Most lifestyle design or self-development bloggers are well-intentioned liars. I know because I’m one of them. While it’s true that I’ve never claimed to be exactly who I want to be or where I want to be, I haven’t exactly been forthcoming with the reality of my situation either.
My last post, Bullshit with Bullets, was meant as a call to action for lifestyle design and self-development bloggers to ditch giving unrealistic, unimaginative and cliched advice and to instead strive to explore more profound ideas and philosophies and how they can be practically applied to our lives. I was incredibly happy to see that this call to action partially inspired Corbett Barr of Free Pursuits to implement a policy of radical transparency.
With this post I’d like to follow suit.
Where I’m At
I’m sure many of you will be happy to learn I’m not completely unqualified to run a site called Wage Slave Rebel. My life is, in many respects, atypical. On average, I go to sleep at one or two in the morning and wake up at ten in the morning. I have no boss keeping anything organized for me or micromanaging my day.
I’m a freelance web designer and developer who works primarily with WordPress. I work from two to four hours per day on projects, sometimes more if I have a demanding deadline. In the average month I’ll only have one major project, maybe two. This is my primary source of income and this usually gets me $1000/month. This isn’t a terribly impressive amount, but it’s more than enough to get the bills paid and have the time to learn new skills, read new books and generally enjoy life.
Where I’m Going
My greatest desire at the moment is to be a digital nomad. This business I operate is already location independent, meaning I can do my work from literally anywhere in the world that has electricity and an internet connection. This is a good start but it’s a far cry from actually traveling and experiencing the different cultures of the world. The issue keeping me from heading out today is primarily money. Earning $1000/month has allowed me to start saving for trips, but, after some calculations, I’ve come to the conclusion that, ideally, I need to earn about $3200/month.
To accomplish this, I’m currently looking into ways to expand my income by bringing more designers and developers into the fold to increase production and expand available services. You might think it hypocritical that, as the owner of a blog called Wage Slave Rebel, I would think to hire designers and developers and, thus, entangle them in the wage labor system, but I assure you as an opponent of wage slavery and a sympathizer of anarcho-syndicalism that this endeavor will be a worker-owned and worker-managed cooperative.
As a blogger, I love to write and I love to be read. I’m planning to take the joy I get from writing and turn it into a passive income by writing books, ebooks and other resources for the Wage Slave Rebel community. At the moment, I’m fairly certain there’s not much of a market for it since WSR’s readership is still growing, but I’ve already explored several ideas for such books.
Conclusion
I hope this post has given you a better idea of who I am and why I have any authority on the subject. At the very least, I am a Wage Slave Rebel, but I am aspiring to be so much more and I hope to motivate, inspire and advise you on your journey. If any of my experiences are helpful for others, then I’ll have felt like a success.
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Related posts
- Five Blogs To Keep You Motivated On Your Journey To Freedom
- Diary of a Wage Slave Rebel: The Truth About Working For Yourself
- Bullshit with Bullets
- So You Want To Be A Blogger, Part Four – Promoting Your Blog
Hey, I'm JD. Last year, I started Wage Slave Rebel as a resource for those who are dying to escape from conformity and design the lifestyles they dream of! I write about online entrepreneurship, productivity, and lifestyle design.
Hey J.D. I gave your "Bullshit with Bullets"post a shout out on my blog in the weekend. I thought it was excellent.
There's no guilt in having people work for you. Not everyone wants to be a wage slave rebel. Some people actually are content for at least a period of their life to work for someone else. I used to be like that, but now I'm looking at quitting my teaching job next year to go back to New Zealand to start my own business and continue blogging. I hope you hit that $3200 mark soon. Cheers.
I'm with Gordie here, I don't see a problem with hiring or working with people. The idea of "work" has been trampled on a lot in the last few decades because people usually focus on the negative aspects.
My definition is a little broader. Work = effort towards a particular goal.
It takes work to maintain a blog, cook dinner, improve your fitness or to learn a musical instrument. It also takes work to pay for food, housing and entertainment.
Most people view "work" in the "get paid to do something you hate" sense. Money complicates things. A century ago, when neighbors needed a hand putting up a barn you would help and not begrudge the work. This is still the way it is in many smaller communities. You work to create value for others. Sometimes people will give you a chicken, sometimes they will help you back, sometimes they will give you money.
In modern society, every transaction has become monetized. "I will put up your barn if you pay me $50 per hour plus expenses and benefits and I want overtime and holiday pay. By the way, I am afraid of heights so I want hazard pay to climb a ladder."
