For many people making money online is a part-time activity or just a hobby.  A few hours are spent late in the night or early in the morning blogging and researching different ways of making money online. 

If people stick at it for a while, they eventually start earning enough to pay for their internet connection or even enough to pay off their credit cards.  Once you start to earn a bit from your side business working a couple of hours everyday, the natural thought then is, if I can make this much money from a couple of hours of work, imagine how much I could earn if I quit my W-2 or regular 9-5 job.  So, if you can make $50 a day from working online 2 hours a day, do you think you will be able to quit your job and and make $500 a day by working 10 hours?

I quit my job at the end of 2006 to travel full-time and work on my websites.  I was working a fairly decent income from my websites which I had built up over a couple of years while I worked in my regular job.  I thought that it would be fairly easy to increase my earnings by having so much extra time to work on my website.  But did it happen?

When you are working in a 9-5 job, your day is very structured.  You get up everyday at the same time from Monday to Friday and you establish a regular routine.  You then have to fit in time from your daily schedule to work on your websites.  For many people this is in the evenings after they have come home from work and eaten some dinner.  If you have a family it can be even more difficult.  Most people just switch the time they spent watching television to working on the internet.

Since my online time was fairly limited when I had a job, I tended to work fairly hard building content for my websites.  After I quit my job, yes I had a lot more time on my hands, but since my time online wasn't as concentrated, I tended to waste more time while I was online, reading blogs and forums.

I lost a lot of the focus which I had when I was working.  During most of 2007 I spent traveling through South East Asia and China, so it wasn't like I was just sitting at home watching television.  Often I didn't have access to the internet, but I didn't spend enough of my time creating content offline, like I can now. 

I was also surrounded by other travelers who were on holiday.  Every night was like a Friday night and there is no denying I had a great time.  When I was home in Australia my family treated me more like I was unemployed than someone trying to run a business and people were always asking me to take care their houses while they were on holiday and feed their pets.

In 2008 I spent most of my time in Beijing writing a blog for the Olympics.  That was the first time I really started to get more focused on my websites and making money online. 

After the Olympics I felt a little burnt out and struggled to find my next big project.  Now I am living in Bali, I have felt a little more settled and focused on writing, blogging and making useful content websites.  I have been inspired again by seeing people working regular jobs and then coming home and still finding the time to write hundreds of articles a month.  Since I have all of the time in the world it made me think back to the time when I only had a few hours to work online. 

To increase my productivity online I am now trying to establish a bit of a routine and setting goals.  You definitely have to work hard at staying motivated and committed. 

I just hope my story can help people who might considering quitting their job to work on internet marketing full-time.