Hi there!
My name is Joe, I’m 28, and I spend my days blogging, writing and scheduling social media posts, growing social media accounts, doing SEO for this website and others, matched betting, advantage playing, and any other activities that I can quickly make money from online.
As you may have guessed from the definition above, I am trying to create an “advantaged” life for myself using only a laptop, an internet connection and hard work.
The long-term aim is to financially free before the age of 40 without ever having to get a job in the process. That does not mean there won’t be thousands of hours of hard graft involved. It just means every second I spend working is to make myself and my family financially better off, instead of devoting the better part of a lifetime to making a big corporate company become even richer.
I’ve started this blog for several reasons.
Perhaps the biggest is accountability, I have come to realise since leaving my job back in 2017 that I often have these big ideas and never take action on them. If I declare them on a site like this, it will help me stick to my goals and report back to you with my progress.
Secondly, being a Solopreneur is a lonely place. I haven’t met many people my age who can relate to having to pay yourself late this month because a client isn’t paying their invoice on time, or having to threaten legal action because they aren’t paying at all.
I don’t know anybody in my personal life that can relate to the stress involved in managing several different websites, social media channels, delivering freelance projects on time and when you’ve finished for the day, spending the evening in front of the telly completing offers, surveys and anything else to make money on the side to make ends meet.
It would be great if this blog helps to foster a community where we can all get together and help each other through the tough times through mentoring, collaborating, meeting up (if possible), and just genuinely cheering each other on.
The amount of times I have just wanted someone there who has been there and done it in the online business world to just put an arm round my shoulder and say, “Hey, I’ve been where you are, its tough, but keep going because the rewards are just around the corner” is beyond counting.
Finally, I guess when it comes down to it I want to earn an income from this blog. I want to demonstrate that it is possible to slowly but surely start replacing the income from your job with online income. Whether that is through blogging, becoming a social media manager or setting up a freelance business, hopefully, this blog can show you it can be done.
I will be running ads, using affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, digital products and anything else I can think of to generate revenue. Once I start to earn something I will start reporting the income in a monthly report.
So even if you are just looking for something to squeeze around your full-time job to improve your financial situation, there should be something for you here to learn and implement.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and if you ever want to get in touch, I am available via email on hello [at] advantagedlife.co.uk
To get started, simply use the menu at the top to navigate your way around all of the different categories, and hopefully, you will learn something new today 😊
2022 Update
Reading this page back after three years sends gallons of nostalgia through my veins. Despite it only being three years ago, so much has changed in my life since I wrote the page that it almost doesn’t feel as though that was me.
So what happened in the intervening years? Well, as it turns out, quite a lot. I got engaged to my partner, we brought two beautiful babies into the world (one boy, and one girl), and there was the small matter of the COVID-19 pandemic which turned the world on its head for a couple of years.
I suppose I did what I set out to do, I created a life whereby all I need is a laptop and an internet connection for work. However, I’m nowhere near financially free yet. But I’m only 31, so I’ve got nine more years left to build up a business that is mostly passive.
So what happened? Why did I disappear off the face of the earth for three years? Well, the reason is as exciting as it is mundane. In short, my freelance writing business took off. After grafting on Fiverr for 18 months, I reached top seller status and the rest, as they say, was history. Now I have an extensive stable of clients that continue to give me slightly more work than I have the capacity for, and if I ever do get quiet, a few changes of the settings on Fiverr and I have enquiries flooding into my inbox within a few hours.
It’s a nice place to be, but there is a problem. I don’t have the best work/life balance at the moment, and having twins has highlighted how badly I need to change my current setup. And so the new mission is to achieve more income while spending fewer hours typing away on my laptop.
My solution to achieve this aim? Websites. Hence blowing the dust off this site and starting again. While I’ll use this site to report on my various website projects, I’ll also chime in with the myriad of things I’ve learned from my time freelancing on Fiverr and delve into what I’m doing to get my websites where I want them to be quicker.
The income reports will probably have to be ditched because they take far too long to collate from all of my various income sources (though I have slimmed them down). I’ll probably write progress reports instead, or income reports that only relate to this site perhaps. Who knows. But seeing as income reports are an entire category on this site, I will try and put something up on a monthly basis. Plus, I know just how motivating these reports can be when you’re beginning your journey.
So that’s it for you, feel free to have a browse and as I said all those years ago, hopefully, you’ll learn something new today 😊