Hi, I am Martin!

After meeting with my friend, I kept thinking about what my friend said: “It cannot be like it was before.” I knew he was right. I could no longer travel somewhere for months doing the job I was doing, it was just not possible.

The only thing to look forward to was a short 1-2 weeks holiday.

At that moment, I knew that I had to do something with my life. Quit my job and find something more flexible, more enjoyable, and less stressful.

Easier said than done. A few months passed again and I did nothing. I didn’t know what I could do and I kept thinking about what my parents and friends would think.

Unfortunately, at that time, I was caring too much about what other people thought about me.

Then all of the sudden, the problem got solved itself. I got fired.

The boss told me that I was not improving as quickly as I should and that it was time for me to go.

It was funny, as I was so happy when he said it but, of course, I pretended to be shocked and sad.

I was happy but also scared. I knew that I did not want to start applying for jobs and land another law office position that I would not enjoy.

I wanted to work on my terms and be my own boss. Be able to work remotely from anywhere in the world and travel again.

Two things came to my mind: freelancing and trying to make money online.

Making money online and having passive incomes is something that has fascinated me since I was 18 after reading a book called The Millionaire Fastlane by M. J. DeMarco.

After reading the book, I got hooked on the idea of working smart and not trading time for money. I was learning about various ways of how to make money online and build passive incomes.

However, for some time, I was just learning about it but not taking any action.

Fortunately, that changed in 2016 when I launched a website app project together with my brother.

We were both studying at university at that time and working part-time jobs, so we were working on our website project during our free time in the evenings.

Our dream was to make some passive income but we knew it would take time for our website to grow and gain a decent user base (it was sort of a niche dating website).

We could not afford to run ads, so we were focusing on learning about SEO and optimizing our website as much as possible.

A little down the road, our efforts paid off and we started making money online for the first time. We were earning between $1200-2000 a month which was not bad but minus taxes and costs it was not that much. We decided to just reinvest all the money into further development and focus on growing the business.

Unfortunately, despite all our efforts, by the time we finished university, we managed to increase our profit only by a small amount.

We kept working on the website but less and less. Partially because of having less time with full-time jobs and partially because we felt discouraged that we had invested so much effort into the project and it did not turn out to be the great success we had imagined.

After being fired from my job, my passion for making money online was reignited. I knew I had some experience that I could use for creating another online project and that’s what I decided to do.

Before I did that, I spent some time learning about building WordPress websites (the website I have with my brother is more complex and was not built by us), affiliate marketing, and blogging in general.

Then I built a WordPress blog and started publishing the first articles and building backlinks.

It was going well, and I had a good feeling about my new blog. A lot of the articles started ranking high on Google and I was receiving decent traffic already in the first few months.

Even though things were going in the right direction, I was not making any money from the blog and I knew it could still take some time.

At the time, I was 26 and moving away from my parents (I know, quite late). I started having bigger expenses which made me realize that I needed to start making some money now and not put all my hopes into my blog that could but also might not make enough money to pay all the bills.

Start of Freelancing

I knew I did not want to go back to law or get any other office job, so I decided to try freelancing.

I created an account on Fiverr and was browsing all their categories thinking about what I could do and that I could charge more than just a couple of bucks.

I found a WordPress development category with sellers charging decent amounts. I enjoyed learning about WordPress and creating my blog, so decided to give it a try.

I researched how to optimize gigs for keywords on Fiverr and other things that are important for being successful on the platform and launched my first gig.

A week passed, and I hadn’t gotten a single order, so I decided to create accounts on other freelancing platforms and increase my chances.

Another week passed and still nothing. It was just two weeks, but I was already getting nervous and contemplating my next steps.

The idea of getting back to working in an office was terrifying, but I was slowly starting to mentally prepare myself for the worst-case scenario.

But then the third week passed and I received my very first order! I over-delivered and the client left me an amazing review.

It was just one order but a huge motivational boost for me. I knew that if I could get one, I could get more.

And I did. In the same week, I received another one and many followed afterward.

In just one month, I was earning a little over $1.000, which was more than what I was earning at the law firm.

I was not just earning more money but was without any stress and working from the comfort of my home. I loved it!

A few months later, I was earning $2.000 a month steadily and on good months as much as $3.000.

I felt so happy and was enjoying the benefits freelancing has like working from anywhere in the world.

In the winter, I flew to sunny Colombia and spent a couple of months working from there. A bit later, I flew to the Dominican Republic. Learning how to surf in the morning and working in the afternoon, life felt great.