I’ve been a fan reader of Caroline Middlebrook’s blog ever since I read about her on Yaro Starak’s blog around 1 week ago. I identify myself with her a lot because she and me share the exact same dream, reaching financial independence with online business.
She has been a lot more brave than me because she actually quit her day job at around August 2007 so she could start working full time on her online businesses. While I can’t do that, I will eventually lose my job at the end of December 2007 so we can say that at the end, both will share the same condition of being unemployed.
One of the things I like about her blog, is that can I learn from her own experiences and mistakes and this allows me to think things twice so I don’t make the same mistakes. Here are the things that I’ve learned from Caroline:
1) Don’t quit your day-to-day job before having an online business that is making at least what you are currently making + some savings
I can see that Caroline quit her job without having any money on savings nor having an online business making at least a good few dollars in revenue. The consequence of this is the desperation to make a buck really quick without letting a project have a good time for a good development.
2) Spend more time on blog than on other projects.
I’m guilty for the same sin, I created this blog with the purpose of documenting my progress on other online business, and I have the problem that I spend more time on it than on the rest of projects. I then fall into the trap of blogging about blogging.
3) Keep track of the time spend online
I also agree with her, actually I started to track my own time using the same application she uses, “Slimtimer.com” and I found some shocking surprises as she did. I found that I was spending too much time just browsing sites on the Internet without any purpose in particular. Internet is a big distraction and we need to keep it under control.
4) Let a project mature by itself:
On this point, I’m not sure about her decision to stop seveal of her projects. She mentioned that she quit her job in around August 2007, so it’s been 3 months since then, so, How come she says that she had some bad niches with only 3 months of development? 3 months is nothing in terms of a project’s time, I think we need to stick with some projects for at least 6 months or a little bit more before dropping the ball. I agre we need to cut our losses but if we have a good business plan, we need to follow it for the time it is scheduled before deciding to leave it for another one.
Without knowing the niches she picked up and other details, I can see that she is starting to get despearate in order to make a few bucks as soon as possible. This is understandable as she doesn’t seem to have any savings nor another source of income.
If Caroline ever reads this review, I hope she doesn’t get me wrong on this review, I really like her blog a lot and I hope she continues to blog about this subject. I wish her all the best luck on her projects so she can keep teaching other people like me.
Héctor Sánchez is a blogger from Ocotlán, Jalisco and he is currently residing in Guadalajara. Héctor is a Public Accountant from Universdidad Panamericana with a Posgrade in Corporate Finance from the same university, and he is currently working as financial analyst for Hewlett Packard. Even though he works in Finance for a living, in his spare time, he is a geek and he likes to build blogs, websites and studies everything related with Internet Marketing and several ways of building businesses online. He is also an active member of Toastmasters, where is the President in turn of his local club, Toastmasters Atlas Chapalita Club.
