5 Months into the Journey
Self-Employment Check-In
Many Good Things
Late August.
Summer is basically over and we are on the downhill slide into fall.
It’s been just shy of five months since I quit my corporate job. Hard to believe it’s been that long already.
I have no regrets.
I’m happier. I’m healthier (mentally and physically). I’m less stressed and I’m more active. Jess and I have been walking at local parks nearly every day of the week for months, and it’s been great!
I have so much more mental energy. As a result, I’ve been wildly productive in my new ventures as well as just the normal life things. For one, our house is cleaner (lol). I even finished and turned a maple slab into a cozy, window table.
I’ve had mental space to let ideas bubble to the surface, sit with them, and sort them into buckets. I have so many idea bubbles.
In a way, it feels like the bulk of my creativity has been locked away in a box for years. The lid held on tight while trying to grow my career in science and analytics. Don’t get me wrong, I was able to use some of this creativity at my previous job, but not like now.
After leaving my job, a lot of pressure and mental demands lifted. As a result, the lid has been blown off that box, and every day, a constant stream of ideas is unleashed.
I was joking with a friend recently that I sometimes wish I had a “pause the ideas” button, so I can slow the roll and not get overwhelmed with all of the things I want to do. For real, I have so many Google reminders for my future self about various ideas.
It might all seem a bit dramatic, but it feels dramatic. I feel very lucky and grateful.
New Career Taking Shape
After we finished our travels in May to Italy (read here) and Arizona, I settled into a regular workday routine.
Although I haven’t shared much online, I have been quite busy.
I am in the process of setting up multiple streams of passive and semi-passive income.
Each revenue stream utilizes my skills in technical writing, data analysis, project management, and creativity in different ways. Combining the flood of creativity with valuable technical skills that I have gained over the years is really energizing.
Ultimately, I just want to create and bring value to areas that interest me.
Currently, there are three buckets that my most active projects fall into: photography & digital print sales, niche websites, and YouTube.
Photography & Digital Print Sales
I sell my fine art photography prints through my main Etsy shop. At the moment, I have close to 100 active listings.
My photos are printed on extremely high-quality paper (Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308) that produces outstanding colors, details, and has the highest age resistance. Earlier this year, I added an option to order your print with a white mat already included. Most of my sales since adding that option have been for prints with mats. I think it just makes it so much easier to get the print framed.
Psst..be sure to favorite my shop so you get notified when the holiday sales start and about new listings.
Beyond the print shop, I have a couple of other experimental Etsy shops that I am working to expand. These are targeted at the sale of digital prints — images people can download and print themselves through a vendor of their choosing.
Niche Websites
A niche website is a website that focuses on presenting information on a specific topic. Think topic-specific blogs. I research and write several articles within a topic that interests me. Revenue earned comes from affiliate links, ads, and (in the future) my own digital products.
I really love the research process of gathering and analyzing info and putting it together in a way that makes sense and brings value to others. These are skills that I gained a lot of experience in refining through my previous job and they are skills I enjoy.
The key is that the topic must be a topic that keeps me engaged and interested, otherwise, nothing will get done.
My photography website could be considered a niche site. Although this website is not a primary focus at the moment, I do earn some affiliate revenue from it each month. I would love to expand more of the photography-centric travel guide piece of it someday.
In addition, I have one website in a technology niche that I am actively writing articles for. I also have plans to start another website next year in an art-related niche.
YouTube
My experience with video editing goes way back to my high school days. Many hilarious (or at least my friend and I thought so) school project videos were made.
I’ve always been drawn to the puzzle that video editing presents. How to put all of the pieces together into something interesting. Video, graphics, music. But, it can be very time-consuming and thus has been low on my priority list for a long time.
In 2022, I started taking nature videos from our travels and turning them into relaxing, nature ambience videos that I post on our Travel Atmos YouTube channel. In May and June, the channel gained a few hundred subscribers thanks to our videos of the bluebell woods in Scotland.
Someday we’ll have enough subscribers (1,000) that we can monetize the channel 🙂.
I recently started a second YouTube channel in a technology niche that I will be dedicating a lot of time to the rest of the year.
A Busy September
September is going to fly by for us.
We will be doing a bit of traveling to Montana and Minnesota. Our travel itinerary will involve a lot of photography, hiking, and relaxing in nature.
The trip to Montana will be the first car-camping trip we’ve taken since going to middle-of-nowhere Utah in 2021. And for the Minnesota trip…we are trying a new mode of travel. You’ll have to wait until October to see what that’s all about 😉.
I hope everyone reading this had a great summer. I’m really looking forward to sharing what this next month brings.
Until next time,
Stephanie
Where else can you follow me & some of my projects?
Photography & Travel: @stephcoffmanphoto (Instagram)
Print Shop: StephCoffmanPhoto on Etsy
Nature films: @travelatmos (Instagram, YouTube)