help and support all around the clock
Almost 1 million members
Unlimited training modules
Weekly live webinars
one-on-one coaching from the affiliate marketing veterans as well as the founders themselves
Amazing time-saving tools (keyword research tool, SiteContent, website manager, etc)
Free Amazon hosting for up to 50 websites
Tons of success stories of its members are being posted daily

Wealthy Affiliate is where I started my first affiliate marketing business and I’ve been a premium member of the platform for more than 3 years now.

Lastly, Wealthy Affiliate is FREE to join.

Of course, as a free member, you won’t have access to every single one of its premium features and training modules but nonetheless, this is an amazing opportunity to get test drive the whole process of building and running an online business without spending a dime, not even for a domain name or hosting.

If my mother asked me where she could learn to build a successful affiliate marketing business, I’d sent her to Wealthy Affiliate, hands down.

Read a Full Wealthy Affiliate Review Right Here!

A Few Words About Project 24

Actionable, 60-step approach to building profitable affiliate blogs in any niche
Access to a private, very active, supportive community
Time-saving tools such as spreadsheets and custom plugins
Dozens of hours of additional courses
New content is being added weekly
Its owners are actively contributing within the community
Extremely beginner friendly
Success stories of people who have joined it are on the rise
Mainly focuses on content marketing and SEO
Very powerful in conjunction with its YouTube channel

Project 24 has been created by Jim and Ricky, owners of incomeschool.com.

Before purchasing Project 24, I had been following Income School’s YouTube channel for a while and by applying some of the strategies and practices taught in there for a couple of months, I managed to improve my rankings, increase my traffic and start making sales more consistently.

And all that just by watching their free YouTube videos!

This is when I realized that since their free YouTube content was so beneficial to me, their paid course should be way more valuable!

And I was right!

Read a Full Project 24 Review Right Here!

You Don’t Really “Have” to Pay for Training

But the fact that you don’t have to, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t…

Investing in the right affiliate marketing training will probably be one of the best decisions you’ll ever make when it comes to the success of your online business.

Truth is that the internet is full of free information on literally any subject you might possibly imagine and there are absolutely hundreds of blogs, forums, YouTube channels which can teach you everything about running an affiliate marketing business without having to pay a single dime.

However, going down that road has many disadvantages such as

inevitably coming across and employing crappy practices which might hurt your blog and stall its success
information will not be centralized in one place so you’ll spend a lot of time just looking around
going through a lot more trial and error
much slower results
a lot more guesswork and frustration
greater chances of giving up

Think about it this way…

It will take at least twice as much time to turn your online business into a success if you just rely on the free information you can find online than if you just paid for some dedicated affiliate marketing training to show you exactly how it’s done.

Another example…

Would you consider becoming a doctor by reading blogs and watching YouTube channels?

I don’t think so!

So, why consider becoming a successful online business owner without the appropriate training?

Lastly, even by following the best affiliate marketing training, a large percentage of people still ends up failing. The chances of succeeding online with no training are extremely low.

That’s why I have been paying for affiliate marketing training for the last 3 years. And even with all this high-quality training, support, and tools, turning my online business into a success, is still fucking hard!

I definitely couldn’t have come that far by myself!

So, although you could build a successful online business without following any training, I wouldn’ recommend going down that road.

Just go ahead and pay for some dedicated affiliate marketing training in order to maximize your chances of success as well as have the confidence that you are not wasting your time employing practices which are not going to eventually bring results.

Again, the 2 best affiliate marketing training programs I’ve come across in my 3 years as an affiliate marketer are Wealthy Affiliate and Project 24.

Go ahead and read my Wealthy Affiliate review right here, my Project 24 review right here, decide which suits you the best and go ahead and join it.

Believe me, you won’t regret it.

High-Quality Training is NOT Enough to Succeed

While training is going to give you a nice boost towards achieving your financial goals, it won’t make you a success by itself.

Don’t worry… I don’t mean that you are going to have to pay for additional resources, training, tools, etc in any way.

What I mean is that the level and speed of the success you are going to reach or not reach is mainly going to depend on your own self, work ethic, tolerance, level of commitment, ability to adapt, perseverance, and ability to follow instructions.