This last idea of work is what people hate. It is built on animosity. Every side is trying to screw everyone else. Successful businesses and people for that matter know that "work" is all about creating value for others.
If you can create value for your clients, (which obviously you can if they are paying you money), then there is no shame in trying to create even more value by hiring others to assist. That is the type of work that creates value for everyone. Your customers get more of your quality services, your employees earn an income, you get paid to coordinate it all and even society gets their share with taxes. That is win, win, win, win.
Business is not bad. Work is not bad. Business and work get a bad name because people abuse relationships and take advantage of others. I don't think you are a liar, I think you are human.
Although I somewhat ranted against the idea of what radical transparency I could become I do enjoy this sort of low key openness – simply letting your audience know where you're at.
One thing that one of my upcoming articles talks about is how people can perceive you to be greater than you are, and I believe that's mainly at the fault of the leader of the tribe rather than the tribe itself. And that's the exact reason I'm working on emphasising that "I'm just some kid who writes about some stuff" – it removes the pressure to live up to a facade and people "get" what you're about. Yes, you may lose a few audience members in the short term who want to be sold "the dream" and only look up to apparent superstars, but in the long run it's helping to build a much stronger community.
Been absolutely loving your recent articles JD. Absolutely top notch.
Thanks for the transparency and honesty, J.D. My position recently is not dissimilar to your own (aside from the writing a great blog bit) and hearing your numbers and habits is definitely interesting, and somewhat reassuring. For many people I know it would take a serious shift in values to survive on $1000 a month.
I wanted to point to a post from the E-TextEditor blog which explains the idea of an 'Open Company'. I read this last night for the first time and haven't been able to get the idea of an open design+development collective operating on a variation of this idea out of my head.
Regardless of what you think of that idea, it's an interesting post.
http://e-texteditor.com/blog/2009/opencompany
By the way, I love the 9am Monday morning kick in the pants
It's great to hear what you have going on, and where you are at right now. I love the transparency! I hope that this will inspire others to write posts of this kind, just as your Bullshit With Bullets post did.
JD!
Wicked post man! Its already amazing that you are your own boss and making $1000 a month. I have yet to reach this goal from just online projects. I think the hardest part to overcome is building the inital momentum, building a bname and relationships and getting your work out there.
I think that over time as your work starts to pay off, the results increase exponetially
Keep it up man, one of the best ways to make money of course is to create a product or concept and have others promote it for you while you get royalties for every sale they make
THis is the idea Im keeping in mind when designing a product.
Cheers!
Diggy
Good stuff J.D. – Happy to hear that you find yourself in a good work/life position, and certainly interested to hear more about your experience getting from $1000/mo to $3200/mo. Do you have a target date?
Radical transparency seems to be taking a real foothold around the blogosphere and that's very pleasing to know. I started my site with the intention of education through self exploration, but noticed that, oftentimes, I was writing in a way that didn't fully convey that.
I think its very important for readers to know the difference between a suggestion made because you've had repeated success with it and suggestions made because you're exploring and trying to find a new avenue to pursue. I've struggled with this in the past, thinking that people wouldn't want to read about me making guesses about what will work and what won't in my life, but that's turned out to not be true.
People seem to appreciate honesty above all else and, whether you're talking from an authoritative stance or a questioning, exploratory one doesn't really matter as long as you're simply giving it to them straight.
Though I'm not sure I feel like I have been lied to, thanks for coming out in the open about where you're at.
I haven't found the problem in the blogosphere (at least in this general circle of lifestyle design/LIPs) to be that people are pumping themselves up to be necessarily bigger than they are. It seems to me that the issue is more that everyone is repeating the same thing; they are reiterating what has worked (is working) for others. There's no fault in jumping on a band wagon and getting excited about new ideas and sharing them. That may sometimes come off as an attempt to appear to be an expert on something to some people, and I agree then, that transparency should be applied. But I found in this group that most of the bloggers are just over excited about ideas they're beginning to implement. I'm really interested to hear how you're adapting what you're learning to your circumstances; from that I might be able to tap into clues to help me in my circumstances. And from that we can move into the next stage of greater efficiency and increased potential.
This could be me arguing semantics here, and I'm excited about this flush of honesty from some of the longer running (yeah, that's you) bloggers in this circle. It's setting a great example, and reminding those of us who are just starting that we're not so far apart. I just hope no one is going around kicking themselves and feeling like they've been intentionally dishonest to their readers. Unless of course you have. But it doesn't seem that way to me, and I don't feel that I've been lied to. Unless of course I have
Anyway, I think you will reach your monthly goal sooner than you think, good projects with great viewing potential are the best advertisement you can ask for as far as online work goes. So worry not.
