LifestyleDesignUnleashed

photo credit: mdanys

Lifestyle design blogs are everywhere these days. Some are fanastic, many are reasonable but frankly quite a few stink. And each of those bloggers has their own opinion on what makes the perfect location independent business model that will allow you to work the hours you choose and from any place you can get connected to the internet.

Broadly speaking though it seems the two most popular techniques for earning an online income are freelancing and affiliate marketing so I thought it might be useful today as someone who has made money from both of these to compare them side by side in the hope of helping you to make a decision about where to put your time and effort in if you’re serious about quitting your job and working for yourself.

Freelancing

Freelancing involves taking on freelance work that other website owners and marketers either don’t have the skills or the time to do. Jobs vary widely from skilled jobs involving programming or graphic design down to simple jobs like writing articles or ebooks that most of us can do. Of course it goes without saying that the simpler the job is, the more competition there is for it and the less it will pay but that doesn’t mean there isn’t money to be made here.

Indeed in my first attempt at freelancing I made $1,200 in my first few weeks by taking on a large article writing project which then also led on to repeat work with the same employer. My girlfriend, too, managed to land a job writing content for a travel website which turned into regular work for her.

So when you do it right, freelancing can lead to not only rapid income but also regular, repeat clients leading to a reasonably steady amount of work with people you have built up a relationship with. It’s also something that anyone willing ti put some effort into can make some money from and over time as your contacts and reputation build it becomes easier and easier to make money as a freelancer.

So far all this looks quite rosy I think you’d agree, so what are the downsides of earning money online from freelancing?

As far as I am concerned there are a number of potential downsides. The first of these is that while I have had some luck with getting regular, repeat custom from some employers, these arrangements have really been few and far between and it took quite some time to build up a contact list of regular providers.

Until that list was built, I spent almost as long applying for freelance jobs as I did actually doing the work each week. A large proportion of the jobs I applied for resulted in no work and so not only does this process take time – and often yield very few results – but it can also be boring and repetitive in my opinion.

It also takes some time in order to actually get reasonably good at applying for these jobs to maximize your chances of success and at one point my girlfriend and I split the tasks between us with me finding us freelance gigs and communicating with the employers while she did the writing work as that is her passion.

A second weakness in my opinion is that of course your income is limited by what employers are willing to pay and how quickly you can work. If you take on a job to write 50 articles for $300 how long it going to take you to really write those articles? You’re unlikely to ever be able to get to hundred dollar days in this way.

To a degree you control your time with freelance work. You can work in the morning or the evening; work long hours or short; hurry through a job or take your time. But you still need it finished by the time agreed. So while you may have more control over your time than you would at a job, you don’t have total control like you do with some other business models.

But the biggest issue of all that I have with freelancing as a location independent or lifestyle business is simply that to get paid you need to do the work. When you stop working, you start earning. This means that while you can work from anywhere you can access the internet, this is really more of a job than a business and typically offers no chance of residual income.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is different in that one of it’s greatest strengths is the potential for residual income. You build a website and market it. Do it right and visitors will keep coming – and earning you money – for months or even years to come. No matter what you’re up to your website is churning out income for you.

You also have total control over your time. If, like me, you like to really immerse yourself in a project, work like a madman for a few months to get a new project off the ground then take life easy for a while then feel free to go ahead. That money keeps on coming in and nobody is moaning about deadlines to you because you don’t have any. This makes affiliate marketing in my opinion far better as a lifestyle business than freelancing.

Your earnings are also not limited in such a way. Your affiliate website might earn you a few dollars or a few thousand dollars. Your results aren’t linked to the amount of time you put in but your skills in choosing the right niche, the right keywords and in marketing and monetizing your site. Your potential earnings are far higher while your time is more your own. That all sounds like good news to me.

So what about the downsides of affiliate marketing? The fact is that affiliate marketing in my opinion takes far more experience to be successful at than freelancing. It takes far more time to learn what you’re doing, how to pick niches, build sites and market them. It can take months before you start getting decent search engine volumes and even longer before your project starts to provide you with regular, reliable income.

While there are people out there who have bucked the trend, you’re unlikely to replace the income from your day-job any time soon if you’re new to the whole internet marketing thing, while you *could* with freelancing if you’re willing to put the hours in.

So what’s best? This is, of course, a difficult answer. Everyone has their own preferences. But my own opinion is as follows. And that’s both. Start learning about affiliate marketing while you’re also working freelance. The money from your freelance work can help pay for domain names, web hosting and so on for your affiliate sites and as your affiliate marketing efforts start to bear fruit over time you can then cut back on your freelance work until you’re earning all your money from passive affiliate income streams.

• Seven Reasons Why It's Virtually Impossible To Get The Truth About How To Make Money Online photo credit: Atilla1000 For many people one of the key ingredients in the lifestyle design process is creating an online...
• Time Management For Internet Marketers photo credit: Robbert van der Steeg Working for yourself is entirely different to working in a normal "job". Whether you...
• Successful Lifestyle Business Models photo credit: WTL photos When we think about lifestyle design a key element is that of a "lifestyle business". So...
• Lifestyle Design In Action - Why You Should Reduce Your Monthly Expenses photo credit: 丹涅拉 - Dani Gama If money was no object, what would you do? What changes would you make...
• When To Quit Lifestyle Design   photo credit: fuzzcat Looking at the keywords that people have found this site through recently I was interested to...

• Supplementary Solutions for Debt Repayment There are a number of other things that you can do in order to improve your current money situation at...
• Increase Your Earnings With World Wide Web Affiliate Programs In situation you'd desire to generate additional revenue as an affiliate marketer it's very best to search for the programs...
• An Honest Review Of WorldVentures First and foremost, I would like to say that I am not affiliated with WorldVentures at all. I have knowledge...
• The Power of Influence: The Easy Way to Make Money Online The Power of Influence: The Easy Way to Make Money Online by author, Sarah Prout Published 30th September 2011 The...
• Which Is The Best Money Making Business on Internet ? One of the beginners problem with online business: finding the right business to make money and profits. There are lot...