Work for your supper? I thought so. Worried about your job? Quite possibly. And with talk of a double-dip recession, your concern is justifiable. If you are self-employed, like me, you're probably feeling just as edgy as the employed about your future income.
As a freelance journalist and copywriter, I've occasionally wondered whether to start looking for a suitably sized cardboard box to move into. Earning a steady living in this way can be tough and erratic, and to tell you the truth, I'm a bit sick of it.
But there is another way, or so I've heard. And it's called "blogging". Apparently, it can make you money.
I'm no stranger to blogs, and started a few after being introduced to the concept when I met former newspaper journalist Craig McGinty several years ago. McGinty told me he earned his living through "online publishing". That is, writing for himself. I didn't quite get it back then.
After going freelance in 2003, McGinty – who had lived in France and has since moved back – turned his writing skills to his site ThisFrenchLife.com (among others), writing advice for foreigners living in France. "As with many freelance writers I first pitched a few ideas to newspapers, but soon realised I was spending more time doing admin than actually writing and interviewing people," he says.
"So I thought I would spend this time writing my own websites and run them as online publications, with a selection of article types, including guest articles, but also competitions and offering a variety of advertising options."
It wasn't long before McGinty stopped relying on a freelance income altogether, and more recently, he's teamed up with landscaping expert Philip Voice to develop LandscapeJuice.com. According to Voice, the site will turnover about £18,000 in 2011. It receives around 90,000 visitors a month but Voice says he expects to see a "dramatic growth in advertising revenue and revenue from other services in 2012".
As for me, there's a blog I write about travel, TravellingWren.com, and one about giving up diets ChocolateAndBeyond.co.uk, yet with a single paying advertiser between them, they're hardly going to be my pension. But this needs to change, or that cardboard box, and maybe a sheet or two of newspaper for warmth, will become my reality.
What I'd like to do is follow in the footsteps of blogger, internet marketer, and owner of the viral marketing website ViperChill, Glen Allsopp, who at 22, earns more than £10,000 per month from his websites.
I read about Allsopp, from Newcastle upon Tyne, several months ago after researching how I could make myself "location independent" (that is, being able to earn my income from anywhere in the world, such as online). Allsopp has achieved this, and I was inspired by how intelligently and diligently he had constructed the life he wanted through mastering the internet, and becoming the creator of his own wealth.
His internet career started at the age of 16 when he combined his passions for DJing and making websites to build a music-orientated social network which quickly grew to over 10,000 members. After his site was featured in the book DJing for Dummies, he realised how much opportunity the internet held, and spent his days improving his skills. He quit his day job in February 2009 aged 19, travelled the globe for a couple of years, and now lives in Cape Town.
Allsopp says: "When I was struggling to make a living online I vowed that once I finally figured this 'internet stuff' out I would show others how to do the same. After the five-figure sale of my personal development blog at the end of 2010, I knew I was going to miss sharing my thoughts with the world and helping people in the process. ViperChill became my new platform to do exactly that."
These days, Allsopp runs a number of profitable affiliate websites while spending his blogging time teaching others how to market their sites and build an income from the internet. One of those people – as you will later see – is to be me. But rather than having to read ViperChill to obtain Allsopp's wisdom, I'll be getting a personal education – which I'll be sharing.
Of course, Allsopp isn't the only one earning megabucks from blogging. With his site CoolestGadgets.com (CG) Al Carlton claims that a "bad month" earns £10,000 – a good month can be five times that. And the site, which reviews the latest "coolest gadgets" (did you guess?), receives more than 1m page views a month, with 100,000-plus email subscribers.
Blogging is a full-time profession for Carlton, who has always been something of a "techie". He says: "I previously worked in the software development industry, and when looking for a career change, I set up numerous sites to explore generating a living on the internet."
Carlton explains that he used to run a web-hosting forum and posted about a cool keyboard that was due to come out. He thought it would be fun to share this sort of news on a gadget blog. "As traffic increased, I saw the potential to produce income from it," he says. "It took around a year for CG to generate a modest income."
Sally Whittle has also turned blogging into a full-time occupation, writing for blogs that started as hobbies, and running blog-based businesses, which developed as a result.
From writing WhosTheMummy.co.uk, she created a monthly list ranking the top 100 UK parent blogs – the Tots100 index. This earns Whittle 50% of her income, while 30% comes from another spin-off, the MAD Blog Awards – the UK's first award for Mum and Dad bloggers. Whittle says: "I thought Tots100 would be a good way to increase my own traffic, and also get myself known among other bloggers who would then read my blog.
"After a few months, I started getting approached by companies wanting to advertise on the site or pay me to offer them advice on working with bloggers. After a year, a company asked if they could sponsor the Tots100."
BlogCamp.co.uk – a free UK training event for non-professional bloggers, is another of Whittle's developments.
Though it is what I'd like for myself, not everyone who blogs as a hobby necessarily wants to make it their full-time career choice. Kash Bhattacharya, for example, writes EuropeBudgetGuide, which focuses on budget travel in Europe, offering tips and advice for readers. He enjoys keeping his blog a part-time interest, earning approximately £900 per month through "advertorials", site banners and a few affiliates. Bhattacharya – who started writing his blog when he was unemployed – has found other work through blogging.
"I don't intend my blog to be my main source of income," he says. "I see it as a platform for my individual talents and for my personal brand. I've learned about social media through blogging which led to me being recruited for my current job and I'm acting now as a social media consultant for travel brands. In short, the blog has opened doors to many possibilities in life."
Currently on a career break from teaching and concentrating on her dream of having a jewellery making business, Viv Smith is another part-time blogger hoping her blog will open extra doors. She set up Poppy Sparkles to accompany her business, but it appears to be developing in its own right, earning about £70 a month in advertising.
"Rather than just being another craft blog, I spend time thinking about my audience. I also place emphasis on quality graphics and images. I don't just showcase anything on my blog, only good images get in, which makes my blog more desirable to readers."
So what I'd like to know is this: how can I go about building a readable, compelling blog that will attract a large audience and through that, generate an income stream? Thus avoiding any need for me to move into a cardboard box. Happily, Allsopp has agreed to take me under his learned wing.
Over the next six months, under his guidance, I'll be creating a blog from scratch with an aim of developing a large enough audience of people who care about what I say, to earn a decent revenue from the site.
This is a very new and unique thing we're doing. And as a reader, you'll be able to follow this process fortnightly in Guardian Work, and learn for yourself some of Allsopp's maverick ways to creating an engaging blog that will be read (be warned: they'll be different to those of other blogging experts).
I'm excited about this project. Hopefully, if I'm a good student and do as I'm told, I may well be on my way to creating that pension after all. And as my friend Craig McGinty used to say about earning your bread and butter: "Why be a sheep, when you can be a wolf?"
Hear me howl.