That’s why earlier I stated that even by following the best affiliate marketing training and having the most professional mentors looking over their shoulder, most people are still going to fail to achieve their desired results and will ultimately give up.

It really doesn’t matter how awesome your training might be, how phenomenal the tools you have are, or if the support you receive is like no other.

If you don’t invest the required amounts of time and effort to put everything together yourself the right way, you are most likely going to fail.

Beating Common Excuses That Hold People Back

As a person who is after helping people quit jobs they hate, I’ve inevitably interacted with dozens of people who were in need of my advice and guidance…

However, once I start talking about creating an online business as a way to quit all jobs forever and become self-employed, I am noticing a pattern of certain excuses not to do so keeps coming up almost every single time.

The most common ones are

I don’t have the time
I don’t have the money
I don’t have the knowledge
It’s not going to work

1 • I Don’t Have the Time

Not having enough time is one of the most common excuses people use to avoid starting their online business.

However, everyone’s having the exact same 24 hours per day and yet some people, somehow, manage to escape 9-5 and work for themselves online.

How did they do it?

Do they have more hours per day than you? Or are they magicians?

Nope!

They just know how to invest their free time in activities which will help them achieve their goals instead of wasting it in meaningless activities which will never take them closer to them.

Do you have time to watch TV? Are you spending time on social media? Do you have time to go out for drinks and coffee? Are you watching movies? Do you have time to browse the web like you are doing right now?

Well, of course you do!

Cut down most or all of those activities and voila! There’s your free time! Invest it in building your online business.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

2 • I Don’t Have Enough Money

Second most common excuse…

Not having enough money.

Truth is that people think that they need to invest thousands of dollars in order to be able to start an online business of their own.

However, as we saw earlier, building an online business requires minimum overhead compared to building a normal one and affiliate marketing is among the cheapest models to employ.

The only things that you will need to spend money on are

a domain name ($15 per year)
a hosting plan ($10 per month)
dedicated training

If you join Wealthy Affiliate you get everything just mentioned with just $49 per month.

That’s the price of a takeout dinner for two for crying out loud.

Most people spend much more money per month on crap they don’t even need.

For my first one and a half years as a Wealthy Affiliate premium member, I was working a part-time job and I was still able to set $49 per month aside to pay for my premium membership.

In my eyes, not having enough money to get started is one of the stupidest excuses I’ve ever heard.

3 • I Don’t Have The Knowledge

That’s why you should consider purchasing dedicated affiliate marketing training as I’ve suggested numerous times.

No person who is currently earning their living online was born knowing how to become an entrepreneur just as no surgeon was born knowing how to operate.

If you are serious about attaining any new skill, either pay someone to teach you or start experimenting by yourself until you get the hang of it.

4 • It’s Not Going to Work

Yes, it will!

Tons of people are earning their living online as we speak and you can definitely be one of them if you want to.

Here are some success stories of Wealthy Affiliate members who are now earning their living online to motivate you and shut your excuses up.

Also, have you actually tried creating an online business before and failed?

Because if not, how the fuck can you be so sure that it won’t work?

NEVER assume failure before even getting started.

Truth is that our minds always invent tons of excuses to keep up stagnant and prevent us from going after and achieving our goals.

You will never have enough time, you will never have enough knowledge, you will never have enough energy, your closest people will always disapprove, no one will take you seriously, you are not good enough, etc, etc.

Every single person on the face of this Earth starts thinking such thoughts the moment they come across a new opportunity which could drastically improve their life.

Those who end up successful, are those who take action anyway regardless of their bullshit excuses.

This doesn’t just apply in creating an online business but in achieving anything worthwhile in life.

The Truth About Becoming Your Own Boss Online

While getting a blog up and running might be easy, scaling it to the point that you are making enough money to quit your job and become your own boss is no piece of cake.

To succeed you will need to start following some training, do research, constantly apply what you learn, see what is not working for you and your business, make adjustments, follow some more training, and do this again and again and again until you reach the point that you are comfortable enough to quit your job.

I really want to be up-front here…

To reach that point takes a lot of time and effort.