Glad to see you're taking the high road as a blogger with your two most recent posts man. It's good to be transparent and show your hand, but there's also nothing to be "ashamed" of when you say you're still in the process of attaining your goals.
Your goals, aspirations & desires will continue to evolve and grow with you for your entire life, and as Clay Collins said in my recent interview with him, finding your purpose isn't a destination, it's a path—a journey. It never ends, at least I hope your growth never ends.
Anyway, I'm glad I've gotten to know you. Seems like we share a lot in common and we're both young guys feeling our way throug the dark trying to find the right career, mission, and lifestyle that fits us. I wish you all the best with it. Thanks J.D.!
This is excellent J.D. I admire your honesty and your willingness to say where you're at. I think it's OK not to be a total expert on the things you're blogging about.
What is wrong is pretending you have all the answers when you don't.
It's also clear that you have and are taking steps along the way towards your goal. Many people who want to pursue the goal of lifestyle independence won't have got to the stage of leaving the 9-5 job and building up freelancing work.
I don't think that not having achieved your goals yet is a reason not to blog, you can advise those who aren't as far along the path as you are. For example, you could write posts about how you source your freelance engagements and how you built up regular work. You could talk about the mindset that you had to develop to leave the security net of the 'safe job'.
And of course, you can post about your own experiences as you strive to reach your own goal and share what has worked and what hasn't along the way. The transparency is more like to make people relate to you IMHO as you will seem like a human being and not some demi-god who makes our own struggles seem like failures every day.
Good for you for taking a stand – long may it continue!
I promise you you don't need that much money. I have just posted a blog entitles "A day in the life of a traveling entrepreneur" where I took a camera out with me on a typical working day for me in Bangkok. Get out of america and start leveraging currency and I promise you can live an exceptional life right now on $1000 a month.
You've definitely sparked something here, J.D. I've been having conversations with people all weekend about authenticity and transparency. It definitely has me thinking. I just wrote something about the whole "fake it 'till you make it" mentality today and I think the transparency topic will provide inspiration for many more posts coming up. Thanks again for the food for thought.
Glad to be on the level J.D. I agree with Kristin. I don't think you've lied to me…and a lot of the content out there is repetitive. I love hearing about people's real experience and so a post like this is great. I try to have that pretty much be my entire site content…in fact it's probably a fault that I go into excruciating detail about my exact steps with too much detail on how I'm getting where I'm going. Exactly where I'm at is on my About page. I really love a call to authenticity, and real life experiences, otherwise where all just repeating the same thoughts with different jargon. Thanks dude, and well done on the web projects. My own two cents…you can live off craigslist relatively easily especially if you are a webworker (web design, graphic design, SEO, online marketing)…I did this for a full year attempting to jump start my own business. Living cheaply gets frustrating after about 10 months though…it's great don't get me wrong…but I didn't like to continually make the living cut backs that I did…I found I wasn't enjoying the things I wanted to…even though I was free.
@Johnny (thelifething) … I totally believe thats possible, but my flavor of life design does not include moving to a different country to succeed. It's probably one of the best ways to create focus through environment and live cheaper…it's just not a realistic setup for several of us.
JD,
You've obviously hit on a hot button topic as is evident by the preceding comments. It's also a topic I've been wrestling with as well so I'm glad to see yours and everyone else's viewpoints. I think a certain amount of transparency is not only important but vital if you want to have a voice that is followed.
I feel like some of the "big dawgs" have become a bit complacent with their posts writing from a "just do this and you will succeed (or be happy, or rich, or whatever you want to put here)" frame of reference rather than a truly helpful / honest viewpoint. But there are a number of mid-range bloggers who are beginning to make names for themselves by being upfront and honest about where they are, where they want to get to, and what obstacles lie in their way (a few of these bloggers have actually left comments here).
When I started blogging I thought that you HAD to develop a perspective as a "fake it til you make it" type of writer to get anywhere. But I quickly realized (1) I wasn't comfortable with that approach and (2) people didn't want to connect with that type of shit anyway.
In the end, I think people truly resonate with stories and people that they can relate to. And transparency is the best way to form that connection. Great post…
Paul
I agree! Sometimes I dont even know to trust the earning figures of those money-making blogs or not. I rather trust those with painful experiences that I can learn from.