Rush hour madness
Every morning almost without fail, I will wake up early, dress up and rush to work. The journey to work will take me about 1 hour to 1 and half hour depending on how bad the traffic jam on that day.
At the same time, almost every morning on my way to work, during the lonely commute, I keep on thinking about how to escape the daily grind that I am in. Working without much purpose and zombie-like routine, ugh… I just hate this.
Will I ever find my way to escape the rat race in this situation?
Thinking of a solution – Plan for alternative careers
So this past few years, after feeling drearier because of the constant rat race to nowhere, I sought to find other alternatives as a career. I was looking to be either self-employed or having a business that can help me to be more flexible with my time.
Offline-based Opportunity
I started out by first looking at the obvious money making opportunity in front of me.
Insurance: I joined an insurance agency to try my luck in the insurance business. It was much tougher than I thought and after many rejections, I gave up.
MLM: I have joined a number of MLM companies before and most of the time, they didn’t work out well. There was one MLM company where I did quite well, but after almost a year, I got burned out and was not willing to continue anymore. I was looking for an opportunity to make money or extra income but, I had hardly any time for my family at that time. So it was a bad fit for me.
Real Estate: We just had a small house built for rental purposes. I hope it will give a decent passive income for our family. Currently, we are looking to build more rental units on our land to get more rental income moving forward.
Self-publishing/Book Publishing: I have written a few storybooks for children and I will be looking to self-publish my books in the future when I have the means. Of course, it would be great if I can get a proper publisher to help publish my books. It will be a long shot and maybe can happen in the future.
Online-based Opportunity
Online-based business is something that I had just started to delve into fairly recently. I must admit that the potential for business growth is just enormous. I knew I must be involved in one way or another with the online business or internet marketing to achieve greater success.
So below are currently the online-based business that I am doing.
Taking Paid Surveys from Home: When I have some extra time to kill, I do paid surveys. Money is not much, but I will be happy with any extra. Good money is possible if you have a lot of time taking surveys and also by referring to friends and family. One of the best-paid surveys out there is CashCrate.
Self-Publishing Online: If you have an original eBook that you are interested in selling, there are many avenues that you can do. I have a few eBooks that I have self-published on the Amazon Kindle platform myself. You can see my Amazon author profile and books here. If you have a lot of books or eBooks, you might as well get your own website to promote them.
Build My Own Online Business: I have a few websites that I am currently working on to build a proper online business. It is very important to have your own website for your online business success. Proper guidance will go a long way to ensure your success online and I got mine here.
Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate Marketing is just simply a process whereby you earn commission by helping to promote other people or company products or services. The process is basically, you find a product of your liking, promote the product to others, and then you earn a commission for each sale that you make. I learned a great deal on how to do a proper affiliate marketing business with Wealthy Affiliate. I wrote a review a while ago about them here.
No More a Pipe Dream
As you can see, I have dabbled in a number of businesses to get extra income and try to make money here and there. All are on a part-time basis as I still needed my job to pay the bills.
However, with the foundation that I have built, I really believe that my dream to escape the rat race is getting closer to reality by the days.
Thank you for taking the time to read my post. I hope you can get something out of my sharing here. If you have a comment or would like to share your experience, just leave a comment below.
Dominic@Dlansing
Very good info you have here. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you dins for your comment. I’m very glad that you like story on this post. Please come to my site regularly for more related post that might interest you.
Dominic@dlansing
Dominic,
My friend you have described my wife’s daily grind, she is strapped to the corporate world an hours drive away without traffic, just 100 miles a day.
I on the other hand somewhat like yourself tried the insurance deal, got my state license sold for Aflac, but the mileage because of our rural setting was too expensive with my Jeep Cherokee.
I also did several MLM’s which most always figure the same financially and I hated hawking friends and relatives for business.
I found my path to affiliate marketing through Wealthy Affiliate as you did.
Thanks for the great read, all my best to your continued success,
Gary
Thanks for sharing your experience here, Gary. Really appreciate it and I can really feel for you. All these experience has made me stronger and become a better person. Wish you best of success in your endevour too Gary!
Dominic@dlansing
Hi Dominic..
I said you just lucky to have double income. Rat race is about making money and spending money without saving and investment. Starting online business is one way to explore and self-development to get extra income..
Regards
Septiana
Thank you Septiana. I am looking to eventually have more free time to be with my family and also my passion. I don’t really like spending half of my day at the office and on top of that spending more than 2 hours everyday in traffic jam rush hour. This is why I am willing to do all these outside of working hours so that I can eventually achieved time and financial freedom.
Rgds,
dominic@dlansing
Dear Dominic,
Yes, rat race is the norms. To escape from it was a dream for most of us. To achieve the dream, we need to be brave and work hard. I applaud you for having the courage to start your journey and hopefully your dream will come true in no time. All the best!
Best regards,
Gregory
Thank you very much for your kind words Gregory!
dominic@dlansing