Affiliate marketing is definitely not a get-rich-quick scheme. You will not become an utter success overnight.

You will get frustrated… Tons of times. You might get tired and sad. You’ll have to work while your friends are out drinking and partying.

Results will most likely take a while to kick in. You will start believing that all your day-to-day efforts are in vain. You will have the urge to quit a number of times.

However, I can promise you two things

If you don’t give up, you’ll inevitably reach your goals
The end result is totally worth all this trouble

Because once you succeed, when all the people you know will keep getting depressed every Sunday evening because they will have to be in a job they hate in a few hours, you’ll be thanking yourself that you did what’s necessary to become your own boss and own a business you love.

Advantages of Being Your Own Boss Online

You have no boss busting your balls (obviously)
Working whenever you want, however you want, wherever you want, on your own pace, and generally on your own terms
Infinite earning potential as you are not tied to a standard salary which will most likely never go up
You get to be way more creative and productive
Increased motivation and fulfillment with what you do for a living
No more experiencing the Sunday night depression
Less likely to fall into a rut
Little to no investment to get started
You mind your own business (literally)
Managing your time based on your own needs
You are investing in yourself
More free time (down the road)
No long commutes, rush hours, traffic jams, etc
Financial security (they say that the only way to become financially secure, is working for yourself)
Nobody can fire you 😛
You can create a business around any subject that you want, love or are passionate about
It’s freaking liberating!

How To ACTUALLY Quit Your Job And Be Your Own Boss

The time has come.

Now that you are aware of what you need to do to quit your job and become your own boss, I’ll let you know how to actually do it.

As I see it, you have two options:

Take the plunge and quit your job at once. Then start working on your online business (recommended only for those who hate their job so much that just another day there might result in killing themselves or maybe someone else)
Create your online business, start developing it on the side of your current job, and when you are making enough that you don’t really need your job’s income anymore, quit it. This is exactly what I have been doing for the last year or so. This is also what most people are doing. Having the safety of a steady monthly salary from your current job while building your business on the side that will eventually allow you to quit it 😉

Key Takeaways

A solid way to quit your job and be your own boss is by creating an online business
Affiliate marketing is the simplest and cheapest model offering amazing earning potential at the same time
Anyone can earn their living online
It might be simple, but it’s not easy
It takes a lot of time and effort
The 2 best affiliate marketing training platforms I’ve found till now are Wealthy Affiliate and Project 24
You don’t “have” to pay for training but doing so is of your best interest
Wealthy Affiliate is FREE to join
Creating a successful affiliate marketing business is a 4-step process
The journey will be hard and arduous but it’s absolutely worth the trouble
You can quit your job and then start building your business (not recommended)
You can work on your business on the side of your job until you are making enough to quit it
Being your own boss is freaking awesome!

Over To You

I can understand that you might be a little skeptical and overwhelmed at that point. Believe me, I was the exact same way when I first found out that making money online would be possible for me.

However, I took the first step relatively easily without much thought and now, 3 years in the game, I want to give you 10 reasons why you should take this step yourself and get started immediately.

If you get started right now, 1-2 years from now you might be thanking yourself that you did. If you fail, you will at least know that you tried your best
You have nothing to lose since you can get started for FREE at Wealthy Affiliate
If there is even 1% chance that this works, it is definitely worth giving this a shot
If one can do it, then you can do it, and you can do it even better
Never dismiss something before trying it out at least for a while
If you start playing you might win. If you never start playing you will definitely never win
You can work on your online business in your spare time. Even 1 hour daily is better than none
You really can’t risk losing an opportunity to quit your job and be your own boss. I know I couldn’t
If you don’t at least try this out, you will never find out if it actually works. If it actually works you lose big time
If you don’t build something of your own, someone else will hire you to help them build something of their own

The requirements for success are:

being at the right place at the right time
doing something about it

What are you waiting for?

If you have any questions or need any further help or guidance from me, I encourage you to leave a comment below or email me at harry@dearboss-iquit.com.

You could also drop me a PM on my Wealthy Affiliate Profile.

Whatever the case, I will get back to you as soon as possible.

My best regards to you,

Harry,
dearboss-iquit.com